CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP

Henry Kissinger flirted with power once again last week in Detroit and stirred speculation: Could he find work as part of a Reagan administration? Maybe part-time.

Reagan's more conservative supporters, while they were polite to Kissinger when he spoke to the convention, have made clear they don't want to see him as part of the foreign policy team in a new Republican administration.

And although a role for the former secretary of state may have been a factor in the abortive attempt at putting together a Reagan-Gerald Ford ticket last week, the GOP presidential candidate apparently has never seriously considered making him part of a Reagan administration. Reagan told a UPI interviewer before the convention:

"No, I think he's back in the academic community now and I think we'd move on to someone else."

He did leave room, however, for a part-time Kissinger role: "I thought mainly more in the nature of special assignments and so forth in which he as a citizen could perform functions for us."m

European newspapers reviewed the Republican National Convention as symbolic of American nostalgia for world leadership, while the Soviet press characteristically panned it as "chauvinistic hysteria."

Literaturnaya Gazeta said that the GOP's proposed tax cuts conflict with the Republican plan to "drastically increase the inflated military budget" -- already, it said, too heavy a burden on US citizens.

"One can sense the musty smell of cold war from Detroit," said the July 19 edition of Pravda.

But some West German and French newspapers found Ronald Reagan and his "virile talk" appealing.

"Reagan symbolizes the need for the American character to get tougher," wrote a French daily, L'Est Eclair, "to resume its world leadership and rediscover virtues that founded the extraordinary epoch of US democracy."

To John Anderson, the conservative tilt of the Republican convention leaves him plenty of campaign room to the left.

In a London press conference at the end of his tour of the Middle East and Western Europe, Anderson characterized the party's vice-presidential candidate George Bush as a man who, while he has a moderate image, actually reinforces the GOP's "very conservative program."

A Reagan-Ford ticket, Anderson said, that dropped the "more objectionable" parts of the Republican platform, "would have been a very, very difficult ticket to run against."

Anderson won access last week to the Ohio presidential ballot in November. He had already won a similar suit in New Mexico, another of the five states where he missed ballot deadlines because of the lateness of announcing his independent candidacy.m

Jimmy Carter picked up the ERA issue the day the Republican convention was over and may make it a signal issue in the fall campaign.

Carter presented the ERA as a major issue to representatives of Girls' Nation , a group of high school students from across the country, in the Rose Garden Friday.

"I have no doubt in the near future we will have our first woman president," he said.

Abandoning traditional support of ERA in the 1980 Republican platform was one of the most controversial moves of the GOP convention. And pushing the ERA issue to the forefront of national debate could help Carter pry votes away from the Reagan camp.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0721/072137.html
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe