Page 2
EDITORIAL
Tale Of Woe
Oh kind reader, loan me a few momenta of your .time
whilst I try to relate, in no uncertain terms, a tale of woe
and misbegotten adventures concerning a place that you
and I know well.
This unfortunate state of affairs I speak of takes place in
a learning enviroment, bordered on all sides by a small
community, in a place settled by a man named William
Penn. Yes t’is true, the place I speak of Is Pennsylvania,
specifically a small town, which we may as well call
Smallville.
In Smallville there is a school, oh, a university, but only
a branch of its big mother, who happens to be spread out
over all of Penn’s Woods. We shall call this school, the
Smallville Branch of Big-U.
The Smallville branch is probably not a whole lot
different from Big-U, although, not nearly as many people
have entrusted their funds to promote their intellectual
stimulation at the Smallville branch as compared to Big-U.
The Smallville branch of Big-U has several governing
factions each directly associated with and consisting of the
members they represent.
For example those who pay for the knowledge to be
taken out of Smallville, have elected people to watch out
for their interests. We’ll call them Lower Watcher-Outers.
Those who get paid have done the same. As a note of
interest here, thou reader, you must know that those who
now get paid have at one time or another themselves paid,
not necessarily at the Smallville-U branch, but,
nevertheless at some institution adapted to such purposes.
Those who get paid have elected Watcher-Outers too.
Now there is an organization that is sort of an overseer
for the Lower Watcher-Outers and the people they
watch-out for. Here is where the conflict arises.
ft seems the Executive branch of the Lower
Watcher-Outers has somewhat hostile feelings toward the
Overseer, whose name I can’t bring to mind, I know,
though, that it is a direction on the compass. Why this is
so, I can only theorize, but it is true.
What the Overseer thinks about the current Lower
Watcher-Outer administration is anybody’s guess.
Of course the opinions of both sides are only expressed
within the confines of the respective camps. Eventually, I
forsee openly expressed adverse opinions probably by the
Lower Watcher-Outers, for the Overseer Is too smooth to
act foolish.
One member of the Executive Branch, a certain, young,
aspiring, sci-fi writer, constantly claims that this Is the
year of detente. [An allusion to relations on a much broader
scale.] Well eventually we’ll see if he is correct.
It is still somewhat early in the year for the Lower
Watcher-Outers Administration, fend they seem to be Just
getting prepared to do something probably for the next
term. Maybe something Is in the wind about parking fees or
prof, evaluations. In any case, to drop a bit of advise
directly from a sagacious old seer: “You catch more flies
with honey than you do with vinegar.”
But, alas, oh reader, we’d be foolish to think such a
problem could be solved, once a mind is of a certain
opinion. Distrust and contempt and anger are all
conditions of which each creature, known as human, are all
injected in gradations of severity.
Oh Yeah, Have a Happy Turkey.
Capitol Campus Reader
of the Pennsylvania State University
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The Capitol Campus Reader is the school newspaper of
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ecffives Page
Jimmy Carter
Future Of Amer
Jimmy Carter, a figure
silent and unknown in the
1960’5, is the president-elect of
the United States in large part
because of the political forces
which were let loose in that
decade. Carter’s nomination
would have been impossible
without the reforms begun in
1968 opening up the Demo
cratic Party to challenges from
those who could not garner
regular organizational support.
Without the civil rights
movement and the dramatic
progress it brought to the
South, no Southern governor
would have Warranted black
votes in the North nor would
they have been there to gather
in the South. Much of the
Carter effort- paid and volun
teer- came from individuals
whose politics were shaped by
the movements of the 19605.
Rep. Andrew Young, of the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and a key Carter
advisor, is no doubt symbolic of
this phenomenon.
Yet, if Carter can be
somewhat ironically called a
child of the 19605, his victory
does represent a sharp break
with the politics of that era.
The divisions between young
and old, white and black which
characterized American politics
in the late 1960 s and early
1970 s were clearly a result of
the struggle over civil rights
and the Vietnam War. As these
issues have faded from our
political landscape, so have the
divisions that they have
produced. And no where is this
more apparent than in the
election returns from the
South.
Carter’s success in the
South, the key to his victory,
was unprecedented not in its
size but its composition.
Carter’s percentages in the
deep South were in fact
dramatically behind those of
Roosevelt’s in 1940 and
Stevenson's in 1952 and in some
states behind Kennedy’s in
1960, as evidenced in the chart
below:
Roosevelt Stevenson
(1940) (1952)
Ala. 85% 65%
Qa. 84% 70%
La. 86% 53%
Mias. 95% 80%
Ksnnady Cartsr
(I 960) (1976)
Ala. 57%
Ge. 63% 67%
La. 64% * 50%
Mias. 60% * 52%
* percentage of the major party vote
In the elections of 1968 and
1972 the Democratic vote in the
deep South was almost entirely
black and reduced to less than
30%. Carter’s South in spite of
the showing in the Electoral
College was not the solid South
of the pre-civil rights era. His
margins were exceedingly thin
in Mississippi and Louisiana
and exceeded 60% only in his
home state of Georgia were
provided by a coalition unprec
edented in past presidential
elections in the South. It
consisted of the newly enfran
chised blacks (95% of Southern
blacks supported Carter) and
poor and working class whites
who returned to the Demo
cratic party after supporting
Wallace and Nixon in succes
sive elections. While President
Ford, according to the CBS
News poll, won a majority of
the whites in the South, Carter
won 63% of all Southern voters
earning $BOOO a year or less,
47% of those earning between
$12,000 and $20,000 and only
36% of those earning more than
$20,000. Carter carried the
black counties of southwestern
Mississippi and white blue
collar counties of northeastern
Mississippi. Carter carried,
according to early reports,
approximately two-thirds of the
Southern Wallace voters. The
urban middle class voter in the
South remained Republican as
he has generally been since
1952. What then emerges from
; arter’s victory in the South is
the triumph of class loyalties
over race- a populist’s dream
come true. Carter’s success in
the South was not the politics of
region but of class.
Throughout the country
Carter’s narrow victory (in only
12 states plus the District of
Columbia was his margin
greater than 100,000) is
highlighted by its class
character. Two divisions in
American politics, character
istic of the past decade, have
blurred class lines- religion and
age almost disappeared in this
election. Kennedy’s mandate in
1960 which had a distinctive
class content was nonetheless
colored by the religious issue.
He gained 78% of the Catholic
vote and only 38% of the
Protestant. Jimmy Carter’s
mandate, for all the talk about
religion in the campaign, was
not as sharply distinguished by
a religious split. The Protestant
and Catholic vote came close
according to most polls to
splitting down the middle.
According to the CBS poll
Carter gained 55% of the
Catholic vote and 46% of the
Protestant vote. The Harris
Poll even indicates that the
Jewish vote, traditionally
Democratic by overwhelming
margins, went only 54% to 45%
for Carter.
In addition to the descent of
region and religion as factors in
American politics, this election
also marks the decline of
generational politics. The
“youth” vote as a bloc seems to
have disappeared as the
Republicans not the Democrats
appear to have benefited from
the 26th Amendment. Those
between the age of 18-21
favored Ford 52%-48% ac
cording to the CBS-New York
Times survey. This mirrors the
November 18, 1976
And The
can Polit
exact split of those voters over
45 which may indicate that the
young are returning to the
politics of their parents and
perhaps to their own class
origins.
All of this throws into
disarray many of the popular
theories about the direction on
American politics. Political
writers such as Fredrick
Dutton, who saw the liberal
Democrats harvesting votes
among the children of the
upper-middle class, and Kevin
Phillips, who saw Southern
supporters of George Wallace
moving inexorably toward the
Rebublican Party, may have to
return to their drawing boards.
The notion that the Sunbelt
would provide the geographic
base for an emerging Republi
can majority was based on the
premise that race would
continue to be the transcedent
issue in the South. Carter’s
victory spilts the Sunbelt at the
Texas border and the “cotton”
South from the conservative
Southwest.
The collapse of the Southern
strategy first conceived during
Barry Goldwater’s 1964 cam
paign does not by any measure
leave the Republican Party
without a firm constituent base.
If anything the 1976 election
clarifies their prospects for the
future, Freed from the racial
politics of the Nixon-Agnew
years, the Republicans can
think nationally rather than
regionally. Their potential as a
moderate conservative party
middle-class, small town and
suburban- has not been
effectively tapped. Republicans
need only look at the success of
such moderates as Thompson
of Illinois, Weiker ofConnecticut
and Heinz of Pennsylvania in
this past election td see where
their future should lie.
The opportunities for the
Democratic Party may be
unprecedented if they can avoid
being snared by the two issues
which have plagued them
throughout this century- war
and racism. Unlike Franklin
Roosevelt, who inherited a
devastated economy, and John
Kennedy, who inherited a tense
international situation and a
conservative Congress, Jimmy
Carter confronts a world at
relative peace, an economy out
of balance but hardly devasta
ted, and a Congress which is
perhaps the most liberal since
1938.
If Carter can avoid debilita
ting military entanglements
and moderate the excessive
rate of arms spending and arms
competition, he may have the
first opportunity for any
American president in over 50
years to develop a program for
reform uninterrupted by inter
national crisis. Roosevelt hard
ly was beyond his economic
recovery program when the
war clouds appeared. Truman
ics