Sioux City Journal from Sioux City, Iowa • 4

Candidates, Take Note: The Over-65 Voter a Huge Bloc By Sylvia Porter TV A 11.1972 (Hi? Sioux dlttij Sinmtnl AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER Established as a weekly August 20, 1864. Daily edUloa founded by Geo. D. Peridn April 19, 1870. The Sioux City Tribune founded by John Kelly, January 1, 1SSO.

The Sioux City Journal-Tribune combined December 29, 1941. SIOUX CITY NEWSPAPERS, INC Publishers, Fifth and Douglas Streets, Sioux City, Iowa 51102 MEMBER OF ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Associated Press Is entitled, exclusively, to the use for republication of all news printed in this newspaper, as well as all Associated Press news dispatches. Today's Bible Verse "If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad countenance, and be of good "Job 9:27. This life is not for complaints, but for satisfaction. Henry David Tboreau, naturalist.

How, then, do the parties shape up on the prime issues? ON CURBING inflation, the 19S5-1969 record of the Demo, crats is dreadful (me Vietnam escalation inflation under Johnson) and much of what McGovern has said scarcely inspires confidence. Nixon's record has been pretty awful too but on this one, I would give a slight lead to the Republicans. On a basic cause of Inflation budgets floating in red ink Nixon's performance has been abysmal and the Democrats can actually denounce NSxon for encouraging dangerous deficits (for (military spending par and the number, 1,872,000, will top that of any state. In California, the proportion will be 13.5 per cent and the number second only to New York at 1,748,000. WHAT ISSUES ARE Miami's older voters saying will be of the most vital concern to them when they go to the polls? ticularly).

The pot eating the The cost of living and how to black curb it towers above all other at Gambling Forcing Look "Don't make waves!" MIAMI Here, in Florida, where the Democrats this week are kicking off the 1972 election campaign, are more than a million eligible voters 65 years of age and over a startling 21.1 per cent of the state's voters and the largest percentage of 65-plus voters of any state in the nation. Here, among this concentration of retired citizens, part-time workers, elderly couples, widows and widowers is a bloc of voters who will wield enormous power in November. Only a picayune few are wealthy: An overwhelming proportion are living on small, fixed pensions, primarily Social Security; a majority of the married couples, though, have some savings in cash or securities. Against this background, the Issues that concern them are clear for all who will take the time to see. THE ATTENTION of the nation is riveted on the 18 to 24-year-olds who, according to the Census Bureau, wdl number around 25 inilion in November, or 18 per cent of Jflie potential electorate.

But there are also 20,800,000 in the 65-and-over age group, a fat 15 per cent of November's potential electorate. And, as a Census Bureau spokesman emphasized to me. "A very, very high percentage of these potential voters actually vote." IN SOUTH DAKOTA, McGovern's state, for instance, 18.9 per cent of the voters are 65 and over; they will outnumber the 18 to 24-year-olds in November. In Iowa, in Nebraska 'and in Kansas, 'the 65-year age group Similarly accounts for more than 18 per cent of the state's voters. In New York, the proportion of the 65-and-over group in Barnum Bailey Route: Less Good Than 111 in Primaries issues: A real assurance that the size of the Security pensions will be increased as the cost of living climbs is also of deepest importance.

PRESERVATION OF the purchasing power of their cash savings or annuities ties in with their first concern about curbing the rise to the cost of living. Preservation of the market value of the stocks and bonds they own is well up on the list too. Of course, the over-65 voter is concerned with a 'generation of peace be it the oft-repeated goal of President Nixon or the firm pledge of candidate McGovem. But the 65-year-old hasn't 33 years left to live and so a generation of peace can't' mean as much to this group as it does to me youngsters wondering what their life, will be like in the year 2010. OF COURSE? THE over-65-year voter is interested in trade and cultural deals we make with Russia and China.

But few of them will be directly involv ON INCREASING Soda! Security pensions as the cost of living climbs, Nixon can claim that he has authored the law that will make Social Security benefit increases automatic. McGovern is for this, too, but the law has just gone on the books during Nixon's term. On insuring savings, annuities, U.S. bonds against the erosion of inflation, the Democrats have grabbed the ball, Their platform proposes tot the U.S. Treasury issue U.S, bonds wMh the guarantee that the dollar value of the bonds would rise with the cost of living and thereby give you protection against the erosion.

ON THE MARKET value of stocks, Nixon has an indisputable edge. So far, McGovern is a negative rather than a favorable factor in the stock markets. To me, the faces and the words of the elderly in Miami are flashing an important pocket-book message. How it will break down into the votes that count in November I leave to the politicSans who say they know how to make this transition. (a Fltld EnterorlMi, Inc.) if James J.

jC KiIpatrIck siderable heat as he zeroed in on bingo. A number of enforcement actions were taken. Church and fraternal organizations have gone on the defensive. Iowans are talking about such issues and their validity in relation to Iowa's gambling statutes. This appears to us as a healthy and desirable response to a controversy that Iowans can themselves settle by referendum vote in November.

A decision on lotteries apparently touches on a wide variety of drawings and ticket-holding schemes promising a prize for the winner. Other aspects of what generally is associated with gambling, including bingo, also will be up for scrutiny. We cannot fault Judge Crouch for what appeared a sensible "wait a minute" approach to the whole fuzzy question. (There are 19 passages relating to various aspects and interpretations of gambling in the Iowa Code.) Nor. can we criticize the attorney general, certainly aware of the coming opportunity to scrutinize and start the process of resolving the question, for bringing it all out into the.open.

His is a kind of definitive interpretation that demands more than a winking acceptance of the language in the Iowa law. Iowa Atty. Gen. Richard Turner's letter-of-the-law interpretation of the state's statutes on gambling has been pulled up short on the issue of patronizing carnival games of chance with a Polk County District Court Judge's injunction. Judge A.

B. Crouch's ruling for a 20-day stay to allow a full hearing on Turner's interpretation of the law is wise at this approach to the traditional season of county fairs, when the economic viablity of the expositions depend to a considerable extent on the admittedly unrelated but familiar carnival atmosphere. The decision does not contradict Turner In his reading of the law. It merely suggests that after generations of unchallenged Banctioning of games demanding a little skill and a lot of chance, a hard-nosed ruling without court scrutiny of the statute would constitute undue hardship. Turner has been accused from a number of quarters of taking an arbitrary stand on the matter of gambling laws, refusing to yield to the time-honored custom of mushy interpretation where the so-called gaming was innocent or in support of a worthy cause.

Before the carnival games chapter unfolded, the attorney general drew con- WASHINGTON For politician and political writer alike, the weekend brought a point of termination. The road that began last March in 'New Hampshire now runs to the sea at Miami. We have reached the trail's end. It is a road, in my own view, we ought not to travel again. The present system of presidential primaries contains some good features, but it offers much less good than ill.

By 1976 a better system must be choice of his own party, but crossover voting makes a travesty of this objective. A SINGLE national primary found. This year saw the Democratic late in August, under the plan candidates struggle through 23 proposed by Sen. Mike Mans- primary elections Advocates of ed hi the deals or wil ever visit November will be 15.8 per cent either land. With Mitchell's Departure, Firm Grip on No.

2 Market lield, is not the answer. Such a system would undermine our federal structure, and assuming a runoff election in September, it would demand three national convulsions in less than three months. A system of five regional primaries, advocated by Oregon's Sen. Robert Pack-wood, offers a better solution. His plan would preserve the role of the states; it would retain the ultimate party conventions; it would eliminate wasteful travel, and it would provide abundant time, over a five-month period, to examine the candidates' minds as well as their stamina.

Nixon Own Campaign Sldpper market and, in addition, have a great beneficial impact on the Siouxland economy. MEANWHILE, WE are stuck with what we have; and the trail has had its memorable moments. One of the highlights for me came in Jacksonville on a balmy night in March, when George Wallace turned up at a TV station to be interviewed by four regional newsmen. The governor is the best base-running shortstop in politics; he gloves everything that comes his way, and he can hook-slide around a question with consummate skill. No one ever lays a tag on him.

This particular night saw all the U9ual questions neatly fielded. Then a reporter asked Wallace how he would deal with the Allende government in Chile. I happened to be sitting behind his lovely wife, who was in the front row, and saw her grow tense. The governor never flinched. "The problem," he said in effect, "cannot be separated from larger problems of foreign aid.

Now let me tell you where I stand on foreign aid." That was the test of the Allende government. AFTER THE broadcast, Mrs. Wallace permitted herself a small sigh of relief and pleasure. "I like to died," she confided, "when that man asked George about Chile. I thought, what does George know about But you saw, didn't you?" Her wifely pride bubbled over.

"He knew all about Chile." The same kind of story could be told of the others Hubert Humphrey in (the snows of Milwaukee, Henry Jackson doggedly appealing to. barefoot collegians, McGovern at his best in California. It has been a long trail typewriters and telephones, planes in the night, tears and laughter, violent shock. We ought not, I say, to travel this particular Barnum Bailey route again, but if the primary campaign of '72 proves to be the last such parade, it provided an unforgettable show. Washington Star) By V- i Marianne i Means 1 4 the system insist that it benefits both the voter and the 'candidate.

The voter has a chance to observe the contenders under conditions of stress, and to judge how they stand up under fire. The candidate, for his part, has a road-show chance to try out his company before taking the play to Broadway. BOTH POINTS ARE valid. In retrospect, it seems evident that Edmund Muskie's campaign was doomed long before he denounced the Wallace voters in Florida or shed those famous tears in New Hampshire, but the emotional outbursts were fatal If he could not keep his cool under so little heat, what would he do In the White House? As for campaign organization, we saw in the McGovem operation the benefits of staff experience. His top people got the fumbles out of their system in thereafter they played like the Cowboys.

Nobody else was in the same league. Yet the drawbacks far outweigh the advantages. Any primary system is bound to be physically exhausting, but Ihe helter-skelter scheme that now obtains is needlessly exhausting. Campaigns are bound to cost money; they ought not to cost a fortune. At the very least, party primaries should be just that they should produce a nominee who is the first fftlQ7 totNuoht Syndicate inc.

U.S. Department of Agriculture reports on salable receipts of livestock in the 11 major terminal markets for the first six months of this year show Sioux City firmly in the No. 2 spot and crowding Omaha for first place. Sioux City's 1,334,597 head of livestock was only 6,827 below the Omaha figure. Comparative standings of the livestock markets, with Omaha and Sioux City leading the pack, point up once again the favorable geographic aspects of the two markets.

Both are located strategically between the corn-growing and livstock feeding areas to the east and the cattle ranch country to the west. Meanwhile, efforts in the Siouxland area, conducted by the Agriculture Committee of the Sioux City Chamber of Commerce, and others, to promote the cow-calf herd concept In this region eventually could result in major gains for the Sioux City market by providing more calves locally. Conceivably that program could make Sioux City the nation's leading livestock No Convertibles? If beginning to look as though the convertible, an automobile body style long a favorite with the motoring public, is on the way out. The major auto manufacturers are eliminating them from their 1973 lineups at a rapid rate. What's making the convertible a dying breed? There are several reasons, namely the growing popularity of the vinyl top; the added safety of the sun roof which still allows for fresh air and sunlight but doesn't ruin women's hairdos; the fears over vandalism to the convertible tops and plastic windows, and the fact that more people are demanding air conditioning in their cars.

Thus the trend to more comfort is pushing the one-time pride of yesteryear's swingin' Joe College crowd toward trail's end. Another era of automobiling is passing. WASHINGTON The real significance of John Mitchell's abrupt departure is that it signals that President Nixon will be strictly his own campaign manager this year. It means that the President will spend more time on pure political detail than he had originally planned, and less on national, domestic and foreign policy. It also means that the President will rely almost entirely on his own view of the nation, although the perspective from the rarefied atmosphere of the White House has often proved in this and past administrations to be distorted.

Nixon has always been to a degree his own chief political expert, and has insisted upon reserving all major strategy diecisions for himself (even the bad ones, such a3 the use of his abrasive taped TV call to the faithful on the eve of the 1970 congressional election). HOWEVER, Mitchell was the one politician in the Nixon inner circle who could talk to the boss and sometimes got him to listen. He could make decisions without waiting for clearance from the top. He could argue with the President if they disagreed without fear of losing his job. The President had confidence in his judgment and leaned on his counsel in both domestic and foreign policy.

By contrast, Mitchell's replacement as campaign manager does not even rate the inner circle. Clark MacGregor, who has been the White House congressional liaison, communicates with his boss through other White House aides. There is no evidence that he is anything, more, in Nixon's eyes, than a technician. The key to Mitchell's influence lies in his past relationship with Nixon. He was the senior partner in a law firm that merged with Nixon's two years before the 1968 election, and Nixon got accustomed both to his friendship and his authority.

They had offices near each other and they discussed problems as equals. The in- i ii i tflillHl President this one, as well as his predecessors invariably grows isolated and defensive in his fortress on Pennsylvania Avenue. Mitchell will remain part time adviser, but will not be on the spot to handle Crises as they occur. Strategy questions will apparently go through the slow process of being funneled from MacGregor to H. R.

Haldeman, Nixon's chief White House aide, to the President; or the reverse. Either way, the system is more complicated and subject to delay and foul-up than it would have been if Nixon and Mitchell just thrashed it out together on the telephone. THERE IS NO ACCURATE way to measure the difference With Nations and Men, timacv and mutual resoect witcneus aDsence may maKe, v- continued into the White House. if anv. tte Nixon campaign.

All About Everything By L. M. Boyd Fermented Berries Bomb Lions Varies in Solving Problems Strategy MacGregor's ties with Nixon are far more tenuous. By the time he entered Congress, Nix-; on was already vice president and his political superior in trip to Peking, and the "Nixon shock" in Japan that followed his failure to keep his close ally rank. They have never had a informed of it, uncercut Prime close personal relationship, and mm By Max Lerner Certainly he was a conservative influence, but Nixon's own instincts are also conservative.

As attorney general, Mitchell was openly partisan, heavy-handed in the area of civil rights, Southern-and business-oriented in policy, and slow to recognize social change. But from all appearances Nixon completely agreed with him in those areas. Where the difference may arise is in the absence of a rudder, a sounding board to help the President think through strategy. It may be just a bit easier now for the President to make a major campaign mistake. (O King Ftaturat) his influence over Nixon is likely to be zilch.

IT IS TOO BAD, because it is a healthy thing for Presidents to have somebody around who is not afraid to say boo and who can get away with it. Not that Mitchell's advice was always he tended to be tough and insensitive to civil liberties. But two heads are al-' ways better than one, and a NEW YORK, N. are three diverse stories I have been following, and with the Democratic convention on me i don't want to abandon any of So here are some notes on a trio of ways of resolving a contest, each characteristic of the nation involved. One is the fracas between the McGovern and Stop McGovern forces over the California and Illinois delegations.

On balance, I feel McGovem was right in his California claims. True, the all-or-nothing Cahfornia rule goes against the logic of the quota or ratio principle that McGovern has a i oned. Also he had fought the all -or nothing proposal originally, just as Hum- bad credit risks. Take the 1968 campaign. Almost all the presidential candidates chartered commercial Jets.

But most couldn't afford them. A lot of those airlines couldn't collect, so ultimately shrug settled for half price. THAT NO. 1 Spaniard Francisco Franco ought to erect a monument to the martini, he ought. Exactly 49 out of every 50 green olives are grown in Spain, and this country's sundry merchants, including bartenders, buy 75 per cent of them.

A SCHOLAR who has made a study of the matter contends no synonym for the word stutter turns up in any American Indian language. IT IS ALSO a statistical fact that women have more missing, filled or decayed teeth than do men. Address mail to L. M. Boyd, P.

O. Box 17076, Fort Worth Tex. 76102. (Copyright M. Boyd) court of appeals where two of the three judges have usually been liberal in their ruling.

The impact of the circuit court decision is bound to be felt at the convention itself. The McGovern nomination is all but clinched. The circuit court, by choosing to break the traditional court prudence in staying out of the "political thicket," BERRY'S WORLD may have invoked an avalanche party and the labor movement, his triumph will exact a heavy toll in the campaign itself. MY SECOND CAE history is how the Japanese resolved the contest between the Fukuda and Tanaka factions for the post of president of the Liberal-Democratic party, and therefore the post of prime minister of Japan. Unlike the American case, where the circuit court refused to consider the Democratic party a law unto itself, the political party in Japan' is accepted as the crucial arena.

For months the contest between the two leading contenders Foreign Minister Fukuda and Trade Minister Tanaka had been carried on by maneuvering inside the leading party, not in open convention but behind the scenes. The Japanese are a more private people than the Americans. Much of their real decision-making goes on in their political parties, their factions inside the parties, their corporations, their closely linked families. Japan is a democracy subject to the rule of law; but (more frequently than in America) the law tends to formalize decisions reached elsewhere. WHILE PRIME Mini st er Kakuel Tanaka's victory spells a break with the traditional ties to American policy, it may be argued that President Nixon was responsible for that victory.

In two senses. First, Nixon's phrey had favored it. After the of such political appeals to the election they both reversed courts in the future. ANOTHER African animal known to get drunk intentionally on fermented berries is the lion. As previously reported, the elephant does, too.

And the baboon more notoriously than any. An inebriated baboon reportedly turns belligerent. An elephant just staggers around. But a lion in this unwholesome condtion is said to become kittenish. Among my numerous money-making notions is a plan to film at some distant future date a television wildlife special featuring a drunken lion with a one-ton ball of yarn.

A MARRIAGE hereabouts today is nine times more apt to end in dovorce than was a marriage 100 years ago. ANOTHER professional type who tends to become immune to seasickness, it's said, is the house painter. AGAIN THIS year's statistics indicate the red car is that automobile most likely to be in an accident. Q. "Wasn't it Will Rogers who wrote, 'Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself?" A.

No, that was Mark Twain. Twain also said: "More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking." And: "Nothing helps the scenery like ham and eggs." SHE DESCRIBED her husband as "a bore," did this San Antonio wife who filed for divorce. "Just what is a bore?" inquired the judge. She thought about it, then quoted, "A person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." The record shows the judge regarded that as grounds sufficient. POLITICAL candidates are notoriously Minister Sato's prestige and that of his foreign minister.

Second, by ending China's status as a pariah Nixon's action cleared the way for Tanaka's policy of moving' closer to China. Not even Henry Kissinger's belated trip to Tokyo was able to undo what, was already Bone. Such are the ironies of history in a world of Great Powers where every crucial action has unforeseen and unintended consequences. MY FINAL CASE history the tangle over the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky chess match in Reykjavik, Iceland-is no great shakes compared to the others. Yet it, too, got involved with Great Power prides and politics.

The Americans have come to accept the crotchets of Bobby Fischer with amused resignation. The Japanese would probably have been puzzled by him but would move on with the But for the Russians, his antics became a matter of national honor and world prestige. They seem to have taken it harder than they took President Nixon's mining of the North Vietnamese harbors before his Moscow trip. After all, no practical power is involved in the tournament, only pride and prestige. LM ArwUti Tliptt) 1 their fields.

But the point is that by the time the election was held, both camps had accepted the total victory rule. It was too late, legally or morally, to challenge it later. BUT NOT TOO LATE in terms of an attempt to use political muscle. That is what the Stop McGovern coalition tried to do on the credentials committee. It was a contest of power, and for a moment the anti-McGovern camp had the power.

The McGovern people expressed their outrage loud and clear; and while the message didn't come through to the federal district court, it did come through to the circuit IT WAS ON FIRMER ground in the California instance than in that of Cook County, 111., where the issue was not the clear one of breaching an agreement everyone had made, but the murkier one of interpreting what a boss-picked delegation is. In fact, McGovern 's lieutenants had earlier tried in vain to strike a logrolling deal with Richard Daley on California and Illinois. Thus the McGovern position became less a moral one than one of practical politics. Unless he finds a way of quieting the enragement of Daley and all the other Daleys, both in the Democratic 'Very nice, Henry! Now how'd you make out business-wise?" 'Martha, why don't you just call me, instead of those newspaper.