Newsday from New York, New York • 30

i TtM MM This Any Way to Run An (Eastern) Airline? KEMPTON from Page 7 tilled the comparative revenues of the countrys airlines into a chart that could not have passed a crueler judgment on Lorenzos performance: In 1988, Texas Air held 19.3 percent of the market, the biggest share in the competition. Now it is down to 15.9 percent and has fallen behind American and United. Six of the 10 largest airlines had increased their market share in the months before the Eastern strike, and three of the four that had lost ground were guided by the managerial genius of Frank Lorenzo. Unpleasant as his company may otherwise be, this is inarguably a man with whom it is rewardingly enjoyable to compete. In the course of his ceremonial embrace of Chapter 11, Lorenzo Baid he was ready to take all the striker back except the baggage handlers.

Easterns baggage handlers make $17.50 an hour, a labor rate that has struck some of my nobbier brethren as outsized for persons of social station as modest as these. But I have only to see some slip of a woman cheerfully tossing about luggage I can myself barely lift to be convinced that her labors are more useful to society than my own and worth infinitely more to Eastern than Frank Lorenzos, unless we are to take it that an executive who directs the loss of $356 million a year is more valuable to his corporation than a baggage handler who costs it $35,000. This visitation of his Bpite upon the humblest of his employees seems to have intruded into the middle of an appearance designed to present himself as that oddest of titans, the cloud conqueror whose latest ascent is to bankruptcy. A man in his straits would be better advised to avoid being quite this nasty on Btage, but then, Lorenzo made his way with nastiness and he would remain true to himself even now when he had lost it. He is one of those who would rather be feared than liked, and he has arrived at the time when he is feared no longer.

It has become a universal, and thus a certifiably suspicious, adage that nice guys finish last. Perhaps they do, but they are anyway still in the league and, in most cases, still there for the next season. But nasty guys finish finished. One of President George Bushs more puzzling disabilities is that he is at once so excessively anxious to be liked himself and so unconscious of toe perils of keeping company with those who couldnt care less whether they are liked or not We ought not in decency to compare another human creature with a de-creasingly sacred monster like Lorenzo, but John Tower also had traces of toe nature that would rather be feared than liked. When Tower was a senator, his colleagues were afraid of him.

Bush mistook this timidity for admiration and served Tower up to a Senate that from having no reason to fear him any longer, had no further need to conceal its distaste and displayed it with a delight bo pitiless that it is unlikely that Robert Dole, TowerB conscript champion, has ever eiyoyed a public occasion this much since the Iowa primary. Bush seems to have come close to making the Bame blunder with Lorenzo. When the Eastern strike impended, the White House took the hands-ofT posture that Lorenzo wanted and the president even seems to have mistaken this crisis for a chance to prove his kidney by standing up to the machinists the way Ronald Reagan had to the air controllers. The difference was that the public thought the controllers were villains because they were striking against toe government and it would too soon arrive at the impression that Lorenzo must be a villain because his misapprehension about toe asset of such an appearance impelled him to look as much like one as he could. It does toe president little good to strive so hard to be likable if he cant steer clear of friends, and allies who labor just as intensely not to be.

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MARCH 12, 1939 471-2301 5iq 424-2354 MM nod to Iho MAi) Cityspire Penalty Debated Any. penalty paid by the developer of toe too-tall Cityspire prqject in West Midtown Manhattan should be put into the general fund for the benefit of the entire city, Queens Borough President Claire Shulman said. Shulman and other members of toe Board of Estimate Thursday postponed action for two weeks on a proposal requiring that developer Ian Bruce Eichner build three floors of dance rehearsal space next door to Cityspire on West 56th Street for $3.5 million. A Koch spokesman said that the space would benefit dance companies from all over the city. A dome atop the building will make it 11 feet too high.

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