The Roaring Silence

THE CLATTERING OF RIFLES has filled every forum of this campaign season like the overture to a blood-and-thunder opera, full of strident and hackneyed themes, but nonetheless ominous. Candidates speak glibly of the nation's military needs, haggle in public advertisements over who would hand the Pentagon the most money, and discuss "limited nuclear war" as casually as the latest poll. Proposals to lower unemployment or slow inflation litter the floors of New Hampshire auditoriums, mowed down by exorbitantly priced arsenals of MX missiles, B-1 bombers and "rapid deployment forces."

This campaign began hushed, the candidates wary of endangering the Tehran hostages; it has become deafening. Military marches swell to fill the deepest silences on domestic policy in any recent election. Voters in New Hampshire today and in Massachusetts next week may join the parade, following their favorite Democratic or Republican platoon sergeant to the shores of the Persian Gulf. But they have a chance to stop the music, to demand sane words instead of rhythmic cant.

Candidates who try to avoid issues are an ancient blight on the American political landscape; but only recently have they perfected the sleight-of-hand by which silence becomes an unbeatable advantage. In 1976 Jimmy Carter stepped into a closed railroad car, and rode it straight to the White House; no one caught a glimpse of the man anywhere along the way. Other candidates are trying to take that same ride today.

New England voters should show they want men of candor--not the coy openness of Carter's "I will never tell a lie" but an intellectual frankness about specific proposals and ideas. This sort of discourse has a way of dispelling the fog of political war; it exposes blithe folksiness for unprincipled ambition, stern patriotism for irresponsible battle-lust.

Among the crowd of voluble candidates in both parties, few have forthrightly announced their plans to solve the greatest problem facing the country--how to cut oil imports. One way or another, the Cold War marches must be reorchestrated to channel American emotions toward conservation. Reduced dependence on foreign oil could become the centerpiece of an anti-inflation policy more humane and effective than the Federal Reserve's current shock tactics.

Whether through direct rationing by the government or indirect conservation in the marketplace, our next president must be prepared to remove the fetters oil imports place on our domestic and foreign policies. Through conservation, he can do so with less loss of life, less paranoia, and less danger of nuclear holocaust than through a self-destructive call to the Cold War colors.