The Week

The political mind at work. Senator Tsongas (D., Mass.) was asked on a radio talk show how, in good conscience, he could have unseated the only black in the Senate (Ed Brooke). Tsongas: “Well, you know, I’ve answered that question so many times during the past three years that I have trouble separating fact from fiction in my own mind.” sign of the times: The Washington Post has given a front-page lead, continued inside for more than a full page, to a report on the new conservative network of publications, foundations, films, etc. The story is full of facts even we didn’t know (if you can believe it), and guess what: there’s not one snide word in the whole piece. Reporter Dan Morgan takes the whole thing seriously, and appears to think the reader can make up his own mind without subtle coaching to the effect that the Situation is Ominous. He even makes mention of “left-wing Democrats,” a breed whose existence has been hitherto unacknowledged in the pages of the Post.

Felix Rohatyn, special economic advisor to the governor of New York, fiddles with his abacus in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, and gets grim results for the Northeast. “Mass transit, housing, health, education, revenue sharing, etc., will all be financed on a significantly smaller scale than the public has been led to expect. … At the same time, in the energy-producing regions—the Sunbelt, the West, the Southwest—cutbacks in the federal budget will be more than made up for by increases in revenues resulting from [oil and gas decontrol].” His political forecast for the region is equally grim. He quotes an editorial in the Wall Street Journal: “An electoral coalition of the South and West controls 276 electoral votes right now, enough to seal a presidential election. . . . And the lock will be tightened further when postcensus redistricting awards 14 more electoral votes to the Sunbelt.” Rohatyn concludes with a variety of prescriptions, some sensible (lower business taxes, less regulation, higher levels of productivity from public unions); some demagogic (a regional development corporation, large helpings of synthetic fuel program contracts); all extorted from Washington by an alliance, of Northeastern and Midwestern pols, businessmen, and labor leaders. The health of the Northeast in the Eighties will depend significantly on which of Rohatyn’s paths its leaders decide to tread.

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The political mind at work. Senator Tsongas (D., Mass.) was asked on a radio talk show how, in good conscience, he could have unseated the only black in the Senate (Ed Brooke). Tsongas: “Well, you know, I’ve answered that question so many times during the past three years that I have trouble separating fact from fiction in my own mind.” sign of the times: The Washington Post has given a front-page lead, continued inside for more than a full page, to a report on the new conservative network of publications, foundations, films, etc. The story is full of facts even we didn’t know (if you can believe it), and guess what: there’s not one snide word in the whole piece. Reporter Dan Morgan takes the whole thing seriously, and appears to think the reader can make up his own mind without subtle coaching to the effect that the Situation is Ominous. He even makes mention of “left-wing Democrats,” a breed whose existence has been hitherto unacknowledged in the pages of the Post.

Felix Rohatyn, special economic advisor to the governor of New York, fiddles with his abacus in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, and gets grim results for the Northeast. “Mass transit, housing, health, education, revenue sharing, etc., will all be financed on a significantly smaller scale than the public has been led to expect. … At the same time, in the energy-producing regions—the Sunbelt, the West, the Southwest—cutbacks in the federal budget will be more than made up for by increases in revenues resulting from [oil and gas decontrol].” His political forecast for the region is equally grim. He quotes an editorial in the Wall Street Journal: “An electoral coalition of the South and West controls 276 electoral votes right now, enough to seal a presidential election. . . . And the lock will be tightened further when postcensus redistricting awards 14 more electoral votes to the Sunbelt.” Rohatyn concludes with a variety of prescriptions, some sensible (lower business taxes, less regulation, higher levels of productivity from public unions); some demagogic (a regional development corporation, large helpings of synthetic fuel program contracts); all extorted from Washington by an alliance, of Northeastern and Midwestern pols, businessmen, and labor leaders. The health of the Northeast in the Eighties will depend significantly on which of Rohatyn’s paths its leaders decide to tread.