Anderson's Vision

I have just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin's editorial, "What I did during my summer vacation," and I am perplexed. By all indications, when Toobin came to Boston with the advance team in early August, he was a committed, die-hard Anderson supporter. Now, with the impression that only he can measure the pulse of the nation, and with the egoistic idea that as Toobin goes so goes the nation, Toobin explains why John Anderson is not the candidate of moment in this election.

Specifically, Toobin's article is fascinating for what it fails to recognize about the Anderson campaign. His final sentence, one last jab at a campaign which he apparently considered more a job than a movement of national significance, questions Congressman Anderson's "vision of America."

How can Jeff Toobin question Anderson's vision? How can he of all people, having traveled the country with a man who has not stopped campaigning since September of 1979, having worked across the country with field coordinators who believe unflappably in Anderson's conviction and in his goals, how can he write about John Anderson's "lack of a clear vision for the people of the nation"? What Toobin's editorial signifies is one disenchanted liberal's self-indulgent attempt at journalism. But let me try to repair the damage done by Toobin's opus.

There is an interesting trend in the mood of the electorate. The constituency that has begun to catch on to the Unity Compaign is the very constituency that can elect him. No longer the darling of the academic community, Anderson has maintained his standing in the pools. The support base has shifted toward a more representative group of the American electorate.

At this point the Anderson campaign does have a real chance of victory. The state-by-state polls of recent weeks show the Anderson campaign in the lead when the voter assumes that the Anderson candidacy is "viable."

All of this is well-known to Toobin, as is the real problem we are having with the press. It is time, and this is the point that voters must understand, that we stop asking the question, can Anderson win? and begin to ask the question, should he win?

There is something special about Harvard University. When I work on the streets, response is much warmer than at Harvard, When I work at other schools, I find more enthusiasm than at Harvard. When I work at other schools, I find more enthusiasm than at Harvard. Harvard students are part of that voter segment that is so frightened of Ronald Reagan that they are willing to vote for an incumbent president whose record they will not defend and whose credibility as president they choose not to discuss.

My point is that intellectuals, having abandoned the Anderson campaign, will undermine what is so dear and so important to them. People like Jeffrey Toobin, by leaving the Anderson campaign (although few have turned coat in the shiny black print of The Harvard Crimson) stand in their own way. We are at a turning point in the Unity Campaign. We are eligible for federal funds. We have been endorsed by the N.Y. Liberal Party. Nationally televised debates are coming and we stand our first bona fide chance to gain national prominence. But right now we are vulnerable. Until we pass up Carter in a national poll, we will be the object of much derogation. Until then no one will believe that only John Anderson, and not Jimmy Carter, can beat Ronald Reagan in November.

So an article like Toobin's is especially damaging to what everybody must realize is a last hope for this election. And an article like Toobin's, because it questions the national vision of the campaign, because it attempts to measure this unique campaign with the yardstick of previous campaigns, is most damaging because it represents the kind of thinking that will surely elect Ronald Reagan come November. David S. Solomon '81   Massachusetts Student Coordinator   Anderson Campaign