Letter from Washington

A few political mutterings for you today. . . . The only sure-thing winner of the New England primaries will be John Anderson. He of the silver hair and golden tongue has already lined up support from the terminally trendy in Malibu, Manhattan, and the cast of Saturday Night Live. As he takes his campaign to New Hampshire and Massachusetts he will pick up the quiet enthusiasm of the Reagan organization (which sees a vote for Anderson as a vote denied to Bush or Baker) and subsequently of the Carter organization (which has settled on Reagan as its favorite November opponent). We expect that Anderson will come out of New England with much-improved prospects—as a long-shot candidate for Vice President and a short-shot candidate for the presidency of a university, a foundation, or a goo-goo group such as Common Cause. . . . We can’t wait for Anderson’s new friends among the coke-for-lunch bunch to ask him his position on nuclear power. OF John has been ardently pro-nuke for more than a decade. Surprise!

Ever wonder about the power of your individual vote? Ronald Reagan never does. He knows. As the final returns drift in from the Iowa caucuses, it’s apparent that the Bush-Reagan contest was a squeaker, not the six-point Bush victory headlined election night by Walter and friends. Roughly two thousand votes separated Bush and Reagan, which translates to less than one vote per precinct. The returns evoked memories of four years ago, when Reagan lost the New Hampshire primary (and, some believe, the nomination) by a mere 1,300 votes. . . . We have eyeballed some congressional polls from the great state of Massachusetts and they suggest the unsuggestable: Carter is closing fast and has a chance to beat Ted Kennedy in the Massachusetts primary. Don’t bet the rent money, though. Kennedys have a long history of doing what must be done in Massachusetts. . . . George Bush has finally arrived as a Serious Candidate: at least two news bureaus in town have unleashed investigative reporters to dig into the records of Operation Town-house, Nixon’s 1970 mechanism for funneling major contributions to favored Senate candidates. (Bush ran that year from Texas, losing to Lloyd Bentsen.) Ironically enough, Bush’s role in Operation Townhouse was revealed in a 1978 political memoir, The Prodigal South Returns to Power. The author of that book was Harry Dent, who signed on last week to manage the Bush campaign in South Carolina.

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A few political mutterings for you today. . . . The only sure-thing winner of the New England primaries will be John Anderson. He of the silver hair and golden tongue has already lined up support from the terminally trendy in Malibu, Manhattan, and the cast of Saturday Night Live. As he takes his campaign to New Hampshire and Massachusetts he will pick up the quiet enthusiasm of the Reagan organization (which sees a vote for Anderson as a vote denied to Bush or Baker) and subsequently of the Carter organization (which has settled on Reagan as its favorite November opponent). We expect that Anderson will come out of New England with much-improved prospects—as a long-shot candidate for Vice President and a short-shot candidate for the presidency of a university, a foundation, or a goo-goo group such as Common Cause. . . . We can’t wait for Anderson’s new friends among the coke-for-lunch bunch to ask him his position on nuclear power. OF John has been ardently pro-nuke for more than a decade. Surprise!

Ever wonder about the power of your individual vote? Ronald Reagan never does. He knows. As the final returns drift in from the Iowa caucuses, it’s apparent that the Bush-Reagan contest was a squeaker, not the six-point Bush victory headlined election night by Walter and friends. Roughly two thousand votes separated Bush and Reagan, which translates to less than one vote per precinct. The returns evoked memories of four years ago, when Reagan lost the New Hampshire primary (and, some believe, the nomination) by a mere 1,300 votes. . . . We have eyeballed some congressional polls from the great state of Massachusetts and they suggest the unsuggestable: Carter is closing fast and has a chance to beat Ted Kennedy in the Massachusetts primary. Don’t bet the rent money, though. Kennedys have a long history of doing what must be done in Massachusetts. . . . George Bush has finally arrived as a Serious Candidate: at least two news bureaus in town have unleashed investigative reporters to dig into the records of Operation Town-house, Nixon’s 1970 mechanism for funneling major contributions to favored Senate candidates. (Bush ran that year from Texas, losing to Lloyd Bentsen.) Ironically enough, Bush’s role in Operation Townhouse was revealed in a 1978 political memoir, The Prodigal South Returns to Power. The author of that book was Harry Dent, who signed on last week to manage the Bush campaign in South Carolina.