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Show The National Enterprise, July 20, 1977 Political Bumper Page twenty-fiv- e Pragmatic Dogmatics Stickers by Kent Shearer Dear Potential Political Candidate: You have inquired whether it is advisable to allocate a portion of your proposed budget to the purchase of bumper stickers which will advertise your candidacy. In theory, these devices have some appeal. The stickers are relatively inexpensive and, if widely used, provide many moving billboards to get your name around. Also, they can give the appearance of a ground swell on your behalf. In practice, they are a pain in the neck and may, in fact, ruin your chances. For starters, the cheaper the sticker the more difficult it is to remove from a bumper, so unless you are a very big spender you will commit malicious mischief to your adherents' property. obtained at your headquarters ordinarily become souvenirs, not moving billboards, And, horrors, your crews could become overzealous (or the stickers in your headquarters could fall into the hands of the enemy), and they could be pasted on vehicles absent owner consent. Then there is the other sticker adversity, so called because those who wear your banner may also wear others. Do you wrant to be paired with the University of Utah in Provo, Brigham Young University in Salt Lake, or either in Logan? The one that reads. "Avoid hangovers Stay drunk? Or how about a population zero sticker on the car parked across from a ward house on Sunday? The possibilities are endless. The foregoing considerations, dreadful as they are, pale when one contemplates what can occur even if the affixation is consensual. For you have, you see, afforded any number of Utah drivers the opportunity to cripple your campaign, perhaps fatally. Finally, there is the car prejudice peril. Your sticker on a Cadillac, Lincoln Continental or Jaguar will label you an economic royalist. On a clunker, it will paint you a slob. A chauvinist will hate you for a Datsun. A Jew, aware of its Libya connection, will find Fiat frightful. And so on. To visualize the extent of this negative potential, drive Utahs streets and highways. Ask if you want certain of those other cars to bear your name. The one that runs a red light? The two that, side by side, plod at ten miles under posted speed during rush traffic? The litterer? The one that, in full honk, speeds and weaves? The defective muffler? The one that d has just another? Imagine their collective impact upon undecided voters if each This may not be a complete catalogue of cataclysmic conceivabilities, but it should be enough to persuade you not to buy stickers. Indeed, it may be enough to persuade you to avoid politics altogether. 1 remain. rear-ende- Also, you will require work crews if you are actually going to place them on autos. Stockers is emblazoned with your name! Your obedient servant BUT wse FR6C- VBet&e Pcwsaess- is - - I mg! Hi men b mojihs gjuj U. Mr. Carters hobgoblin vs. national survival by Ralph deToledano Copley News Service c(0 Consistency, said Dr. Johnson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds. The shoe fits President Carter, and he insists on wearing it. Unfortunately, it is not merely Mr. Carters corns which will be pinched. The national survival may be at stake. When candidate Jimmy Carter opposed the B- bomber, it was assumed that he was speaking from strategic ignorance and many voters believed that once in the White House he would bone up on the facts of military life and change his mind. Had this happened, it would have been understood both in Washington and around the rest of the country. Well, Mr. Carter studied the military needs of the United States. And he came within an inch of ridding himself of the hobgoblin. The word was out from the "most reliable sources that he was ready to give his approval to a plane desperately the needed by this country if it is to keep its guard up -l vis-a-v- is n cd Soviet Union. But tough though the President can be with some of the world's smaller countries, he could not resist the pressure from in the Democratic Party who believe those Ferdinand-the-Bull- s that if they bury their noses in enough flowers the Soviet threat will disappear. So once again we have had politics-as-usufrom a President who got himself elected by proclaiming his independence from such mundane matters. The Presidents announcement of his disapproval was He built up tension by allowing beautifully some of his closest advisors to say that he would give the l his and they ended up with egg all over their faces approval of fools his them. headlines by making he made What shocks this writer more than Mr. Carters decision is the reasons he gave for turning thumbs down on an essential al stage-manage- d. B-- economy ! It is not only weapon in the American arsenal that the national defense can have no price tag w'hich set back many in Washington. It is, simply, that this is not true. If the Carter administration really believes the United States can rely on an obsolete and plane, the then it should also point out that to arm this plane with the cruise missile will, in the long run. cost more than the l . The will have to be completely redesigned, and the figures for this arc so astronomical that they defy reason. Mr. Carter also suggested the cruise missile might be launched from the subsonic 747 commercial plane, a suicidal idea. If we had the supersonic SST, this might begin to make sense. But the SST was knocked out by the environmentalists who screamed it would add to "noise pollution and also give us all skin cancer. Those on Capital Hill who said that the Kremlin must be breaking out the vodka to celebrate President Carters decision may have missed the point. is genuinely feared by the Soviets. l The Being suspicious men, the Soviet leaders must be wondering just what Mr. Carter has up his sleeve. No country with the global responsibilities of the United States would set aside so formidable a weapon unless it had something else on the drawing board. Unfortunately, Mr. Carter has nothing up his sleeve except the hobgoblin of consistency and his concern over his amateur standing as a military expert. It wont take the Kremlin long to discover this and to realize from the standpoint of comparative strength with the United States, it is sitting in the catbirds seat. There are other consequences to Mr. Carters conNot S3 billion already expended only will more than sistency. on the l go dow n the drain, but many thousands of jobs w ill B-5- 2, 28-year-o- ld B-- B-5- 2 B-- B-- disappear. And the aerospace industry, which is vital to the national defense, will be dealt what may be a crippling blow. |