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Show f Prepare to Choose During one of his theatrical TV performances recently, re-cently, President Johnson spoke of the "awesome jmrdens" of his office. It is more than high-flown philosophy to assert that in a very practical sense each of us shares the turdens of that office. The ultimate test of our understanding un-derstanding of that fact is when we put an "X" opposite op-posite the name of a candidate for the Presidency fn the lonesome confines of a polling booth. I That test tells whether we are serious or frivolous, frivol-ous, thoughtful or careless, and whether we have solemnly reflected on the choice or have let ourselves our-selves be moved by emotion. Have we selected the candidate who addressed the issues or the galleries?! The difficulties in making a choice are no greater this year than they were four years ago. They are no different from one Presidential election to another. anoth-er. Our system of choosing the Chief Executive works when many, if not most, people demand that the candidates exhibit ability and virtue in extraordinary extraordin-ary degree. Looking back, just the span of one's own experience, can be useful in choosing. For example, we cannot say what the difference in our world might have been had Wendell Willkie been elected rather than Franklin D. Roosevelt, or Adlai Stevenson rather ra-ther than Dwight Eisenhower. But those differences would surely have been considerable. Which candidate candi-date reflected the greater virtue in private and public pub-lic life? Which exhibited greater ability? Which addressed ad-dressed the issues and which the gallery? One of the soundest counsels, left to us by Alexander Alexan-der Hamilton, drew attention to certain defects in Presidential candidates. He noted that a candidate with "talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity", certainly does not merit our esteem and confidence. In our age of television, the importance of these talents may be magnified in the eyes of the candidates. candi-dates. But they must not be magnified in the eyes of the voter. When we, the voters, prepare ourselves to count "talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity" as demerits, the professional politicians politi-cians may be persuaded to bring forward more worthy wor-thy candidates for our consideration. A neighbor of ours says he decides which candidate candi-date he'd choose to work for over the next four years that he figures he'll be working for him about five months a year to pay his taxes. That just may be as good a basis for choosing as any. |