European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 12, 1980, Darmstadt, Hesse Pago 12 the stars and stripes Flora Lewis Friday september 12, 1980 let s Hope candidates move to solid ground Thi first impression of a professional traveler coming Home to contemplate the City at inc Navel of the world is How Busy it is contemplating itself. Practically everybody else in the world is waiting o Sec what will in Washington and so is Washington meanwhile trying to nudge events a Little with inquiries into Hilly Carter s greedy bad taste in patrons and the Pentagon s awkwardly Slick Liming of leaks. Of course these arc not the tucs ions the rest of the world is putting to the capital of the United states and one has the feeling they Aren t much help to american voters either As they face a glum Choice. It in t easy to understand Why ticklish Little Points of How things came to happen should overwhelm discussion of what has and has t been done what should and should t be done Over the next four years. The likeliest explanation i be found is that nobody is coming up with any Good ideas new or of o Deal with inc substantive problems so bluster and innuendo arc being used to veil the vacuum. Ronald Reagan talks about making the United Stales no. I again whatever thai Means in a world so turbulent and Mobile that nobody is going to pin it Down. Jimmy Carter no longer even talks about persisting with the ideas he bunched four years ago but suggests that whatever Reagan might do will be much worse than the nothing for which Carter seems to be settling. Despite All the polls and meticulous measurements of America s pulse there in t even a Clear sense of just where Center is at the moment. John scars Reagan s ousted Campaign manager maintains that the country has t really become More conservative but hat issues have changed with re cession and the feeling that the United states has lost control of events. But Liberal democrats bemoan what they Sec As a swing to narrow minded righteous Ness and i now nothing ism in mores As we As in politics economic and social problems and an egocentric View of America s role in the world. Certainly television has served As the great Simplifier and superficial pm Ogniz or. With its intimate focus on wrinkles and Teeth it reduces the distance Between voter and candidate to the other Side of the room but the closeness also reduces perspective. Maybe More distance to Survey and judge is needed so the critical Eye Ana ear can seek some meaning in the generalities and resist he trivial pleasure of being a connoisseur of technique. Everybody is sophisticated now about packaging and marketing of candidates. I be heard More heated and knowledgeable debate about inc relative merits of Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkite and such than about choices of government. Their Stan Dards of professionalism seem o be the major measure of rivals for Public stewardship. And yet beneath the talk of expertise there is a palpable throb of concern for a definition of America s personality and plans As history moves on. La does t seem to be nostalgia despite the rhetoric. In foreign policy nobody is talking isolation but How to choose friends and who the the United states can go it alone out Here. On the face of it a capital has never been More cosmopolitan. The shops the restaurants the brilliantly flowered shrubs in neatly tended Parks the accents of its taxi Drivers who often. Not Are students from Nigeria or Ghana or Thailand or Lebanon or Al Salvador All attest to conscious involvement with people and places and prob lems once considered exotic any outlandish. Looking inward in t about withdrawing into the Mirage of an easier More secure past but about getting a better hold on who we arc and what we want now before Tak ing another Stab at the future a lot of the trouble with the grasp seems to be the chasm left Between gobbledygook expertise and resonant empty words with no substantial Perch for the mind Between missile numbers game and plaints of de Between Statis tics and economic Pic in the sky Between computerized electoral targeting and on camera blah. Corning Back for a closer look it s not surprising that the View from overseas can discern no pattern. If a will for direction exists and i think it docs judging by the very of the country with the candidates failure to outline discretion it has been badly obscured. It still in t too late for them to come Down from the fog bound Mountaintop and out of the bewildering Trees to provide a clearer signal at the Crossroads. Let s Hope the debates get Down to solid ground. That would give the world with which the United states must live a Chance to assess what is really stirring beneath All that extravagant noise. Prospects depend on How outsiders figure us. Too. C new York time flex w5 m a mom6nt from my a Wisp who James Kilpatrick insider s insider tells about recent presidents this is turning into quite a season for political books but one in particular cries out to be read breaking cover by Bill Gully. He tells us More about our re cent presidents than some of us would really like to know. Gulley spent ii years in the White House As administrator and later As director of the White House military office. For much of this time he had effective control Over a secret discretionary fund that could be diverted to virtually any presidential Pur pose. Gulley had responsibility for White House communications and for scheduling air Force one. He was inc ultimate insider s insider. Until this Book appeared. I my self had never heard of him. And i doubt that other senior correspondents knew much about Gully his office or his fund. Now he Lias let it All hang out in a Memoir that paints our presidents As Cromwell wanted his own portrait painted warts and All. Much of the Broad picture is familiar he profane Johnson the secretive Nixon the ingenuous Gerald Ford. Some details also Are familiar various investigators have revealed the extravagance of tax funded improvements at the lbs ranch and at Nixon s summer and Winter palaces. What emerges from Gulley s Book is a sense of the insidious ways in which Power corrupts. Arthur sch Csinger or. Was right on target when he wrote seven years ago of presidential Power spacious and Peren Leto i the constitutional presidency he said has become the Imperial i suspect did t know the half of it. Unknown to All but 3 handful of White House insiders tax funds constantly have been channelled into outlays that never on Earth could have survived scrutiny by con Gress or by the press. Nixon s swimming. Pool at Camp David to cite one example Only was financed from the secret fund to i the tune of s550.000 largely became Nixon wanted the Pool built on a site that i happened to be squarely atop the Camp i bomb shelter. Probably Nixon could have been talked into a less costly location but the very a lure of imperialism is not to question the Imperial Power. Nixon had said up the Pool there so there it was placed. In us fashion of a pathologist exploring a purulent wound Gully repeatedly Makei i Point that Power corrupts not merely presi dents or even mainly presidents Power tends to corrupt the underlings around 1 president until their perquisites and their status symbols and their High handed authority become pervasive. They Are Conr v tiers to a King reveling in the pleasure of our Fontaino Ilcau on Pennsylvania Avenue he vet curiously the Imperial Finger thai can dispatch air Force planes on luxurious House parly missions seems unable to Cobi Mand the kind of Security a Monarch might Ici be expected to have around him. The mod startling passages in Gulley s Book Deal with an incredible la i y As he perceived it not Only in protecting a president bul in protecting a nation also. " Gulley makes the self evident Point Uttel we live in a world of increasing terrorism a. In such a world he finds an american pred 5, Dent pathetically vulnerable. Back in 197ft he discloses an air Force counter int Effit t Gynce officer was assigned to see if he calf penetrate the very places it was assume the president was most the office succeeded so brilliantly that Dummy expo sics were planted at Camp David in gift Force one and on the yacht Sequoia. 4 even More chilling arc Gulley t Duck 1 surfs about the vital this a Black briefcase containing every or Turiy a to in Fonfe coded directions for response to a Nucita attack. The football is supposed never to More than 30 seconds from a preside hand but at least Early in the Carter ministration the aide and the football Wert slaying at a hotel in Americus g 10 Miles from i tried to Check that out with the current director of the military office Marvin i. Braman jr., but got no timely callback. H the Imperial Power is still working in Ilyf recklessly dangerous fashion Gulley s Eye opening Book will have served a most useful purpose
