Big Dome analysts are concluding, after the turnabout vote on aid to the Contras, that the Great Communicator is also the Top Pol. Says Lou Cannon, a Reagan biographer who writes a critical weekly Washington Post column on Reagan: “He inhabits the real world. He remains a riddle and an enigma to many of his followers because he intuitively understands better than they do the difference between campaign rhetoric and objectives that are politically attainable.” . . . Commented political analyst William Schneider on the Contra vote: “It’s [Reagan’s] political strategy at its best —compromising and looking as if he did not compromise”; and James Sundquist of liberal Brookings Institution adds: “He has a marvelous way of turning defeat into victory.” . . . An American Enterprise Institute analyst points to Reagan’s 50 per cent or better Gallup rating for past 27 months, and comments: “That’s one of the longest trends at that level ever.” . . . At the nuts-and-bolts level, Rep. Dan Daniel (D., Va.) comments that he and 72 other Democratic congressmen went the President’s way on $27- million aid to Contras because “we can no longer temporize or compromise with Communists on our doorsteps.” They don’t want to be perceived as “soft on Communism.” . . . Back a couple of months, Kevin Phillips put it this way: “Anti-patriotism simply doesn’t pay in U.S. politics.” . . . Republican Sens. Steve Symms (Idaho) and Bill Armstrong (Colo.), with assist from Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, scored big one when Senate voted 63 to 34 to repeal Clark amendment, which bars military aid to Jonas Savimbi, the pro-Western Angolan freedom-fighter. Question: Will the House go along? Answer: Probably not.
Richard Nixon, say Peter Goldman and Tony Fuller in The Quest for the Presidency 1984, believes Mario Cuomo is the Democrats’ best bet in ’88. . . . Only poll yet on that race (Mervin Field in California) puts Cuomo third at 21 per cent behind Kennedy, 33, and Hart, 27. (Among Republicans, same early June poll, it’s Bush, 39; Dole, 14; Howard Baker, 11.) . . . On senatorial level, the first New York Daily News/Eyewitness News Poll shows Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato leading Geraldine Ferraro 43 to 35 in possible senatorial race next year. … In Massachusetts, most interest is on who will be new Tip when old one retires. On Republican side they’re talking of Joe Malone, who managed Ray Shamie’s campaign last year. And here’s a teaser: Could one of the Democratic candidates be David Brudnoy, NR contributor, talk- show host, and columnist? Brudnoy writes in a recent column: “What if a conservative or a libertarian, more identified with the GOP than the Democrats, became a Democrat and challenged the 8,745 (or however many there are) liberals for that nomination [in the 8th CD]?”
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