European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 13, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday november 13, 1992 commentary i the stars and stripes a Page 13perot, term limits clearly show voter discontent James j. Kilpatrick those of us on the conservative Side of the political Fence have now had a week of postmortem. Looking Back at last week s Dull Gray tuesday we find two developments of keen interest. The two Are linked the astonishing vote for Ross Perot and the unmistakable clamor for term limitation. Little remains to be said of other events. Bill Clinton beat George Bush because be looked fresh and Bush looked tired. End of analysis. It is the turnout for Perot that has us pondering the Tea leaves. The Texas billionaire wound up with almost 19 percent of the vote. No third party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 has approached any such level and Perot Wasny to even a a a party candidate. He was himself Perot old lonesome Ross. Beyond the realm of High finance he was almost unknown a year ago. Everybody knows him now. Perot garnered More than 20 percent of the vote in 20 states. He rolled up 30 percent in Maine 29 percent in Utah 28 in Idaho and 27 in Alaska and Kansas. He did poorly in the Southeast but in the West and Midwest he rumbled and he roared. Here came the Wabash Cannonball. He did All this despite negatives that should have swamped him. Perot had no experience in elective office he never spelled out his simple proposals for balancing the budget Ana he seemed incapable of intelligent discourse on such major issues As health care crime drug control and election Reform. Was it personal Charm and a winning manner maybe his Pickle barrel wit appealed to some of his supporters but the Texas twang must have turned off others. Some of us wickedly prayed for a Perot Victory just to hear him talking to French president Francois Mitterrand his paranoid suspicions his Lunatic charge that Bush had connived to defame his Daugh Why test 1wt>9�xu> not 6� . I to let m Maxnew it it Chi Canton / m Degaj. I know Vburg our there. Navel amp butt   Muse Guam orkw1ws/ and1ae Media. A y my Buffo a 6erm� �4 i Siam Ter on her wedding Day would have killed the candidacy of any presidential candidate of my acquaintance. But look at his vote Nineteen million plus. Little of this was Hooray for big ears the Man. It was More of a scream a from voters who had taken All they could take from professional politicians. Perhaps the 19 million saw Clinton As a blow dried Yuppie and Bush As a tired old Man. Not Many could realistically have seen Perot As president but his name provided a vehicle for venting their frustration. He was a Means toward the end of unfocused protest. My guess is that the Perot movement As such will be gone by 1996. Every Hurricane Peters out As the Eye dissolves but if the Clinton administration fails to live up to the democrats promises a storm will gather again. The natives Are restless out there. This discontent appeared dramatically a a amp Ftp top wedding in referendums on limiting the terms of members of Congress. Fourteen states put the question on their ballots. All 14 came Down in favor of limitation and except in Washington the tally Wasny to even close. These were landslide votes. Very Well. I still think term limitation is an overrated idea. In my View Congress benefits from the institutional memory of a few old timers. If All members Are to be ousted after 12 years of service  lobbyists committee staff and career bureaucrats will have weightier influence. Besides i believe americans should have a right to vote for anyone they Damn Well please. If voters in Mississippi a 1st District want to end Jamie l. Whitten a 26 terms they know How to do it put up a More attractive candidate and vote the on ousting u Kivi v Attu Viivi  Emu Vuew i old gentleman out of office. Nothing Earth prevents texans from oust Henry b. Gonzalez of san Antonio but last week they gave him a free ride he ran for re election unopposed. If we Are to have term limitation the proper route is by constitutional amendment. I never expect to Sec the Day when two thirds of the House and Senate would vote to deny themselves unlimited terms in office but the Day May be dawning. So much for Dull Gray tuesday. Candor compels me to recall that i said Bruce Hirschensohn would win a Senate seat by one Point in California. He lost by five. I thought John Glenn might lose in Ohio. He won by 10. On one prediction i was exactly right. I said that if Bill Clinton won on nov. 3, the Sun would still Rise on wednesday. It did. It surely did. We pundits know a thing or two after All. C in Hersal press Syndicate can a russian general judge . Legal system the news Story All but spoke of Alger Hiss having been definitively cleared. By the . Super As _ supreme court of no. By a russian general historian Gen. Dmitri a. To Logonov. A Man of High reputation who however in a a clearings Hiss of having served As a soviet spy takes rather unusual liberties americans May assume that the general has Access to Kab files because the general is chairman of the commission on Kab and military intelligence archives. But to assume that after four or five weeks he established that Hiss was never a communist agent for the soviet Union a says Odd things about him As a historian you can to begin to go through Kab files thoroughly in five years let alone five wee Sand b makes him suddenly an expert on american judicial history. You see said the general at his interview with Hiss emissary John Lowenthal during the cold War people were Quick to suspect other people of complicity with the enemy Quot the fact that anger Hiss was convicted in the �?T50s was a result of either false information or judicial  suddenly we Are listening to a russian general to find out whether Hiss was fairly tried and convicted. The following Day on can the reporter identified Hiss As a having gone to jail for allegedly committing perjury Quot yes and Ted Bundy was executed for allegedly murdering 10 women a letter from historian Gertrude Himmelfarb a was a former grubber in archives better organized archives on less secretive and sensitive subjects assure you that one month of searching and inspecting is no time at All a certainly not enough time to produce the categorical judgment attributed to the general. In fact a categorical judgment of this kind is itself suspect historians always qualify their conclusions cover themselves lest subsequent findings refute them. William f. Buckley or. There is something very Odd about this whole Story. Remember Trevor ropers Gaffe about hitlers secret diaries a indeed. But the movement to exonerate Hiss has run into so Many obstacles Over so Many decades that to declare him innocent is on the order of declaring Alfred Dreyfus the French officer eventually exonerated of treason guilty. Newsweek reports Quot Alger Hiss is still on trial in America. Was he a spy a member of a secret communist cell who passed along confidential state department reports to the soviets or was he a statesman framed by the fanatical right a Wanton sacrifice to the careers of sen. Joseph Mccarthy and rep. Richard Nixon the Legal system never resolved the  those sentences Are historical travesties of a major order the Legal system absolutely resolved the question yet they appear in the nov. 9 Issue of a National american newsweekly. The overwhelming Case against Hiss is documented by professor Allen Weinstein in his Book perjury that Book was judged As Diapositive of the Hiss Case by historian Arthur Schlesinger jr., who was not a Mccarthy Ite. Every Legal Man Euver Effort Caprice and effrontery was attempted on behalf of Hiss and always these efforts to turn history around came to naught. The incriminating papers were typed on Hiss typewriter they were Given to Whittaker Chambers and he sent them up the espionage Assembly line to his soviet superiors. And it Isnit As though All evidence against Hiss died with Chambers in 1961. Only two years ago Oleg Gor Dievsky the soviet Union s spy chief in London from 1982 until his defection in 1985, published the Book Kab the inside Story. In a Mere footnote in the Book Gordievsky referred to Iskhak a. Akhmerov As Quot Hiss wartime Kab  and . Writer and spy watcher Thomas Powers writing in the new York review of books on aug. 17, 1989, advised us that the code name for Hiss in the soviet Union was a sales a there is More to be said about the Chambers Story and Sam Tanenhaus a gifted Young historian is working on a comprehensive biography of one of the most fascinating and talented writers of the Century the great witness who gave us witness. To Logonov is a Nice Man but it really was a Little Odd when in Moscow last month he turned to a bitter end defender of Hiss with his certification that Hiss was a victim of mccarthyism and said a i would like to hand this document Over. And believe that you can Tell or. Anger Hiss that the heavy weight should be lifted from his heart a How Nice. All we need to do in order to lift that heavy weight from Hiss heart is to defame the american system of Justice classify As libellous dozens of witnesses who built the Case against him and reject As a sadistic liar a great Man who unlike his old spy mate Hiss tried to make it up to the country he betrayed. A Universal press Syndicate