For the Record

Rocky, indeed, is the road of the early favorite in a presidential contest, as Walter Mondale is finding out in a big way. At least two of Mondale’s worst lesions have been self-inflicted. In interview with Boston Globe Feb. 25, he revealed that he had privately disagreed with many of Jimmy Carter’s decisions that he publicly supported: the big Cabinet purge, the sale of F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia, the Soviet grain embargo in response to Afghanistan, among others. Result, report columnists Evans & Novak, is a trail of sizzling Carterites (including the big man himself) around the country, plus boomlet for presidential aspirations of moderate Sen. Dale Bumpers of Ark., a Southerner with good ADA credentials, whose admirers, say E&N, include “liberals not yet bowled over by Sen. Gary Hart.” . . . Carl Rowan, the black columnist for the Washington Post, says blacks are infuriated by Mondale’s inept endorsement of Richard M. Daley in three-way Chicago Democratic primary (Daley ran third). The black community, says Rowan, will not accept Mondale’s excuse that he had promised Daley his backing last fall before Rep. Harold Washington, the winner, entered the race. . . . Mondale still has inside track for formal AFL-CIO endorsement in October, but even that path is strewn with boulders. Says one AFL-CIO official: How, for instance, can the California AFL-CIO go along with the national organization when its favorite son, Sen. Alan Cranston, has 100 per cent perfect labor voting record, even if, he adds, “Cranston’s going nowhere”? . . . And then there are the hawks in labor’s ranks—the old George Meany crowd—looking askance at Mondale’s appeasing gestures toward the Soviet Union. Nearly all the Democratic hopefuls are playing the disarmament card—Ben Wattenberg describes it as “getting into bidding contests as to who is dovier-than-thou”—but Mondale is hard to overtake on this one. . . . Finally, can he make it with the Sunbelt? Sen. Fritz Hollings (S.C.) doesn’t think so. Hollings was at Bal Harbour, Fla. with the rest last week, cheerfully admitting to his 50 per cent record on labor votes and his provenance from a right-to-work state, but, he says, Lane Kirkland et al. must realize that no Democrat can win the Presidency without winning the South and he, Hollings, is the most likely man to do just that.

Despite various criticisms of State of the Union speech, net impact was good, according to Garth-Penn-Schoen

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Rocky, indeed, is the road of the early favorite in a presidential contest, as Walter Mondale is finding out in a big way. At least two of Mondale’s worst lesions have been self-inflicted. In interview with Boston Globe Feb. 25, he revealed that he had privately disagreed with many of Jimmy Carter’s decisions that he publicly supported: the big Cabinet purge, the sale of F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia, the Soviet grain embargo in response to Afghanistan, among others. Result, report columnists Evans & Novak, is a trail of sizzling Carterites (including the big man himself) around the country, plus boomlet for presidential aspirations of moderate Sen. Dale Bumpers of Ark., a Southerner with good ADA credentials, whose admirers, say E&N, include “liberals not yet bowled over by Sen. Gary Hart.” . . . Carl Rowan, the black columnist for the Washington Post, says blacks are infuriated by Mondale’s inept endorsement of Richard M. Daley in three-way Chicago Democratic primary (Daley ran third). The black community, says Rowan, will not accept Mondale’s excuse that he had promised Daley his backing last fall before Rep. Harold Washington, the winner, entered the race. . . . Mondale still has inside track for formal AFL-CIO endorsement in October, but even that path is strewn with boulders. Says one AFL-CIO official: How, for instance, can the California AFL-CIO go along with the national organization when its favorite son, Sen. Alan Cranston, has 100 per cent perfect labor voting record, even if, he adds, “Cranston’s going nowhere”? . . . And then there are the hawks in labor’s ranks—the old George Meany crowd—looking askance at Mondale’s appeasing gestures toward the Soviet Union. Nearly all the Democratic hopefuls are playing the disarmament card—Ben Wattenberg describes it as “getting into bidding contests as to who is dovier-than-thou”—but Mondale is hard to overtake on this one. . . . Finally, can he make it with the Sunbelt? Sen. Fritz Hollings (S.C.) doesn’t think so. Hollings was at Bal Harbour, Fla. with the rest last week, cheerfully admitting to his 50 per cent record on labor votes and his provenance from a right-to-work state, but, he says, Lane Kirkland et al. must realize that no Democrat can win the Presidency without winning the South and he, Hollings, is the most likely man to do just that.

Despite various criticisms of State of the Union speech, net impact was good, according to Garth-Penn-Schoen