ustxtxb_obs_1970_10_30_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

The story of “one of the most bizarre and fruitless chapters in American military history It can be read as a period piece and also… as a wry commentary on current diplomatic-military perplexities.” WILLIAM WEBER JOHNSON, Life THE GREAT PURSUIT General John J. Pershing’s Punitive Expedition across the Rio Grande to destroy the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa by HERBERT MOLLOY MASON, JR. 58 photos, 4 maps. $8.95, now at your bookstore t t. RANDOM HOUSE isof Fullerton & Barnes Austin Byron Fullerton, the Republican law professor who is running against Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, is conducting a gentlemanly campaign. Nevertheless, he has raised the central question about Barnes that will not go away. Barnes has become a wealthy man while constantly on the public payroll at a salary of $4,800 a year, first as a wheel in the House of Representatives, then as speaker of the House, then as lieutenant governor. Fullerton asks questions about this undeniable and fundamental fact. “Since Texas pays its lieutenant governor only $400 a month,” Fullerton says, “he should have other sources of income. But I am concerned about the manner in which Barnes gets his income the circumstances and sources. I’ve read where Barnes has been quoted as saying he’s been given interest in businesses without putting up any money. I don’t understand this system. It seems strange to me. Nobody has ever offered me any interest in a business under an arrangement where I didn’t have to put up anything.” Fullerton also asks: “Where else in the whole country could a young man of modest means and no business experience build a fortune in just ten years on a $400 a month job?” Fullerton charges that Barnes has amassed “a personal fortune from no visible support other than holding public office. … His wheeler-dealer style of piling up a personal fortune from invisible sources has sparked resentment and outright suspicion among the press and public alike.” This, of course, is the same Barnes of whom Lyndon Johnson has announced, “Where you lead us we will follow. We have enlisted for the duration!” Johnson speaks for himself and whoever wants to let himself be included in the Johnsonian “we.” It is quite clear to the rest of us that in any tough statewide race for an office of high public visibility, Barnes would have a full public accounting to make or a defeat to take. Fullerton has brought to the Republican candidacy for lieutenant governor, usually an empty formality, a considerability. He slams Barnes for having favored a sales tax on groceries, for “his attempt to saddle us with a bread tax.” And Fullerton says that instead of spending public money to clean up industrial pollution, we should require the polluters to clean it up at their own expense. But Fullerton is not above demagoguery. He puts out the season’s usual hard talk against campus militants, who, when it becomes clear they intend only to disrupt, Observations “will be thrown out.” Barnes has approved removal of the statutory Texas ceiling on welfare spending, which has caused so much grief and even near-disaster in this state, but for this decent stand Fullerton berates him, favoring a ceiling. And Fullerton puts out the usual Republican hokum about the “splurge of public spending” under Barnes, the need for cutting the state budget, and all that. Nor has dark-horse Fullerton been able to resist making votes out of Barnes’ endorsement of lowering penalties for simple possession of marijuana. Barnes has managed to sound like he favors, well, maybe even the death penalty for any other narcotics offense, but he has not taken back his stand on the penalties for possession of pot. Fullerton says Barnes “wants to weaken narcotics laws by lowering penalties for possession of marijuana. I say such action would double the use and traffic of that drug almost instantly.” But then, to a person who won’t buy such a line as that, Fullerton says he has not flatly opposed lowering the penalty for having pot: he wants a study, and then what you do “may include a change of penalties, or it may’not.” This is the very tired old game of having it both ways. Still, Fullerton’s campaign has served some useful purposes and is one more step toward a healthier political structure in Texas. The 1972 question The possibility of a fourth party, challenging mainly the Democrats from the left, may be worrying such people as Lawrence O’Brien, the national Democratic chairman, judging from a remark he made to an A.P. reporter. Speaking of “the reluctance of old contributors” to the Democrats, he said, “After the election, I can assure you that these people are going to be spoken to. I want to know whether they consider the Democratic Party worthy of continuity.” Senator Eugene McCarthy says \(according to that he intends to keep alive the possibility of an independent presidential candidacy in 1972, at least until the national conventions that summer. “Perhaps,” McCarthy says, “the threat of a fourth party will make the Republicans and Democrats more responsive on the war and the rest of our issues.” Frederick Dutton, a University of California regent who served in the Kennedy Administration, writes that a fourth party led by John Lindsay or possibly Eugene McCarthy in 1972 “will be . . . sure to cut massively into both major party bases” and, in a four-way split, “has the best chance in over a century.” Bentsenizing Adlai The Agnew right-wing is doing the same thing to Adlai Stevenson III in Illinois that Lloyd Bentsen did to Ralph Yarborough in Texas this spring. I quote from a letter from a correspondent in Illinois: “After reading your column on calling commercial for Ralph Smith that showed the other side’s participation in this name-calling. Smith is running an incredibly dirty campaign against Adlai Stevenson. The commercial showed some kids carrying a peace sign, then a picture of Adlai, then Smith came on and said, ‘The enemies of America will never take refuge in my actions.’ . . . Another commercial I saw later showed Adlai, then a picture of the Chicago riots, then a voice came on and asked, ‘What does Adlai Stevenson have against the FBI?” R.D. October 30, 1970 19