OUR VIEWS

Picking Auburn trustees

The political maneuvering may not always be evident, but when a group wants to make changes or a determined and polarizing individual seeks to gain or retain power, the political struggle can get unpleasant and very public.

If political pressures and maneuvers cannot be exercised in one way, they will be exercised in another. That's at the root of the current fight over the election of officers for the Auburn University Alumni Association. Supporters of Auburn Trustee Bobby Lowder are apparently trying to gain control of an organization that might prove a threat to the power he exercises.

While the association is an important source of financial and other support for the university — and occasional voice of discontent — it has not been a direct player in the selection of trustees. That will change if Alabama voters approve proposed constitutional Amendment 5 on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Under the terms of the amendment, the association's board of directors will select two members of the five-member appointing committee that nominates individuals to fill vacancies on the Auburn Board of Trustees. That's the same number the trustees will name. The fifth member will be the governor or an Auburn graduate designated by the governor.

If an individual or small group could control both the Auburn and Alumni Association boards, that individual or group would effectively control who becomes a trustee. Although the state Senate has to confirm nominees before they can serve, only the appointing board can nominate. Presently, nominations are made by the governor

While we do not believe it is healthy for any university to be dominated by a single powerful trustee — whether it's Lowder or anybody else — the outcome of the Alumni Association struggle should not dictate your vote on Amendment 5. No matter who holds power within the association, the changes to the composition of the Auburn Board of Trustees and to the selection process would improve the board over the long term.

The amendment would expand the Auburn board by two at-large members, who can live anywhere in the continental United States. Current trustees must live within Alabama and all but one of them must live within specific districts. That one, the state superintendent of schools, will be replaced by another at-large appointee when the current superintendent, Ed Richards, leaves office.

At-large members can bring new perspectives and ideas to the board. Depending on who they are, they can also bring national support and visibility to the university.

Also helping to promote new ideas are changes in the terms of office, term limits and age limits. New board members will be eligible to serve two seven-year terms. No person can be appointed after reaching 70. Currently, board members serve 12-year terms and can be reappointed indefinitely.

The shorter terms and age limits not only ensure fresh voices and perspectives, but should prevent most situations in which a trustee holds on to office long after he or she is capable of serving. That has happened in the recent past.

No university board of trustees is better than the individuals who serve on it. However, Amendment 5 makes it more likely that good people will be selected. We recommend approval.

Single county amendments

Five of the nine deal with the issue of supernumary local officials. We will address them Friday. Of the remaining four, we believe voters outside the affected counties should abstain on one and approve three.

Amendment 8: This proposal would require the Fayette County Commission to impose an additional three-mill property tax. The revenue will be distributed among the county's volunteer fire departments and resque squads. While we endorse the concept of funding volunteer fire and rescue services in this way, it is a decision that ought to be made by the voters or elected officials of Fayette County. If voters from outside Fayette County abstain from marking their ballots on this amendment, the decision can be made locally. We urge readers who don't live in Fay-
ette County not to mark a choice on Amendment 8.

Amendment 9: This proposal would give the Legislature authority to fix, alter and regulate court costs in Greene County. This is an appropriate power for the Legislature to have. We recommend approval.

Amendment 11: Subject to action by the town council of White Hall in Lowndes County, this proposed amendment would allow the operation of bingo games in White Hall by nonprofit organizations. The amendment sets minimum conditions, but leaves it to the White Hall council to make the actual decisions about bingo. Because of this local control, we recommend approval.

Amendment 14: This proposal authorizes the Winston County commission to levy a three-mill property tax for maintaining roads and volunteer fire protection. Because the final decision is left to local elected officials, we recommend approval.

YOUR VIEWS

Amendment 1 is needed tourniquet

The General Fund will never be adequate to resolve the many financial problems facing our state until our politicians revise our antiquated constitution and revise our convoluted and inequitable tax laws. Gov. Don Siegelman has stated he is not going to "tilt windmills" on revising the constitution and he realistically knows he cannot be re-elected if he advocates tax reform .

The problem lies in the historically low quality of our state legislators. They resist change because they would lose the power associated with centralized government and the great wealth gained from slimy lobbyists and powerbrokers Many of them are bottom feeders camouflaged as statesmen.

No meaningful changes can be made in state government until most current legislators are replaced with men of integrity and competence. In the meantime, vote yes on Amendment 1.

James F. Lynn
1564 Stillwaters Drive
Dadeville

Vote no

Amendment 1 is the so-called raid on the oil and gas trust funds. These trust funds were set up in the 1980s to provide interest income to the Alabama General Fund each year from offshore oil and gas wells. The principal was not to be spent and was to continue to grow as long as the offshore wells were in production.

The Legislature can now appropriate the annual interest from these trust funds to help run state government. It can't touch the principal. If Amendment 1 is defeated, the citizens of Alabama will continue to receive the benefits from this annual interest for generations.

The politicians in Montgomery want to get their hands on part of the principal. They have come up with a scheme to do this by means of a constitutional amendment. If Alabama voters approve Amendment 1, Don Siegelman and his friends will be able to spend part of the principal each year and will have a lot of discretion about how this money will be spent.

Changes may be needed to the trust funds, but not these changes. I will vote no on Amendment 1.

J. Elbert Peters
1701 Jeannette Circle
Huntsville

Outright lie

The signs up and down I-65 say "Protect the Trust, Vote Yes." This is a outright lie by the backers of Amendment 1 and Gov. Don Siegelman is leading this deception. The raid on the gas and oil trust amounts to theft and they know it. Why else would they use such deceptive labeling on the ballot? They are counting on the uneducated and uninformed voter to read the ballot and mark the ''yes."

Siegelman is taking a page out of the Clinton-Gore play book. The feel perfectly safe in deceiving the people to get the money for their own pork projects. The managers of the bond issue will make a fortune over the next four years.

We were lied to about the lottery, MAPS and other issues in the past but the people had enough information to defeat these measures. This is not the case with Amendment No. 1. The opponents have very little funds to fight it but Siegelman has the big money backing his effort from the very groups that will make the most.

These are the same deceptive tactics used by the Clinton/Gore administration in the past eight years and Siegelman, seeing it work in Washington, sees no reason it will not work in Alabama. His ace in the hole is the uneducated and uninformed voter. With a low turnout, Amendment No. 1 could easily pass and we will have lost a valuable long-term asset for the state.

Donald Dunlap
1335 Montevallo Road
Irondale

Thanks

Look forward to the book he is penning.

Could you talk him into two days a week. Thanks for the improvement

Anson Allen Murdoch
2053 Crestmont Drive

Gore, Bush not fighting drug prices

Drug prices in the United States are outrageous and should be lowered. Some ways to do so are: Study of drug prices in foreign countries to learn what they are doing. Importation of drugs from foreign countries. Price control of drugs. Make the drug companies into public utilities. Nationalize the drug companies.

Neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush have proposed any of these. Instead they have presented plans for people on Medicare that are basically alike. These people are to make extra payments to Medicare to cover drug prices. The funds will be used to pay parts of the drug costs for those elderly who have extremely high drug costs. Everybody else will continue to pay high drug prices.

Political spending is done by candidates and political parties. It makes political noise. Both candidates and parties believe implicitly that this noise produces votes. The more noise the more votes.

The present way to do political spending is get the money from private parties. Another way would be to have the government make donations to candidates and parties. But this way would not be liked by candidates, parties, and office-holders. The government would have to spend less on something else or raise taxes. Moreover government donations would likely be equal and government might decree no other political spending shall be done. If so, political spending would be equal, political noise would be equal and vote production would also be equal.

Therefore the present procedures are preferred. Under them every candidate, and party can hope to get more in donations, spend more, make more noise and get more votes than the adversaries. Also the big corporations like it. They can have more influence with government. And the drug companies are especially favored. They can raise their prices sky high and in effect force the people to pay the donations. This is plutocracy, not democracy but, so what.

E.A. Thompson
2322 Sheraton Lane
Florence

Decidedly undecided

Well, what if an "undecided voter" decides to decide, you say? Won't happen. Your real, professional and dedicated "undecided voter" never decides! Their inherited profession obligates them to occupy a place of television prominence week after week to announce to their anticipative subjects the learned and dramatically announced decision that they are still an "undecided voter." What will "undecided voters" do when there is no election on the horizon? Well, they're undecided.

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane

OTHER VIEWS

Candidates' demeanor will appeal to many voters

By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

Question to Al Gore, after the third debate, on ABC's "Good Morning America"

WASHINGTON — Clawed by such questions — or are they genuflections? — from the tigers of the news media, Al Gore knows his message is getting through. It is getting through the news media in their role as his campaign's megaphones. The distilled essence of his campaign is:

Voters, I am going to speak slowly so you can follow this. You simply have no choice. You must vote for me because my opponent is an imbecile.

For example, George W. Bush's principal foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, says Bush favors termination of the U.S. peacekeeping role in the Balkans. Surely this is an idea about which intelligent people can differ. However, Gore responds that the idea is indicative of a failure of "understanding." His implication is that Bush (and presumably Rice, former provost of Stanford) cannot fathom serious matters.

The "Good Morning America" question implicitly commends Gore for being such a good sport about the intellectual slumming involved in debating the doltish two-term governor of the second-most populous state. The question illustrates the extent to which Gore's campaign has become an exercise in undisguised condescension. Democrats have done this before.

In 1952 and 1956 the Democratic nominee was an early prototype of Gore. Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, was thought — it is now not clear why — to be quite an intellectual. Today Michael Barone, editor of the Almanac of American Politics and of "Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan," notes that when Stevenson died the only book on his bedside table was the Social Register. However, Stevenson, like Gore, was susceptible to strange ideas supposedly grounded in science.

After Gore offered himself as a presidential candidate in 1988, and the electorate emphatically said "No, thank you," Gore responded by writing a book, "Earth in the Balance," the theme of which is: Unless you people listen to me, you are doomed. In 1956 Stevenson suggested that the Earth might literally be in the balance. He said (Oct. 26, in Rock Island, Ill.) that his opponent, Dwight Eisenhower, favored nuclear weapons tests "that can shake the earth's axis."

Liberal intellectuals disdained Eisenhower. Stevenson (unlike Gore) spoke elegantly. Eisenhower's spoken syntax (he was a graceful writer) was sometimes indecipherable. Eisenhower won two landslides. The intelligentsia said the bovine electorate had been beguiled by Eisenhower's smile.

In 1980 Democrats again said voters really had no choice. Ronald Reagan was a simpleton. Reagan won handily. The intelligentsia, happiest when condescending, clung to the Smile Theory of History.

However, this year's election may turn on an aesthetic judgment. Demeanor may matter, and maybe it should.

American politics usually has low ideological octane, so other calculations, such as likability ("I like Ike," was the ubiquitous slogan in 1952), can matter a lot. However, such calculations can carry an unarticulated ideological component.

In the nation's formative era, serious men gave serious thought to the presidential demeanor proper for a republic. How should President Washington be addressed? How should he be approached at levees and fetes, how should he respond? The founding generation understood that presidential demeanor might carry philosophic content.

Now, try this thought experiment. Imagine that you watched the debates, particularly the first and third debates, with the sound muted. You would have seen two strikingly different demeanors — demeanors denoting political sensibilities.

Bush's ambling on the stage and his low-voltage delivery of his words exhibited a kind of behavioral modesty, analogous to and expressive of conservatism's modest expectations for the uses of government. Gore, for whom the debate rules were not a controlling legal authority, strode and gesticulated and generally overflowed with the sort of confidence with which liberalism would wield government for grant purposes.

First radio (Franklin Roosevelt became, in the words of impresario George S. Kaufman, "that grand old pal of the airwaves") and then television (the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 was the first national coming-together around the electronic hearth) contributed to the inflation of the president into the constant commentator and commiserator about everything. This involves Americans in a peculiar (or so Americans once would have thought) intimacy with presidents.

Which is why a candidate's demeanor, as an indicator of political sensibility and as an unavoidable presence, should matter.

George F. Will can be reached
at Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20071-9200

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