TCIM~bR CIW li1WALTE rr. rwr fw+ wwwiwgwrw wrrr w nw .w w SeventIy-Sev.en Years of Editorial Freedom EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Poltics. arTODAAND TOMORROW.. by WALTER LIPPMAN theGame E~i ics and Poker: BreakingC7UP teGm Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-05521 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: DANIEL OKRENT Administration Moves in Right Direction but Takes Wrong Step NEW YORK - The safest thing to say is that it is too early to guess about the 1968 elections. But politicians and journalists are not allowed to play it that safely. For the politicians are already mak- ing choices and decisions, and, as for the journalists, they had bet- ter go out of business if they want it never to be said that they guessed wrong. And so, since political guessing is inevitable, how can we best educate our guesses? We must have some idea where we are go- ing during the coming months. While there is no way of fore- casting now whether the Demo- crats or the Republicans will win the Presidency or who the Repub- lican candidate will be or even whether Lyndon Johnson will be the Democratic candidate, it is possible, I think, to see that 1968 may be a critical year in our party politics - a year like 1932, when a new coalition of groups and factions emerged and took THE BOARD OF Governor's enlightened decision last month to give students the control over visitation hours in the dormitory rooms they rent from the University is a tardy recognition of the obvious. For it merely places the Good- housekeeping Seal of Approval from the Mother of State Universities on rights the students claimed on their own last semester with no intention of relinquish- ing them. In effect the Board's action elevated University students above the social level of junior high school kids on their way to their first Snowball Ball with Daddy driving. Individual members of the Board can- vassed the campus and came to the con- clusion that the word "student" is not some stigma, and that affording tuition- paying members of society the same rights as human beings will not cause a rash increase in the country's birth rate, ALAS, DESPITE THEIR flawless sense of direction, there are pitfalls into which University functionaries contin- ually tumble. In this case the Board just wasn't up to abandoning time-tested bureaucratic procedures and had to dele- gate the right to determine visitation hours through house councils rather than leaving the policing of rooms up to the individuals themselves. In such private matters, House councils are not the rele- vant decision-making unit. Why not pre- tend that University dorms are like al- most any other Ann Arbor apartment, and let students as individuals at least have the right to make their own de- cisions in exchange for the excessive rents they pay. NEVERTHELESS, IT IS comfortinag that the University is beginning to aban- don its rigid head-in-the-sand attitude and recognize that students are no longer content to be silent partners in running an institution which would not exist without them. But if the power elite of the University does not learn last month's lesson, the University community will be the scene of futile rear-guard battles over issues the students have already resolved for themselves. --KEN KELLEY Last Flicker of 'Flaming Creatures' Since then the Democrats have been the dominant party. They have had a coalition of organized labor, farmers, ethnic minorities, the intellectual community and the young voters. This coalition was put together by Franklin Roosevelt and, although it had a setback under Gen. Dwight Eisen- hower because of the Korean war, it elected John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The crucial question for 1968 is first whether the Democratic coalition is breaking up. The sec- ond question is whether a Repub- lican coalition, capable of taking over political power, can be dis- cerned. THt~ERE IS, of course, no doubt hat the Democratic coalition. first under Mr. Roosevelt and later under Mr. Kennedy, is, if not broken, badly fractured. The political question is whether it will no longer constitute a ma- jority in the 1968 election. w 1. I 3 ' It is impossible to make a defi- nite guess about this. There is in the first place the uncertainty of war. While there is little doubt, it seems to me, that the war can- not be won in the sense that South Vietnam becomes an inde- pendent, anti - Communist a n d anti-Chinese state, it might hap- pen that Hanoi will be so bat- tered that it makes a gesture of submission. This may be unlikely, but it is possible. In that case Lyndon Johnson may yet appear in the role of a victor. This might rally a large part of the old Demo- cratic majority. But we must remember that as with Mr. Wilson in 1918 and Win- ston Churchill in 1945, being vic- torious is not necessarily and al- ways a free ticket to election. THE OTHER great asset of the Democratic Party is that as late as 1967 there were, according to the Gallup Poll, 46 Democrats to every 27 Republicans in the coun- try. What the proportion will be in November will surely depend in a great measure on whether the Republicans nominate a can- didate who attracts or repels Democrats. Moreover, the Johnson leaders must remember that a landslide victory very much like that of Mr. Johnson's in 1964 was won by Herbert Hoover in 1928. Mr. Hoover in 1928 won by 44 elec- toral votes to 87. Yet, four years later, his huge majority had dis- appeared; the Great Depression made him a one-term President, and the Republican Party after the defeat was so broken that it lost the next four elections in a row. Out of the old Democratic coalition, Mr. Johnson today has lost most of the intellectual com- munity and a very large propor- tion of the young voters. It is not easy to see how he can win them back. There is little he can say or do which will make them for- get or forgive the way that pledges were broken and promises re- versed immediately after the 1964 election. Not even a gesture of surrender from Hanoi will restore the confidence of the intellectuals and the young, their faith and hope in the President. IT IS TRUE, of course, that the intellectual community and the young people are nothing like a majority of the people. But in this century, at least, the Demo- crats have never won an election without their active support. If the Democrats can win this time, it will be because the Republicans have made it impossible for anti- Johnson Democrats to vote for the Republican candidate. If this happens, if the Repub- licans do not offer the great mass of dissenting Democrats a choice, there will be some, there may be many, who will vote for Mr. John- son, preferring the devil they know. But what I fear most is that for lack of a political choice in 1968 there will be a large exodus from the political arena into some form of political nihilism - despair, drugs, withdrawal, sporadic vio- lence, refusal to play the game, including attempts to break up and interfere with the game. THIS IS THE prospect which must most concern responsible Democrats who look ahead. They do not have to win the 1968 elec- tion. That may be beyond their power. But they do have to save the Democratic Party as an American institution, making good its claim to the support of Americans in times to come. Their main task in 1968 is to pre- vent the destruction of the faith that in this nation political griev- ances can be righted by political means. The Democrats must not be- come identified with the notion, which is not widespread, that what presidential candidates say when they are running for office is quite different from what they do when they get into office; that voters in the Senate and in the House have no effect on the ac- tivity of a President when he wages undeclared war after an- nouncing various slogans, refuses to explain what he is doing; that, in a word, the political life is a fraud. This is the overriding issue on which Sen. Eugene McCarthy has chosen to take his stand. It is a gallant and discerning decision and, whatever the outcome, it will mean that someone has come forth, not to fulfill an ambition or to work off a grievance, but to keep valid the Democratic be- lief that the greatest issues in public should be decided not in the streets but by orderly and rational debate. THERE ARE reasons for think- ing that the time has come when the Roosevelt coalition is worn out and a new coalition is waiting to be formed.. In some re- spects the situation resembles the year 1912 when the Republican coalition which had dominated American politics since the Civil War broke apart. Like the Repub- licans in 1912, the Democrats to- day are deeply divided among themselves. Mr. Wilson, who was the beneficiary of the Republican split in 1912, did not put to- gether a durable Democratic coalition. The final Republican crack-up took place under Mr. Hoover in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression. In the aftermath Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s put together the Democratic coa- lition w h i c h has dominated American politics ever since. TODAY ON THE EVE of the 1968 election year certain things are clear. One of them is that the Democrats are split over the war and the personality of Lyndon Johnson. Another is really more significant for the future: it is that the Roosevelt coalition is worn out and no longer repre- sents the realities of the present age. The true believer in the New Deal philosophy and program is today an old-fashioned fellow who has not kept up with the times. It is an accident that, at the time when the New Deal has be- come obsolete, the President in the White House should be a man whose political ideas are hand- me-downs from the New Deal. It is an accident, too, that, having vowed he would not do it, he has involved the country in a frus- trating war. And it is also an accident that he is personally un- likable. Had none of these accidents happened, the outstanding fact of our time would still be that the old Roosevelt coalition is dying and that a new coalition is wait- ing to be formed. THERE HAVE BEEN great changes since Mr. Roosevelt put together his coalition in the after- math of the Great Depression. The working class is no longer struggling, as it was then, for employment and for elementary rights and privileges in bargain- ing about its wages and condi- tions of work. The affluence which the expanding American economy is producing has lifted a large part of the working class business. There has been develop- ing a remarkable sense of obliga- tions of power by the men who have become used to the exercise of power. The age of the robber barons and of the sweatshop capitalists has passed away and in the great m o d e r n corporate aggregations there is a new generation of man- agers who realize that they are part of a new form of social or- ganization. The old concepts of the econo- mists and of the reformers do not fit the facts any longer. They do not describe these men who con- duct enterprises which are a mix- ture of public and private partici- pation and who have learned that while they must work for private profit they must serve the public welfare. This new form of eco- nomic organization has been identified by Prof. Kenneth Gal- braith. We are living in a post- capitalist and post-Marxian era. Like so many epoch-making changes in man's affairs, the new epoch has begun before the men who live with it are fully aware of it. IN THEIR LEADERSHIP and in their political organization to- day, neither of the two parties truly reflects and represents these momentous changes inthe dominant forces of our society. But if self-government is to work through political means, one party must come to reflect and repre- sent the realities of contemporary life. It must be in tune with what has happened since the 1930s. I do not myself think that the Democrats can do this now. For with Lyndon Johnson as Presi- dent they have alienated irrepar- ably the intellectual community and the young voters, and with- out them the Democratic Party does not have the brains or the I energy for the task of represent- ing the new age. sI THE CELEBRATED Cinema G u i l d "Flaming Creatures" case ended with a fizzle, not a bang in December as Mary Barkey pleaded guilty in a surprise move. Those who were hoping to create a test case which would affirm the im- munity of student organizations from .outoide police interference have been seriously disappointed, not to say an- gered, at Miss Barkey's apparent "sell- out." The most legitimate objection the sin- cere advocates of artistic freedom have to Miss Barkey's plea is that she waited so long to make it. If she did not want to denfend prin- ciple and attempt to establish a prece- dent in the case, it seems obvious she should have backed out at the beginning. However, had Miss Barkey pleaded guilty at that time the case would never have gotten out of Municipal Court, adverse publicity would have died quickly and Cinema Guild would have been saved the incurred court costs. AS THE SITUATION stands now, Cin- ema Guild has suffered a highly pub- lized defeat in Circuit Court. However personal accusations against Miss Bar- key may be ill-considered. In reality the case would have been of limited value as ae precedent. The de- fense attorneys did not concentrate their arguments on the issue of artistic freedom per se, but brought in a good deal of procedural considerations which may have strengthened the case itself, but limited its effectiveness as a favorable precedent. Specifically, they accused the local police of improper procedure in con- fiscating the film and making arrests without previously viewing the film and giving its sponsors an opportunity to defend its artistic and social value. WHILE ARREST PROCEDURE is an im- portant issue in itself, a favorable decision in this case may have resulted in stricter censorship controls; prospects of a University requirement for prior police review of all films shown on cam- pus can hardly be seen as favorable to artistic freedom, especially in view of the ambiguity of present state obscenity guidelines. Even if the case had not resulted in such a requirement, the multiple argu- ments involved would provide a con- venient legal technicality for future prosecutions. While the lateness of Miss Barkey's decision to plead guilty is unfortunate, the decision itself is in Cinema Guild's best interest. Rather than fighting the case in higher courts and giving already shaky Cinema Guild finances a further blow, she chose the personally more pain- ful, but in the long run most practical, route, and is therefore not to be con- demned, JILL CRABTREE ;T l _ -0 over political power. This may be, this can be, a year when the Democratic Party, as brought to- gether by Franklin Roosevelt un- der the banner of the New Deal, gives place to a new coalition formed by the Republicans. This is not a certainty. The Republicans may fumble the op- portunity. But the dominant fea- ture of the political scene will be, I venture to predict, that this his- toric opportunity now presents it- self. WE START, THEN, with the general proposition that in this big country all successful political parties are coalitions. When they are solid, interlocking coalitions of powerful interests, the party is likely to dominate political life until it breaks up and important elements in the coalition seek their satisfaction in the other party. In the past hundred years there have been two great coalitions. The first was Republican, formed at the time of the Civil War; it' was a union of the manufacturing interests of the North and of the farmers outside of the South. While this coalition lasted, the Republican Party won most of the elections, losing only a few and then only temporarily. In 1912 the Republican coalition began to break up and, although it recov- ered in the 1920s, after the re- action against Woodrow Wilson and World War I, the coalition went smash in 1932 in the Great Depression. r . - try j K' 'a DMILE Of THE ROAD 1S GETTING KIND OF NARROW..: The Calloused Peace Feelers to a standard of living which has made it a part of the middle class. And this has meant that the working class which has been left behind, in the main the Negroes, has little solidarity with and, in fact, has a dangerous antagonism toward those who have forged ahead. In the upper class, among the managers and owners of corpo- rate industry, there has been a revolutionary change of attitude since the first appearance of big For this reason I do not think that crucial question for 1958 is what McCarthy and Sen. Robert Kennedy do, important and in- teresting and significant as that may be, certainly for the future. The crucial question is whether the Republicans, who are still distraught by their ideological caper in 1964, can pull themselves together and seize an historic opportunity which is now theirs for the taking. (c), 1967, The washington Post Co. IN THE MURKY world of diplomatic manuevering that surrounds the Viet- nam war the visible surface of the ice- berg too ' often distorts the underlying circumstances. The North Vietnamese diplomatic mis- sion in several countries have reiterated the willingness of Hanoi to talk with the United States about "relevant problems". This event must not be viewed in Isola- tion from certain ploys by Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk to stave off encroach- ment of the war on his country. Sihanouk describes himself as caught "between the hammer and anvil" of op- posing military forces which his small army would be unable to prevent from crossing Canobia's borders. He is ap- parently jockeying to prevent a perman- ent intrusion of the 'war on his soil by playing off U.S. interests with threats of seeking Chinese or Russian help. North Vietnamese interests in opening a peace bid now would want to enter bargaining from a position of military strength. The stepped-up activity by North Vietnamese troops in Laos, Cam- bodia and along the borders of those nations in South Vietnam may have been a prelude to Hanoi's announcement last week that it "will" talk if bombing of the North is stopped. Previous Hanoi a+stm--- hsti ai Wnrh Vim-Mom Despite pre-election promises, the Thieu government appears even more adamant than previous against recognizing, meet- ing informally or otherwise contacting the National Liberation Front. Despite overt pressure from President Johnson to move in that direction, the Saigon regime seems more interested in con- solidating barracks-room rivalries than bringing peace to the war-torn country. President Thieu is planning to replace many of the province chiefs appointed under now Vice-President Ky's regime as premier; police chief Loan, a Ky crony, has already been forced out in a previous power play. Practically the only agree- ment among the factions in the North- ern- and military-dominated Saigon re- gime is an unwillingness to open up negotiations that might result in a coali- tion government with the communists and nationalists that would jeopardize their hegemony. AS IN THE PAST, in the game of politics and diplomacy the people suffer the the most by indecisions. The objective social conditions that originally impelled the revolution and have sustained the insurgents have been ignored by those who control the South Vietnamese gov- fl-nf ct ril4,,,, ,,l.. nfl -,4. fl nhnr,.. alm tni A.- .". ....... .. ... .............. ........... ..... ............. "............t.............. M i t. . ......... .r..... ....r....... .............................. . ....... ...,...M1vr.. .... 5 S% S .. .. .. } .. . . t.1J: t. t.%.%f. Letters: Passing the Buck to the 'Bump' To the Editors: A WEEK OR SO before the holi- day vacation, The Daily re- printed a letter from Steve Schember who, a m o n g other things, called Bump Elliott "one of the most mediocre football coaches in the country." Obvious- ly the "buck" has to stop some- where (invariably on the head coach's lap), yet is it too much to ask for a little balance and com- mon sense from our sideline Quar- terbcak Club? Since our freshman year Michi- gan's four year record has been 23-17, certainly no Alabama or Notre Dame, but nonetheless re- markable in view of our alleged deplorable coaching. This record seems all the more amazing when compared to Duffy's green giants (two supermen" teams in four sea- sons) with a 26-13-1 record; or the most irrascible Woody. who Another point mentioned by Schember was that "the talent on this year's (Michigan) team was easily as ample as Indiana which has a good coach." Whether this statement is true or not is a moot question. However, assuming it's a priori validity, is it unreasonable to assert: "The talent on this year's (MSU, Iowa, Illinois, North- western, OSU, et al.) team was easiily as ample as Indiana which has a good coach?" Now please don't misunderstand this-we're not apologizing for our mediocre record this past season, it should have been better. But to say (as Mr. Schember does) dropped pass- es, interceptions, fumbles, etc., are the result of poor coaching and are "inexcusable for any college team, let alone one in the Big Ten" is pure balderdash. Even mighty Bear Bryant who report- edly can walk on water or the comnner -1ire Vinc T omhani do that; nonetheless it would be sincerely appreciated if some in- dividuals, despite their sincerity and good intentions, would show a little mature judgment before look- ing for a scapegoat. When one re- examines our pre-season football prospects and considers the gaps which had to be filled (four un- tried defensive backs, an inexperi- enced end corps, sophomores and non-letter winners in the offensive backfield), then it seems Bump and is staff did a commendable coaching job. We seniors have seen Bump El- liott from a different and much closer perspective than most, and in addition to his coaching abil- ities, he has always impressed us with his loyalty, sincerity, and per- sonal integrity. As we look back on our football experience at Michigan, it is our association with men such as Bump Elliott that we Jail Cell To the Editor: I THINK THE citizens of this community would be interested in knowing what goes on in our county jail occasionally. Last week I went to visit a group of young men serving sentences which they incurred a year and a half ago as the result of a dem- onstration at the local draft board office. Six of them and a seventh were taken out of the incorrigible cell so that I might visit with them. They had been placed there 24 hours earlier and were released for a short time in the morning for breakfast and toilet. I was shocked to learn that seven men would be placed in a cell measuring six by six feet for 24 hours. I made a few telephone calls and by evening I was in- Mrm4A rt a f,.minA, 4+rv, v or chair and only periodic re- leases. What was the offense? One or more of the group of seven in the cell were trying to convert a candy bar into hot chocolate by placing the candy bar in a cup and light- ing a fire under it, using toilet paper for the combustible. When the fire was discovered all seven were placed in the incorrigible despite the confession of one that he had lit the fire. WHAT DID THE Prosecuting Attorney's investigation reveal? Nothing in writing, but I was in- formed over the phone that all seven were guilty because they were "involved" in the incident. And how were they involved? As the result of "participation," "discussion," or "c o n s p i r a c y." Could any one of theseven have C