. . . And now comes Anthony Kennedy. But not soon enough to still tempest sweeping Washington as result of Ginsburg fiasco. Biggest loser (after Reagan and Ginsburg): Attorney General Edwin Meese. Says liberal Washington Post columnist David Broder of Meese: “A disaster [whose] narrowness of view is matched by his incompetence.” . . . Says conservative columnist Janies Jackson Kilpatrick: Meese should be fired . . . . According to political analyst Kevin Phillips, what the White House needed after Bork was “a plain vanilla Republican, not more conservative intellectuals with esoteric ideological fish to fry.” Phillips widens the scope of his displeasure to what he calls “conservative-movement types.” “These are the people,” he explains, “who wear Adam Smith ties and attend meetings commemorating dead Austrian economists” (a/k/a Ludwig von Mises). . . . Second group of big losers in Ginsburg debacle was pot-smoking pols. Presidential contenders Albert Gore and Bruce Babbitt have come clean about their youthful puffs, as have Democratic Sen. Lawton Chiles of Florida and his probable 1988 challenger, Republican Rep. Connie Mack. . . . Finally, for the record, on Republican side the usual suspects lined up against Robert Bork and the President: Weicker (Conn.), Specter (Pa.), Chafee (R.I.), Stafford (Vt.), and Packwood (Ore.), plus, surprisingly, Warner (Va.).
Surprising post-Black Monday New York Times/CBS News poll showed very little slippage in confidence in the economy. On October 18, the day before the plunge, 60 per cent of those polled believed the economy was in good or fairly good shape; two weeks later, 52 per cent still felt so. . . . An NBC News/wall Street Journal poll found 43 per cent thought Republicans could handle economy better, to 33 per cent for the Democrats. . . . Even more surprising, the Times sampling found for first time in a year that more people said they would vote for a Republican for President (34 per cent) than for a Democrat (32 per cent). Same poll indicated people thought Republicans had better field of candidates than Democrats. . . . Unexpected and welcome political fallout from crash is strengthening of Reagan’s hand against protectionists in Congress. White House says 38 senators have pledged to support a veto of massive trade bill now in conference— enough to prevent an override. . . . Turmoil in world financial markets has led Senate-House conferees to support provisions in bill that allow U.S. negotiators free hand in Geneva talks on reducing tariff barriers. U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter calls this “significant step forward.”
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