KANSAN COMMENT
'Think of it Larry-a chance to get back in the driver's seat!'
The guard changes
When Lawrence O'Brien announced Tuesday that he would, after all, accept the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, the beleaguered party was struck by a faint beam of light from the end of the long tunnel it entered at the 1968 Chicago convention.
Unlike Oklahoma's Sen. Fred Harris, the departing chairman, O'Brien makes few waves. Yet his experience, gained as Presidential campaign manager for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and from his earlier whirl as national chairman during the Humphrey campaign, should benefit the party.
Harris took the post in early 1969 amid cries that his senatorial duties would interfere with party responsibilities. To an extent, his detractors were right. The Oklahoman, a critic of the Vietnam war, decided to prod the party into a dovish stance. No matter how good his intentions, it became apparent that some Democrats either didn't want to go his way or didn't want to go as far. And Franklin D. Roosevelt's grand coalition of labor, intellectuals, the poor and Southerners—always a shaky combination—couldn't stand the new leftward tug.
The party was also without a vibrant leader after Chappaquiddick; Hubert Humphrey remained a symbol of the old politics, while Sen. George McGovern's commission-chairing and Sen. Edmund Muskie's speechmaking failed to arouse the public.
In addition, the Democrats were still faced
with an $8 million debt from the 1968 campaign.
Fund raising dinners and last month's Miami Beach gala netted disappointingly little.
So Harris decided to chuck the whole affair, leaving the tangle to O'Brien.
O'Brien is faced with dismal prospects in the fall congressional races. Twenty-five Democratic Senators are up for reelection but only 10 Republicans. The GOP needs just seven new seats to gain control of the Upper House for the first time since 1955. The Democrats already trail the Republicans in governorships, 18 to 32, and the outlook there is bleak for a Democratic resurgence. Furthermore, the Republicans hold the White House and all the tasty patronage that accompanies it.
Whether a party chaired by O'Brien, who was backed for the job by Humphrey, can enlist youth is uncertain. The disappointment of the 1968 Kennedy and McCarthy campaigns lingers, while splinter groups led by the enigmatic image of Sen. Eugene McCarthy threaten to form a new party.
Yet O'Brien may well be able to gather the remnants of the old party. And given the predominantly liberal list of possible 1972 Presidential contenders—Sen, Harold Hughes, McGovern, Muskie, Harris, Humphrey and lately, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark—and O'Brien's credentials as a former Kennedy man, the Democrats' future thrust looks vaguely promising.
—Monroe Dodd
BY SOKOLOFF
$ \textcircled{C} $ David Sokoloff 1970
Pit and the pendant
By CHARLIE CAPE
Kansan Makeup Editor
Between the time a girl enters college and the time she graduates, she is apt to experience a run-in with an institution on today's campus—the lavalier (not to be confused with the lavaliere or laval-liere).
Webster says that this is "a pendant ornament on a fine chain that is worn around the neck as a necklace." It is the college equivalent to a high school boy giving his steady girl his class ring or ID bracelet.
Being lavaliered to someone is the next best thing to being pinned, which is the same thing as being pre-engaged. And before pre-engaged is the next best thing to being engaged.
Now, being engaged is as much of this as many guys want, but somehow, a good part of them seem to make it to the altar and are transformed into what is commonly referred to as husbands.
This is to say that being married is the next best thing to a. . . to a. . . to a, well, who knows what?
One simple thought to those who are considering the lavalier (from either side)—Do not go gentle into that good night. . .
hearing voices—
To the editor:
At one time I held the opinion that political careers did not attract the most talented individuals of a society, but attracted only insecure gentlemen whose history included submission to domineering mothers. My opinions have matured on this matter since I have encountered handbills describing the campaign platform of various parties here at KU, and I find it increasingly difficult to make this accusation. These bills impressed me with a paling stupidity, a dizzy idealism, and such a loose grasp on reality that to argue against their goals would resemble arguing against the existence of either. When I remember the traditional ineffectiveness of these elective offices of student leadership, I stand in awe of the candidates' pretentiousness. If a university contains the greatest minds of the new generation, and if these candidates are the greatest of the greatest of the new generation, then I predict the masses of the future will demand many more stomach pumps to relieve the nausea effected by the buffoonery of these political pathogens.
Charles Novo-Gradac Kansas City sophomore
- * *
To the editor:
In writing the following, did Gordon Allport have Senator Shultz in mind?
A person widely experienced and knowing many courses of conduct has many degrees of freedom. It is in this sense that the broadly educated man is freer than the man narrowly trained. Today we are witnessing the frightening things that political leaders with one-channeled minds can do. What alarms us is their simplistic view of social and political reality. They know only one solution; and this solution is totalitarian and spurious. Their lack of tolerance and fear of dissent reflect their own lack of freedom. One-channeled minds can never comprehend that truth may have many channels.
(From "Becoming" by Gordon W. Allport)
Henry Edwards
Waterville sophomore
KANSAN
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