The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 4

Page 4 The Salina Journal Monday, February 1,1982 Opinion The Salina Journal On dissolution of the union A money shower for Coach Osborne Up in Nebraska, where Football is King and Coach Tom Osborne is the Crown Prince, some good burghers are trying to raise a fund of $100,000 for Osborne and his staff as a "goodwill gesture" and a way to say "thank you." Of course, Nebraskans are almost always appreciative of Osborne mainly because his teams almost never lose but this outpouring of financial affection is out of the ordinary. However, recent events have added some urgency to that affection. Coach Jackie Sherrill left the University of Pittsburgh for Texas for a six-year $1.7 million package reportedly more than is paid any other university employee in the nation. Sherrill then quickly lured Nebraska University Recruiting Coordinator Jerry Pettibone away at a fancy figure. Pettibone left so quickly that he didn't even have time to tell Osborne he was leaving.

By contrast, Osborne received only a $5,500 raise in December, bringing his salary to a measly $58,500 a year. Considering inflation and the competition, the good Nebraska burghers obviously feel they had better display more love and affection and quickly, if they don't want to lose Osborne. Predictably, there have been squawks from NU academicians who think all that long green for Osborne is vulgar and demeaning to them. But that's only because they aren't getting it. They can be dismissed as jealous crybabies.

Not so easily dismissed are those outside the university who think raising $100,000 for a football staff is an indication of distorted priorities. However, the Lincoln Journal newspaper doesn't share that view. It thinks bonuses are just fine. It opines: "Tom Osborne and his associates are a deserving lot. Not because they produce winning teams.

Winning doesn't mean much. What's more important is how the players are treated, how they're prepared for life after college, the examples they and their coaches set for others. "Whatever rewards Osborne get they will deserve because they try to run a clean program, free of scandals. Osborne cares about his young charges. He insists on things like studying and getting a degree." Then, the Journal adds: "Let's put it this way.

If the bonus-money drive isn't completed until a year from now, and next fall the Huskers don't win a game, Osborne and his staff will be just as deserving as they are now." Oh, come on now! That stretches credulity to the snapping point. Deserving though Osborne may be, you can bet that if he doesn't win a game next fall, the contributing fans will want that $100,000 back, with 15 percent interest. One percent art Reading the editorial above, you might get the idea that Nebraskans are a crass lot, interested only in football and not the finer things of life. That's not true of all of them by any means. Nebraska, for instance, is the only state which we know that voted for and built some fine, big works of art along Interstate 80 to relieve the travelers' monotony.

And, recently, the legislature passed a law requiring that one percent of the cost of major state building projects be invested in art work. This year some insensitive state senators tried to repeal it, but a legislative committee killed the repeal bill. The Lincoln Journal applauded. "Surely," it said, "the appeal of art, of color and shape, of state- ment and insight, is universal. "Art, like music, inspires.

Art teaches. Art memorializes. Art can make us laugh as well as share pain. Art is civilization. To reject art, or deny any priority for it, is to downgrade the advance of civilization." Well said, Journal! Surely, percent is little enough to pay for all that.

Where to write Sen. Robert Dole 4213 Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 if Rep. Pat Roberts 1428 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Nancy Kassebaum 304 Russell Senate Building Washington D.C.

20510 The State of the Union more accurately could be called the Dissolution of the Union speech. The ironical high was reached toward the end when Reagan praised Lincoln for having preserved the union, just after having elaborated on his own proposal for dismantling the union. The president's scheme for transferring federal social responsibilities back to the states is hailed by him as the "new federalism," and by his admirers as "bold." (An overcome Roger Mudd on NCB called it the greatest speech in 50 years.) Actually, it was the same proposal Reagan made in the New Hampshire primary campaign of 1976, which President Ford promptly warned would bankrupt the states, and which is credited with causing Reagan's loss to Ford in that campaign. It appears, more than anything else, to be a.brazen effort to transfer the federal deficit to the states in the hopes of retrieving the oft-made conservative promise to balance the budget. Nostalgic appeal There is a certain nostalgic appeal in the illusion that this huge, sprawling, tightly interlocked, highly interdependent nation can return to the good old days of small and separate, bucolic backwaters of individual states, preoccupied with their own penury and largely unconcerned about the problems of one another.

The lure is that that would be far less expensive for all of us. There is also great nostalgic appeal in returning to the horse and buggy. It would do away with pollution, energy dependence, highway speeding deaths and surplus feed grain acreage. It would also produce a lot of horse manure. Unfortunately, that's also an apt description of the New Federalism.

First of all, it rejects the hard won principle that America's social problems are national problems that such vital human concerns as welfare, adequate food, good education, depend- able transportation are national concerns, affecting us all, no matter where we live; that with the mobility of modern society and the instant communication of modern technology, we are, indeed, one nation indivisible. Secondly, it foretells an end to equity. The president proposes turning these social responsibilities over to the states and furnishing the states the revenue to pay for them. But then he says clearly that the states "to the extent they choose to forego the federal grant programs they can use their trust fund money on their own, for those OR OTHER purposes." In other words, the state which chooses not to fund Aid to Families with Dependent Children, can spend its money for football stadia, legislators' salaries or business tax rebates. The nation will become a checkerboard of socially hosspitable or hostile states with a migrant population flowing among them, seeking the best programs.

The proposal reveals a startling ignorance of the realities of American politics. Reagan seeks, for example, to John McCormally Harris News Correspondent turn food stamps over to the states because the federal food stamp program is considered too cumbersome, expensive and fraud-ridden. But if one national food stamp program is a problem, imagine having 50 food stamp programs. If you think there's trouble with federal administrators, wait until the crooked politicians in, say, Illinois, get their hands into the food stamp till. A farm power loss And wait until farmers wake up to the fact that what Reagan is proposing is to strip the Department of Agricul- ture of most of its political clout.

Food stamps are the biggest single function of the USDA. Nurtured by Sen. Bob Dole and other guardians of farm welfare, it is the cement that holds the rural-urban coalition together. Farm congressmen vote food stamps for city folks and city congressmen support commodity price supports. Take away food stamps and what lever does the USDA have any longer on the city vote? The absolute highlight of the performance was the dramatic pronouncement that this administration will not "balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers." The only thing more totally inane than that statement was the rousing and bi-partisan applause of simpleminded congressmen upon hearing it.

How on earth do you ever balance a budget or pay for any part of a budget except "on the backs" that is out of the pockets of the American taxpayers? And this was the outfit which used to preach that there is no free lunch. Roosevelt was our first media president WASHINGTON The returns coming in from the hundredth anniversary of his birth transmit a shock of recognition. Franklin Roosevelt was a media president the first media president. But in his case the showmanship and the packaging wore well, and promoted benign ends. For FDR was in touch with the fundamental national purpose.

Radio, of course, was the medium of that time. It made Hitler and Goebbels in Nazi Germany. In this country, Huey Long crossed over from stump- speaking to broadcast politics and became, until his assassination, a potential rival to Roosevelt. Father Coughlin posed a threat because he had an audience of 80 million persons for his weekly broadcasts. But Roosevelt was the undoubted maestro.

Almost all the retrospective accounts mention the confident voice, the resonant tones and the patrician accent. Even for those of us who were children at the time, phrases he uttered over the airways hang on like refrains from familiar songs "My "the hand that held the "a day that shall live in infamy." The original microphone through which he broadcast the Fireside Chats By Joseph Kraft Syndicated Columnist is a feature of the Roosevelt Exhibition at the National Museum of American History in the Smithsonian Institution. Roger Kennedy, the director of that museum, says Roosevelt was so formidable as a radio performer that the churches, in the interest of holding their congregations, begged him not to broadcast on Sundays. Mr. Kennedy also points out that Roosevelt benefited from the quick-drying inks which made him the first president to be in the slick magazines.

The press conferences given by Roosevelt have become legendary affairs. Surviving -participants never cease to talk of crowding around the president's desk to get the word twice a week. Undoubtedly there is an interest in the contrast between the informality of then and the highly organized affairs of now. Will Democrats assail 'nice guy' image? WASHINGTON "I think it's about time," a Democratic politician was saying the other day, "that we stop talking about what a nice guy he is." He was talking, of course, about President Reagan and the political legend that has grown up around his personal amiability the notion that he is seen by the voters as such a nice man he is beyond political assault. This idea has become an important one in national politics because it has intimidated Democratic candidates in their campaigning.

"What you do," one explained a few weeks ago, "is attack his policies and the people around him in the White House, but you never attack Reagan himself." The fact is, however, that this strategy flies in the face of the data from the public opinion polls with which politicians are usually prepared to live or die. Contrary to the legend, Reagan's job approval ratings right now are at a lower point than those of any president in 20 years at the end of his first year in office. And his personal favorability scores are correspondingly low. In December, according to a new survey made for the Democratic National Committee by four respected pollsters, Reagan was given a "favorable" rating by only SO percent of the voters, compared to 31 By Jack Germond and Jules Witcover percent "unfavorable." By contrast, at the end of his first year, Jimmy Carter's scores were 74 percent to 21 percent. There are some obvious explanations for Reagan's relatively low ranking.

He didn't start out as high as Carter, so, as White House pollster Richard Wirthlin pointed out to the Republican state chairmen the other day, his decline in the first year has been significantly less than that of such predecessors as Carter and Gerald Ford. Secondly, unlike Carter, Reagan has been an activist President in his first year, pushing successfully significant and controversial changes in national direction. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in a polarization of opinion on both ends of the scale. Explanations aside, however, the image of Ronald Reagan as too likable to be vulnerable has become fixed in the minds of a great many Democratic candidates. And that is what the DNCis trying to attack with its new survey.

As Patrick Caddell, one of the pollsters who made the study, noted, "Likability is only important if it translates into political support." The Democratic answer, based on the poll findings, is that it doesn't translate. Using one standard measure, the poll found that only 43 percent of the voters believe that Reagan "cares about people like me," while 48 percent disagreed. At the same point, Carter's score was 79-17 percent positive. More to the point, the survey isolated 30 percent of the voters who said they like Ronald Reagan personally but disapprove of his policies. And that group was heavily weighted with voters with Democratic intentions in 1982 and views on issues that are encouraging to the Democrats.

Peter Hart, another pollster involved in the study, said this has persuaded him that Reagan can be taken on "frontally" in the 1982 campaign and that he intends to give that advice to client Democrats. "You bring it straight to the White House and the Oval Office," said Hart. It remains to be seen how many Democrats will take that advice. Many of them remain impressed with Rea- gan's skill in using television. And they also see data that indicate voters are willing to give Reagan's proposals for the economy more time to work and generally approve the direction in which he wants the nation to move.

To the extent that Democrats do take the advice of the Harts and Caddells, however, the campaign of 1982 may prove to be a far better referendum on the president and his performance than is usually the case with mid-term elections. Indeed, some Republicans believe this is inevitable. Eddie Mahe, a respected and veteran consultant, told the party chairmen: "If we start pulling back from the president, we'll be pulling back from our party. There's only quicksand behind us." It is clear, however, that all the calculations made now can be tossed out by events later in the year. Professionals in both parties, for example, agree that an upturn in the economy during the second quarter would give Reagan and the Republicans valuable ammunition in making the case for more help to "finish the job." But assuming that doesn't happen, the first thing Democrats must do is get over their fear of Ronald Reagan's fabled personality the notion he is such a "nice guy" he is immune to criticism.

Otherwise, though, the accounts seem pallid. They smack of talk about courthouse politics by old men rocking on crumbling front porches. For the truth is that Roosevelt manipulated the press shamelessly. The reporters of those days, just as much as any of us now, were extras in a drama dominated by the actor at center stage the president. Novelty explains some of his staying power.

The radio was newfangled, and psychological resistance to it developed only slowly. Major Bowes and Fred Allen went on year after year after year, and the audience was never sated. Disbelief sets in Television is different. The overloading of the airways has bred a communal wariness, apparent even among the very young. From the age of 5 on, most Americans know it is not smart to believe what is seen or heard on the tube.

The best advertisements are jokes that mock other ads. So political leaders who establish themselves as TV performers risk going stale quickly. But a deeper reason explains why the Roosevelt magic endured through four elections for the presidency. There was, for one thing, a background of genuine crisis. The Great Depression, and then the great war, touched all kinds of people directly.

They evoked the bonds of fellowship and the willingness to make sacrifices that are the raw material for leadership. But if the raw material was there, Roosevelt had the gift of shaping it to coherent purpose. He was a squire from the Hudson River Valley, not a man of the people. But he felt, by a kind of laying on of family hands, the fullness of the American past. Paralysis forged a bond between FDR and the truly forsaken.

His wife, whom it has become fashionable to disparage, brought him a high-mindedness not out CITIZEN SMITH of keeping with the native strain of idealism. So he didn't need polls to discover what people thought. Nor one-liners to find out what he himself believed. While not exempt from blunders, as the attempted packing of the Supreme Court proves, he was always out front, not running to catch up. So he is perhaps the supreme example of the great man in a representative democracy.

He reacted to problems in ways that expressed the inchoate views of the great majority of Americans. Only with more foresight, and higher powers of articulation, and as a keener judge of men, and a bolder creator of institutions. He found the vector of national opinion by looking inward. The dictates of his conscience drove him to the path masses of Americans wanted to follow. By pursuing his own bent, he opened the way for millions.

In a word, or rather two, he led. The cleaners By Mark Russell Let us concentrate on just one item in the tax break congressmen recently imposed upon themselves deductible laundry expenses while Congress is in session. Guess who's going to the cleaners? us. 6 How much do you trust your congressman? Are you confident that he isn't throwing his wife's and children's things into the washer with his own load? 6 Is he deducting the entire cost of the bleach or just the amount which whitens only his clothes? TV This calls for quick passage of the Truth In Laundry Act. By Dave Gerard 'Now that you're retired, Benson, promise you won't drop in every day to straighten things I.