Mondale: A Forceful Alternative

ARE YOU better off now than you were four years ago? In 1980, many Americans found they could unabashedly answer no to the question posed by Ronald Reagan, and so they turned Jimmy Carter out of office. Four years later, Reagan is betting his re-election that the response to this question is yes, but not only is his perceived answer highly debatable this time around, it also begs off the real issues of the campaign and underscores the malicious effect his policies have wreaked on the temper of America's political values.

Whether we, as individuals, have benefited from the actions of a President must always take back seat to some conception of the commonweal some higher sense of purpose for us a nation. Ronald Reagan has reversed this creed of government and placed the twin values of greed and self-interest as the centerpiece of his Administration, and he now bids the American voters to ratify this vision. That he is apparently successful is testimony only to the genial Californian's skillful use of television to sway Americans from their fundamental generosity of spirit. We profoundly reject Ronald Reagan's vision of America. And it is in the hopes of providing a forceful alternative to his ideology of selfishness that we enthusiastically back his opponent for the Presidency, Walter F. Mondale.

What Reagan Recovery?

It has been said in many quarters that the prospect of four more years of Reagan is reason enough to vote for Mondale, and we find it difficult to argue with this proposition. Four more years of uninterrupted failure both at home and abroad. On the many issues that confront a President, from the economy and civil rights to arms control and foreign diplomacy, the stakes are too high to countenance waiting until 1988 to reverse Reagan's disastrous slide.

It is important to dispose of at first the President's one major claim to success-the economic recovery which has more than halved the 13 percent rate of inflation that helped bring down the Carter White House. No amount of partisan spirit should deny the President his due for this achievement, but we doubt that the recovery is of long-term significance. For one thing, this "success" has nothing to do with the increased investment Reagan's supply-side minions said would be brought on by tax-cuts for corporations and the rich. It has everything to do with Reagan's massive and pointless increases in defense spending and his bulging budget deficits, which together have unintentionally provided the impetus for an old-fashioned, demand-driven Keynsian recovery.

As such, this recovery is doomed to fall through the trap door of 200-plus billion dollar budget deficits extending as far as the economic forecaster's eye can see. The runaway deficit is, in the words of Democratic economic guru Felix Rohatyn, "a prescription for national bankruptcy," the threat of which to our well-being is matched in direness only by the myopia with which Reagan is approaching the problem.

REAGAN REFUSES to ask wealthy America, which has already benefitted disproportionately from his tax cuts, to make a small sacrifice for the good of all in the form of modest increase in its taxes. He and his cronies think the deficits will go away through growth and budget cuts, yet this Administration has actually done nothing to improve the long-term prospects for economic growth or curb the rate of growth in government spending. Experts point out that even under best-case scenarios for the deficit, growth would have to be continuous for the next half-dozen years, hardly the stuff of reality. And as for budget cuts, Reagan hasn't made a dent: he has merely replaced which-needed social spending with $500 Defense Department hammers. The total is the same.

To finance this Pentagon binge, Reagan has pulled the safety net out from under the feet of the most needy of our society. His budget cuts in social spending areas have pushed more than 500,000 people, many of them children, off welfare and below the poverty line. Statistics show that the poverty rate has increased at a faster rate during the Reagan Administration than at any time since the 1950s, with more than 15 percent of the population now living in destitution.

Under Reagan's policies, between 1980 and this year, the share of U.S. disposable family income held by the poorest fifth of America's population declined from 6.8 percent to 6.1 percent. The richest fifth's share of the wealth rose from 37 percent to 38.9 percent. The only attributes besides incompetence which can be recommended to Reagan as an economist are cruelty and unfairness, and the "I got mine" attitude his tax cuts have engendered among the population.

While Mondale's appeal is immeasurably strengthened by the dead-end approach implict in a continuation of the Reagan Revolution, it stands on its own as compassionate and responsible economic policy. Mondale would restore the cuts in social spending. He would pay for these social obligations to the poor, the sick, and the elderly through, mainly, a forthright pruning of the Pentagon budget and a plan for modest tax increases. Mondale's deficits reduction plans are not without their problems, but at least he has plans, which is more than can be said of Reagan.

Privacy at Home

AS ONE MOVES to the other areas of debate, the starkness of the choice is highlighted repeatedly, and one has to start with the respective choices for vice president. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-Queens) is cut from the same compassionate liberal clothe as Mondale, and she is infinitely preferable to George Bush, whose rightward drift while in office has supplanted his past record as a thoughtful moderate.

On the environment, Mondale offers a clear choice as the candidate who best understands the urgent need to safeguard the country's land, water and air. Under Reagan's stewardship-or rather, lack of stewardship-the environment has suffered a brutal attack from the forces of neglect unleashed by the lies of James Watt and Ann Burford.

But perhaps the domestic issue which offers the most compelling reason for a Mondale vote is the area of simple justice for the citizenry. Mondale's proposals sound a clarion call to reversing four years of back-pedalling in enforcing civil rights, maintaining civil liberties, and keeping the Church off-limits in the legislation of our private lives. Particularly disturbing is the prospect that, in a second term, Reagan would be able to name several Supreme Court justices, which could etc his rigidly rightwing conception of the law into the books for decades to come.

It has to be stressed that Mondale's themes are not a sidelight to an acting career, but have been with him throughout his hard-fought climb from the bottom up, from Minnesqta attorney general to senator to vice president. Just to cite a few telling examples: Mondale was one of the sponsors of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, whose intent Reagan tried to gut early on in his Administration. He helped to create the Leagal Services Corporation, whose job of providing legal aid to the poor Reagan tried to eliminate. And at a time when it was unpopular, the early 1970s, Mondale chaired a Senated committee that pushed for new aid for school desegregation, a goal the Reagan Administration has all but abandoned.

Wisdom Abroad

IN THE FINAL important area of debate, foreign policy, our preference for Mondale is equally as p0ronounces, and for much the same reason as in domestic policy. This feeling goes beyond our misapprehensions about the rapidly growing knowledge that the President is lost on many of the most elementary aspects of foreign and strategic affairs. The President has a reputation for being a strong leader, but his lack of hard knowledge on arms control, Lebanon, or Central America has guaranteed that the U.S. will remain direction-less as it searches for solutions to problems around the world.

The truth is that whatever claim Reagan might have for praise on the economy, he has none whatsoever for his diplomacy and military policy, for which he can assert not one triumph-unless one notches a "victory" over a few hundred over-matched Cubans in Grenada Atlantic Alliance firmly through the tribulations of Euromissile deployment, but this is hogwash. Any praise that is to be given ought go to our European allies, who were able to hold together, despite the wholly unreasonable approach to negotiations favoured by the United States.

As with its domestic policy there is a pronounced degree of me-firstism in the Reaganite Foreign polices, of the feeling that is acceptable-if not preferable-that America solve the problems of the world itself. On many foreign policy fronts, from Central America to East West relations, one notices a propensity for going at it alone, and for refusing the patience needed to see through our problems with our allies. The most visible manifestation of this attitude at home is the misguided "New Patriotism," fully encouraged by the Administration, whereby Americans are mistaking pride in their country for an orgiastic jingoism that needlessly inspires resentment by our enemies and unsettles our friends.

Certainly abroad this penchant for cowboy-style diplomacy has proved a recipe for diaster. The Administration waves a big stick to little effect in Central America, while earning the opprobrium of the world for its mining of the Nicarguan harbors. It has bungled relations with our reality of the Soviet gas pipeline. And, through its morally disgraceful policy of "constructive engagement," it has allied the United States with the forces of reaction and racism in Southern Africa.

WALTER MONDALE would provide a salutary antidote to the ideology-in-a-vacuum which has characterized Reagan's foreign policy. No one need challenge this old Minnesotan's commitment to a sound defense, which would hardly be emasculated by the Defense Department cuts he proposes. Mondale wants only to scrap the weapons system-like the MN missile-which have no value either strategically or as bargaining chips in arms negotiations with the Soviets. More important, though, Mondale's vigorous scrutiny of the Pentagon budget would help bring an end to the insidious culture of procurement that has flourished under the free-spending ways of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38, but which has brought no appreciable gains to U.S. defenses.

Around the world, Mondale would offer a moderate voice of reason on behalf of the United States, in which negotiations would be stressed over the role of voice, whether it be in Central America, the Middle East or East-West relations. Nowhere would this difference be more apparent than in the area of arms control, where Reagan's lack of command has been decisive in our inability to reach some kind of rapproachement with the Soviets. While third-rate bureauerats have haggled over the details of what acceptable proposals the United States would bring to the negotiating table on both intermediate and strategic missiles, Reagan has remained remote, ready only to issue a reassuring, but misleading, impression of progress to the American people. Mondale has clearly demonstrated an aptitude for the hard details that make arms control agreements, and his combination of realism with a firm desire to reverse the arms race would do much to bring about a constructive relationship with the Soviets in the next four years.

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THE PUNDITS are saying now, as they have been saying for the past year, that the jig is up of Mondale, that his two good performances in the debates will not prove enough to overcome the President's large lead in the polls. This comes, of course, as part of the Reaganite strategy to convince us that indeed Mondale is the "loser." But it is the American people who will be the losers if they believe this fluff, because Reagan's victory will be the triumph of our own worst instants. It will symbolize the sacrifice of the role of a compassionate government on the altar to greed as symbolized by a few less dollars in income tax returns.

Mondale has often trumpeted his connection that he would rather lose a campaign based on decency than win one based on self-interest. In framing the question thus, Mondale has highlighted precisely the crucial issue of this campaign, and we hope that in fact he will be able to triumph on the theme of decency. American voters should once and for all repudiate Reagan's ideology of selfishness and elect Walter Mondale President.