Ring out the old, ring in the new: At year’s end, the most popular presidential candidate of Democrats continued to be “Not Sure.” Late December NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pre-Hart re-entry) gave “Not Sure” 36 per cent of the Democratic vote followed, in not so close order, by Michael Dukakis, 16 per cent; Jesse Jackson, 13 per cent; Paul Simon, 11 per cent. . . . “Not Sure” got only 11 per cent of the GOP vote, which also showed George Bush leading Robert Dole 45 to 31 per cent. . . . More important Roper poll commissioned by U.S. News has Bush beating: Dukakis 48 to 30, Jackson 56 to 27, Hart 52 to 32, Cuomo 47 to 34 per cent. . . . Hart hasn’t hurt the Duke in New Hampshire, where Dukakis continues to ride the crest at 43 per cent to 16 per cent for both Hart and Simon. . . . Washington Post columnist David Broder writes that Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk has concluded that “the less the Democrats say as a party on the issues, the better chance Democrats have to win.” . . . And columnist and political commentator Ben Wattenberg, reviewing the pronouncements of pundits and politicos on the Democratic “Six-Pack,” sums it all up: “You can hear that: Gephardt is in trouble; Dukakis, who was in trouble, is in less trouble; Simon, who was not in trouble, may be in trouble; Gore is in trouble but he’s the wild card [this was before Hart]; Babbitt was and is in trouble; Jackson is trouble.”
At year’s end the “anti-imperialist forces,” as the Communist empire continues to call itself, had same number of troops deployed in field as at year’s start: over 110,000 in Afghanistan (Soviet Union), over 140,000 in Cambodia (Vietnam), over 35,000 in Angola (Cuba). . . . Freedom House’s year-end rating of Free, Partly Free, and Not Free States showed 51 Not Free, 19 of them either Communist or Communist satellites. Only one country in all of Africa rated as free (Botswana), and only one in the Western Hemisphere as Not Free (Cuba). . . . Small blessings department: For the first time in fifty years Soviet authorities are permitting private charitable enterprises to operate— they were abolished in 1938 lest inadequacies in the Soviet system be revealed. . . . Mikhail Gorbachev permitted the parents of young German aviator Mathias Rust to visit him in the Lefortovo prison over Christmas before shipping him off to a labor camp to serve out his four-year sentence. . . . The average Muscovite may know a lot more about what’s going on today, under glasnost, but as of October, 50 per cent questioned in a poll conducted by French and Soviet sociologists didn’t know there was a wall dividing Berlin. . . . The irrepressible Col. Muammar Qaddafi is demanding reparations from Italy for Italy’s occupation of Libya (1912 to 1942), suggesting cession of the five small Tremiti Islands in the Adriatic Sea. . . . The radical Guardian has yet to recover from Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the last British elections: “So where,” it asks, “did it all go wrong and why do the British people keep electing such a reactionary and thoroughly nasty leader?” . . . A large part of the European press called the Irangate hearings, when they finally wound to a halt, superfluous theater. “What on earth have all the weeks of testimony proved?” asked the liberal London Guardian. And the equally liberal Le Monde commented: “Congress could have won a lot from the process, but was unable to score even one point.” . . . Bicentennial celebrations did not please chronic crank Ralph Nader: “The stomachs of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have been turned had they been there.” Nader was particularly miffed that organizers failed to include a parade float recognizing the spirit of protest and dissent. . . . The Helen Caldicott Leadership Mother’s Day Award for Women Against Nuclear Disaster went to John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, for exemplifying “the woman who has integrated her life, her art, and her political convictions.”
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