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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, May 6, 1964
Alabama Demagogue
Power Play
Governor George Wallace's cleverly plotted power play deserves more attention than it has received to date. Alabama's Democratic delegation is pledged to the Governor and will remain pledged to him until he releases it, thus insuring him a considerable mischief-making potential at Atlantic City.
ALSO, ELECTORS will be chosen at the same time. These electors will appear on the ballot, not as rival "slates" pledged to Governor Wallace or President Johnson, but merely as individual names. In effect, there will be two slates — one "loyal" (with the solid backing of Senators Lister Hill and John Sparkman), the other a "rebel" or Wallace group — but electors will not appear as slates, nor will any of them be pledged to any nominee.
Conceivably, therefore, Alabama could elect some electors who would support President Johnson and some who would not. In effect this gives Wallace a second line of defense and enhances his mischief-making potential.
NOW TURN TO INDIANA. There, as in Wisconsin, Governor Wallace is the amiable, softspoken, courteous, serious, folksy, "underdog" contender.
Beyond Indiana is the Maryland primary (May 19). What Wallace hopes to do is roll up a million votes outside the South which will, he calculates, augment the power that derives from control of the Alabama delegation.
He has plenty of money. The Alabama Sovereignty Commission has set up the Committee for Fundamental Freedoms which is collecting for him. He is also getting help from the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms, and Birchite support is available.
IN INDIANA as in Wisconsin, Wallace is the beneficiary of saturation television coverage. He is "the man in motion," the challenger, the interloper, the newsmaker. Without any conscious bias, the television cameras automatically focus on him and he projects very well. As a result he gets top billing—at no expense to himself.
For example, the Huntley-Brinkley report of April 15 devoted a long sequence to Wallace in Indiana: arriving at the airport, the plane-side press conference, entering the Claypool Hotel, conferring with friends and well-wishers, entering Butler University, addressing the students. If television is to concentrate on Wallace as the man in motion, it should provide some background on the other Wallace.
Someone—the networks or the opposition—should let Democrats see shots of Wallace defying federal authority at the University of Alabama, Wallace delivering his inaugural address, the cattle prods, the bombed churches, the disgusting Birmingham street scenes.
THE LATE JOE McCARTHY was a political incompetent. Most of the money that flowed to him he spent on horses and soy bean margins; he would have had difficulty organizing a teen-age raid on a peanut stand. Wallace, by contrast, is a shrewd, unscrupulous demagogue who knows how to acquire power through exploiting latent social discontents and deep currents of prejudice. He will not make the McCarthy mistakes.
The Nation
Dailij Hansan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
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Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
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The People Say...
Editor:
With all the commotion over the low morals on the college campus and all the talk about morals that goes on on this campus, I was wondering if you could possibly reprint this article. After all, there is another side to the morals issue, and I think it would be a relief to see something like this in our paper. Maybe if there were more articles like this then there wouldn't have to be so many of those on the low moral standards.
This article is from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Janet Phelps
column of the St. Louis Dispatch):
What she (the freshman girl)
wants when she most needs
is a clear code of conduct in
sophistication or knowledge of the
St. Louis sophomore (Following are excerpts from the column of the letter)
world. She wants to do what is right-
ment, not just to boys, for youth is naturally idealistic.
"THEY TELL HER that a beautiful body is the most desired thing in the world, but for her personal pleasure, for the domination of men, for the acquisition of wealth and ease and for worldly success, she must show what other conclusions she could draw.
"But do we tell her that her body is the temple of the living God? Certainly not—what would be the percentage in fact that is the teaching of the Christian region, every high religion teaches that the body is the temple of God.
"We ought to tell her also that it is the nature of love to want to make the marriage real for a good, real man, she will rejoice with every step of the wedding march if her shimmering white bridal gown are symbolic of an inner purity."
"DO WE TELL her what things in life she has learned, having things without which all the resources must be dust on parched lips? Do we tell her more about ourselves times more important than facts?"
By Roy Miller
Annual State Sessions Guard Federal Power
Increasing responsibilities are facing state governments and failure of states to take needed action results in concentration of power in Washington.
REALIZATION of this situation has caused, among other things, a trend toward annual sessions of legislatures. Even quarterly sessions of state legislatures are the ideal set forth by the Model State Constitution.
In Kansas, the constitution provides for biennial regular sessions, with budget sessions in alternate years. Frances Sanford Nelson wondered in "Constitutional Change in Kansas" (a pamphlet printed in 1958 by the KU Governmental Research Center) how "infrequent legislative sessions strictly limited in duration can cope with the complexity and the magnitude of the questions that come before them today."
"There is found among the legislators a degree of discontent with the present budget session. There are those who would prefer that the legislature meet only biennially.
THE SECOND COMMISSION on Revision of the Kansas Constitution, a 10-member commission which reported to the Legislature in 1963, said:
With the issues of reapportionment and legislators' remuneration disposed of by past legislation, the question of how often the Kansas Legislature should meet is one of the main problem areas in regard to revision of the Legislative Article of the Kansas Constitution.
"The long-run trend in American state government is, however, toward the annual session. The responsibilities of the state governments are increasing, and not diminishing.
"THE DANGER IS, as the Kestnbaum Report indicates, that failure of the states to take needed action leads to undue concentration of power in Washington."
The Commission called its recommendation on the matter "a compromise between those who would have full-fledged annual sessions and those who would not."
THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDED that the constitution be revised so that the budget session may consider legislation other than budgetary matters "upon a resolution adopted by a two-thirds vote of the elected members of each house," which legislation "may be passed by a majority vote by such elected members."
The commission added, in making its recommendation:
"Incidentally, the proposed change would somewhat reduce the boredom, during the budget session, of those legislators who
are not members of the finance committees of either chamber."
The present biennial sessions in Kansas, in the minds of some people who would revise the constitution, create difficulty by forcing budgeting for a two-year period.
ANOTHER PROBLEM is a flood of last-minute legislation which accompanies most sessions.
"Whatever the reason, postponing difficult decisions until the last minute is a common (and forgivable) human trait," according to "Constitutional Change in Kansas."
"One of the newest approaches to a solution of this problem takes this into account. It tries to do away with the 'last minute,' insofar as that is possible, by suggesting more frequent sessions of the legislature-perhaps quarterly sessions,
"THOSE WHO ADVANCE this plan say that the need for law-making is continuous; why should not the law-making itself be continuous? Furthermore, they claim, frequent short sessions would mean that committee deliberations would be more carefully planned and could easily mean that when legislators do not have an imminent deadline looming ahead they will settle down and work out controversial problems as they arise."
Miss Nelson also pointed out that the more frequent sessions "need not take up many more actual legislative days during a two-year period than the present arrangement, particularly when the growing practices of recessing and special sessions are taken into account."
ANOTHER recommendation of the Second Commission on revising the Legislative Article would enable special sessions to be called by petition of a majority of the combined membership of the two houses.
At present, the governor alone has 'the authority to call special sessions.
William H. Cape, associate director of the KU Governmental Research Center and associate professor of political science, wrote in 1958 in "Constitutional Revision in Kansas."
"There is increasing sentiment for the proposal that the legislative branch should be authorized to reconvene itself.
"SOME OTHER PROCEDURE for calling special sessions would be in addition to the power now granted the governor. It would break the exclusive power of the governor over emergency sessions, but it would not infringe upon his leadership in executive matters.
"The additional authority would tend to increase legislative responsibility by making the Legislature more independent of the governor."