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Show Bailey Describes Politics of Future At Western Democratic Meeting The marvelous communication of that era will have efect upon poltitics. When a politician campaigns cam-paigns for office in America by going to Russia to argue in a kitchen, instantaneous Telstar waves will bring that candidate into every American livingroom as he looks to the Russian dictator dic-tator in the eye and says, "Blupo may stop dirt backwash, but Fluffy is gentler with dainty underthings." Incidentally, this is an imaginative imagi-native account, and has no resemblance re-semblance to any California politician, living or dead. Think what an expensive and tiring campaign schedule we will be, able to plan for a Presidential Presiden-tial candidate when rocket ships can enable him to speak in Harlem, Har-lem, Alaska and Hawaii all in one day! What will the two political parties be up to in Century 21? j It is not too much to expect that in the Republican Party the heirs of Goldwater and Birchites will be going around charging that the Democrats have a no-win no-win foreign policy and that if a Republican were in the White House he would be tearing down the space wall around Saturn molecule by molecule. The Republicans will also be attacking the Democrats for reckless spending. Former GOP Presidential candidate John L. Tower, who will then be an elder statesman to the Republicans, will pay a visit to the Richard Editor's Note: The following are excerpts from a talk given at the Western States Democratic Demo-cratic Conference last weekend in Seattle by John M. Bailey, Democratic national chairman. The theme of this conference is what politics and government will be like in Century 21. I believe your chairman has put the question in these words: Will the pushbutton world of tomorrow tomor-row produce a mechanical citizen citi-zen and a pushbutton politician without a national or human purpose. Let me start out by saying that despite the fact that an IBM machine has replaced human hands in sorting our mailing list and keeping our books at the National headquarters, I am not going to provide you with any exciting political science fiction. In Century 21 I predict politics will still be people and the only pushbutton in the successful suc-cessful campaign will be the doorbell. The precinct records may very well be kept by some electronic brain and the precinct worked may go from house to house on a one man helicopter operating on atomic power, but people will still decide the outcome out-come of political campaigns. I am hopeful that voting will be conducted with electronic machines which can provide us with practically instantaneous results so that we won't have to sit up all night biting our nails on a cliffhanger election like the M. Nixon Memorial Library (in Whittier, not Sacramento) and make a speech in which he attacks at-tacks the Demcoratic planet aid and trade programs. "Why must Earth do things for other planets plan-ets which they should be able to do for themselves? We are pouring money down the rathole in aid to these underdeveloped planets." The Republicans will continue to be a minority party and they will be grumbling about the vigorous Democratic President, and muttering about that woman in the White House. "Madame President" will be a familiar (Continued on page 8) one ot lyeo. In Century 21, I would hope that our outmoded laws on registration reg-istration and voting will have been changed to make it easy for every eligible citizen to exercise his franchise. The civilian astronaut astro-naut en route to another planet on election , day will be able to vote and so will the militaryman on the moon station, together with his wife stationed with him. By Century 21, I think the universal voting age will be 18, and if we do what I think we do in the field of education in order to cope with the problems of this space age, the 18 year olds will be as well educated as a 25 year old graduate student is today. At the rate women continue to outnumber men, in Century 21 the chairman of the Men's Activities Division of the National Na-tional Committee will urge that all states and counties have a male vice chairman and that a few males are selected as convention con-vention delegates. Private, person to person television tele-vision will have replaced the telephone. Thus the National Chairman and the State Chairman Chair-man will be able to look at each other face to face when the state chairman calls to complain on patronage. Bailey Describes Politics of Future At Western Democratic Meetina Tp (Continued from page 1) expression by then, and the few male reporters left in Washington Washing-ton will be trying hard to get recognition at press conferences. What about the Democratic Party in Century 21? It will still be the conscience of American Ameri-can politics. It will still be the innovator, the planner, the doer of bold deeds. It will still be the party of universal appeal and universal service. But it will not be a placid or complacent party. It will be concerned con-cerned about putting our great advances in technology to the service of this earth and all who reside within reachable space. Some old political problems will still be with us. The Federal Communications Commission is still trying to improve the fare on television, but "Space Train" the successor to "Wagon Train" will outdraw Meet the Press and announcers will be shaving sandpaper in outer space instead of under water and planet pilots with tatooed hands will smoke cigarettes on the wall size TV screens. We will go from coast to coast at supersonic speeds in 500 passenger pas-senger rocket ships, but despite the efforts of the FAA and the CAB it will still be impossible for a passenger to find out what is happening when one of these spaceliners is delayed at take off. All in all, America and the earth will be in pretty good shape under the Democratic Administration Ad-ministration in Century 21, and the Democratic chairman will say you may have heard this before that prospects for the mid term election ahead look good if we get good candidates and get our workers out ringing doorbells to get the voters registered reg-istered and to get them to cast their ballots. |
