Too Harsh on Hart

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I have just had the poignant displeasure of reading another entry in the Crimson tradition of free-verse editorials, Mark T. Brazaitis's piece, "Iowa Sends a Zing at Hart." Some would call it difficult to respond to the substance of such a piece--that is, substance of a particularly base nature--but I am a local supporter of Gary Hart's campaign for the presidency, and I adore a challenge.

I need hardly point out that to speak of Gary Hart's "passing" due to his not winning the Iowa caucus today is ludicrous. He is running without money behind three candidates who have demonstrated, granted, "political strength" among the liberal establishment and interest groups who influence the caucus's outcome. Walter Mondale did this, too, in 1984; but in 1984 Gary Hart was a better candidate for president. Since then, it may be true, he has "made mistakes," but he has also done more homework. His knowledge of such issues as defense and education reform, programmatic foreign policy, and national service has been demonstrated consistently at his every appearance. Mr. Brazaitis has not noticed this, instead ranting something about "Jesus Christ Super Stud," "hard wood" and "Chinese water torture." I realize it may be arrogant for me, a mere campaign worker, to criticize a newspaper-man's use of such unintelligible images and lame Johnny Carson-style jokes in the place of actual political discourse; nevertheless, this is truly execrable stuff.

Mr. Brazaitis tells us that "wherever he goes, Hart is asked The Question." What sort of questions are asked of Gary Hart? Often they are good ones. When Senator Hart came to speak at the Science Center on January 10, I recall questions such as, "Would you call yourself courageous?" Hart replied that this was for others to say, and mentioned that he ran McGovern's campaign against the Vietnam War when no one else would touch it; that he voted against missile systems developed in Colorado; that he is the first candidate for president to refuse PAC money. There was one question of lesser quality; toward the end of the meeting a certain fellow asked if Gary Hart had ever smoked marijuana. The Senator replied that, as to the implicit character inquiry, for 200 years the standard has been the candidate's ability to govern, and as to the specific question of marijuana, to stentorian applause, the Senator told him, "It's none of your business." Mr. Brazaitis missed this, and indeed seems to draw his "information" more from last May's National Enquirer than this February's New York Times.

I should stress that to my mind, there is nothing wrong, at least in this preliminary stage, in liking another candidate more; denying the legitimacy of a candidate's campaign is another matter. I have worked on this campaign for a while now, and in this time I have heard some singularly moronic reasons why we should not support Gary Hart for president. Traditionally Democratic friends have told me that he can't win because Paul Kirk won't give him the nomination, even if he wins it. What a wonderful democracy we live in! A writer at another Harvard publication waded so shallow in his political analysis as to criticize the pitch of my colleague Noah Berger's voice when introducing the Senator at the Science Center. This writer later told me (his own voice unfaltering, and quite a nice tenor) that he didn't like Gary Hart for president because Hart has no endorsements and no PAC money. Critics such as this writer (who worked on the Mondale campaign) are experts on producing unelectable interest candidates and rendering the Democratic party irrelevant in presidential politics. The arguments of such critics, however, are moronic. But all these arguments, that of Mr. Brazatis, that Hart cannot win because he simply cannot win, because "we (we who? we wisecracking Crimson editors?) have already decided," before the results of even the first caucus are in, is, to my knowledge, the most moronic argument against Senator Hart this campaign has yet recorded. It seems, in the end, that to any writer who wants so maliciously to help a thinker of national importance to his "political grave," we can only say, "Have a vengeful day." Avram Brown '89