Mondale/Reagan advisers: It's all in the family

Scan page 3

Nov. 3 conference called to defend NBIPP charter SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1984 3 Since the Democratic Party Convention, the election campaign of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro has offered us further enlightenment on capitalist politics.

Writing in The Nation on Oct. 6, Professors Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, authors of the forthcoming "Right Turn: The 1984 Election and the Future of American Politics, ask plaintively in their article "Why Mondale Turned Right":

• "Why, after some hopeful signs at the San Francisco convention, did the Democrats de-emphasize the issues of jobs, inequality, and nuclear war and choose the suicidal strategy of campaigning on a lowered deficit, increased taxes, and still higher military spending?

And why, once it became obvious the strategy was not working, did Walter Mondale continue to pursue it?"

Their explanation is that when Edward Kennedy withdrew from the race and Mondale "stepped forward" the combination of a "turnaround" in the domestic economy, a worsening trade balance, and Reagan's "spectacular success in debilitating labor" had wrecked the "accord" between "labor leaders" and Democratic "business leaders."

Despite the revealing evidènce they cite showing how the Democratic Party operates, the authors ascribe the "right turn" to a need to outflank Reagan in a period of "upturn."

Nonetheless, Ferguson and Rogers, who took their research from the Project for Investigative Reporting on Money and Politics, conclude that the Democratic Party missed "an opportunity opened on the left for a candidacy that offered fewer guns and more butter."

They blame the press. The New York Times is chided for quoting at length from the American Enterprise Institute cautioning against "any Democratic move to the left."

"Rock of Gibraltar"

Yet they show that "virtually all the Democratic business leaders favored further increases in the military budget."

The space missed "on the left" by Democratic Party candidates was, they tell us, one which "Jesse Jackson's campaign sometimes fought to fill."

But the authors also reveal that Jackson's campaign was "assisted by contributions from people-such as former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Atkin-who have, perhaps not always championed the cause of the domestic poor and oppressed."

Professors Ferguson and Rogers also inform us that "leading investment bankers" were "overrepresented" among the major contributors to Democratic organizations, like "Democrats for the '80s."

They received "substantial funds" from partners and executives at Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb; Goldman, Sachs; Brown Brothers Harriman; Lazard Freres; and Prudential-Bache, to cite only a few. In fact, we learn, Prudential-Bache sank so much money "into Democratic organizations in the past couple of years" that the Democrats' real emblem was "the Rock of Gibraltar":

"A virtual first mortgage on the Mondale candidacy was taken out by investment bankers, insurance company executives, and other business elites for whom a cut in deficit and further increases in military spending constitute the preferred political program. These essentially conservative groups now make up the elite corps of the Mondale campaign."

Flexible Schlesinger Furthermore, the chief counselors on foreign policy to Walter Mondale turn out to be James Schlesinger and Max Kampelman, both of whom accompanied Walter Mondale for his briefings by the director of the National Security Council.

James Schlesinger is the consultant to the investment house of Shearson Lehman/American Express. His views on the deficit and on economics are identical to those of Ronald Reagan, whose campaign he once directed in 1976.

From the viewpoint of the ruling Vote SWP Mel Mason The Socialist Workers Party candidates, Mel Mason for president and Andrea Gonzalez for vice president, are ruaning on a program of opposition to the U.S, war drive in Central America and to the bipartisan attacks on working people in this country.

The SWP candidates advance the idea that the labor movement should organize its own political partyindependent of the capitalist parties.

Socialist Action calls on our readers to vote Mason-Gonzalez on Nov. 6 defend NBIPP For at least a year, a split over program, tactics, and strategy has been developing within the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP). The failure of the majority of its leadership and adherents nationwide to break with capitalist politics-specifically the Democratic Party-and to implement the charter that resulted from its 1980 founding conference, has cost NBIPP hundreds of members and created significant opposition to those leaders.

The charter clearly points a path away from the Democratic Party, capitalism, imperialism, and reformism, and toward independent political activity in the interests of the Black masses and their domestic and international allies.

On Sept. 29, a California State Conference was convened in Sacramento by members who are and have been actively working to implement the NBIPP charter. Its main purpose was to unify California activists and coordinate their participation in a National NBIPP conference to defend and implement the founding charter. The national conference is set for the weekend of Nov. 3 at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md.

A newsletter the class, the James Schlesinger story is composed of the right stuff. He was director of Strategic Studies at the Rand Corporation where he was a senior staff member advising John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1963 through 1969. He helped direct the Bureau of the Budget under Richard Nixon in 1969 and was Nixon's co-director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1971.

Schlesinger also served Richard Nixon as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1971 to 1973. Nixon resigned, but Schlesinger carried on-to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1973 and secretary of defense from 1973 to 1975.

James Schlesinger, however, is a flexible man. He helped run Ronald Reagan's challenge to Gerald Ford's nomination in 1976 and, when Ford lost to Jimmy Carter-why James Schlesinger became a personal assistant to President Carter. Carter appointed him secretary of the Department of Energy where he served from 1977 to 1979.

While secretary of defense under Richard Nixon, Schlesinger was "more hawkish" than his boss. His advocacy of first-strike capability continued in 1980 when he became senior staff at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. Here he divides his services between devising strategems of strategic nuclear superiority for Pentagon associates and his financial nostrums sought out by Shearson Lehman/American Express.

Versatile Kampelman The Max Kampelman saga is even more stirring. Kampelman's relationship to Walter Mondale long antedates that of James Schlesinger. He counseled young Mondale when Mondale was a protege of Hubert Humphrey.

Kampelman was Lyndon Johnson's "adviser" to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1966 to 1967 during the height of the air bombardment of Indochina. He served in the right-wing Atlantic Council of the United States from 1965 to 1970 and chapter of NBIPP was distributed. It featured a front page article titled "Now is the time for a national Black independent political party" by Ken Morgan, co-chair of the Baltimore chapter of NBIPP.

In it he stated, "History has shown us that we cannot rely on the Demo- ( MICHAEL, IN THE PAST THREE YEARS I'VE DONE A LOT FOR YOUR PEOPLE!

YEAH...MILLIONAIRES Committee on the Present Danger.

This committee grew into the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, of which Max Kampelman was vice chairman. This group advocated far-right policies for the Democratic Party. Kampelman re-established the Committee on the Present Danger to address the "communist menace."

His co-members comprise a who's who of the "neoconservatives" who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and are among his principle advisers.

These include Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Leon Keyserling, Jean Kirkpatrick, and Richard Pipes. Richard Pipes is Ronald Reagan's chief adviser on the Soviet Union. Jean Kirkpatrick continues in Max Kampelman's footsteps at the United Nations.

This is not surprising. Kampelman and Kirkpatrick co-authored "The Strategy of Deception" in 1963, a polemic on the world communist conspiracy and the need to smash it.

A vaudeville act Noting that Schlesinger and Kampelman were brought by Mondale to guide him in his briefing by the National Security Council director, Alexander Cockburn exclaims in The Nation on Sept. 29:

"Reagan claims that Nicaragua is exporting revolution to the rest of Central America and so does Mondale. Reagan says Nicaragua should be 'pressured' until it mends its ways, and so does Mondale. Reagan says that he will invade Nicaragua if it buys 28year-old Soviet MIG-21s to protect itself, and so does Mondale.

Reagan justifies the invasion of Grenada...and so does Mondale.

Reagan says that he supports the policies of Duarte, and so does Mondale. Reagan blames the missile crisis in Europe on the Russians, and so does Mondale.

Reagan is bad on the Middle East, and Mondale is worse. And finally, Mondale promises to raise taxes and cut social spending."

To be asked to choose between Reagan's "Kampelman and Schlesinger" or Mondale's "Schlesinger and Kampelman" reduces any notion of real alternatives to the vaudeville act these partners in crime connote.

cratic or Republican parties in our fight for liberation...Our challenge is to build an independent Black political movement-led by a Black party that will fight for Black interests, not those of the capitalist system responsible for our oppression."

For further information on the National Conference, NBIPP, or local contacts, call (301) 444-3454; or write NBIPP, P.O. Box 244, Baltim ere, Md. 21203 PEOPLE?

Scan page 4

— El Salvador