Louisiana: The State We're In; 441

[Beeps] Production assistance for the following program was provided in part by Kaiser Aluminum. The President of the United States of America. And the man I believe in my heart will be the next president of the United States, Governor Ronald Reagan. [Applause] The State We're In with Beth George and Ron Blome. Welcome to

this edition of Louisiana: The State We're In. This week, a virtual parade of politicians toured the state led by both the Democratic and Republican nominees for the presidency. Jimmy Carter visited historic Jackson Square in New Orleans, hoping to repeat his 1976 performance when he carried the state and the nation by a narrow margin. Ronald Reagan was in north Louisiana where he gave a speech at Centenary College, repeating his conservative economic theme that he hopes will find favor with the voters. This week we'll have a report on both of those visits. And in the wake of the presidential parade, we'll pause and take a look at what the style of this year's campaign has to say about the political process. In particular we'll look at the role of TV in this election year in a conversation with a top official of Common Cause, a people's lobbyist organization based in Washington. But first things first, as we take a look at how the presidential campaign swept through Louisiana this past week. And I can tell you there's not a person in America that I have a higher regard for and more respect than this man, the President of the United States of America.

And let us now welcome our great friend of the state of Louisiana, a tremendous American, and the man I believe in my heart will be the next President of the United States Governor Ronald Reagan. [Applause] Thank you very much. Louisiana is a swing state in this election year, which may account for all the attention the presidential candidates were paying to us this past week. It's a state where the race is close, where Jimmy Carter's Southern bloc may have some cracks in it. It's a state where Carter and Reagan are counting heavily on the support of governors past and present. A state where the 10 electoral votes still evade anyone's solid claim. In the past the almost solid Democratic Louisiana has split between Democrats, Republicans and independents when it came to presidential elections. In 1976, the state went for Carter, with 5 percent to spare. But the polls this

year show Carter in trouble. In 1976, Jimmy Carter came to Jackson Square in New Orleans for a last-minute campaign appeal, an appeal that apparently worked. This week he tried it again. [Band music and applause.] [crowd noise] Some 5,000 persons including a few Reagan supporters and a lot of tourists crowded into Jackson Square for the Carter appearance on Tuesday. Mister President and the next president of the United States, we pledge to you tonight that we will carry Louisiana for you on November 4. [Applause] And I'm honored at this time to present to this great audience of New Orleanians and visitors on this historic site and on this historic occasion

the greatest president of this century and I think the historians will write that. Mr. President, I'm honored to present to you this great audience and to present to you the President of the United States Jimmy Carter. Thank you, everybody. President Carter is working the advantages of incumbency hard in his presidential election. In New Orleans as in other stops, he talks about the federal benefits going to the area. And here he talks about the job he has given former Mayor Moon Landrieu as Housing and Urban Development secretary. And Carter mentions the north-south highway although he seems unaware that it doesn't mean a lot to the Jackson Square audience.

At the urging then of Bennett Johnston and Russell Long, they told me to mention that we were going to get a north-south highway started. I didn't know what I was talking about, but I promised it. An I-49 connector is now on the way to being a reality. The Carter theme for this audience follows a pattern set by appearances in city after city: that this election offers a clear philosophical choice and that Carter will win. There is no way that Republican voters can carry New Orleans or Louisiana on November the 4th. [Applause] Thank you very much. I love you all. From the rally in Jackson Square, Carter traveled the French Quarter to a fundraising cocktail party and dinner where Democratic supporters and officials paid from five hundred to two thousand dollars to see and hear the president. Coordinating all of this in the Carter campaign in Louisiana is former Governor Edwin Edwards. In 1976, Edwards was a late comer to the Carter campaign, explaining that if you're not the

first one on the bandwagon you ought to be the last one on. But this year Edwards joined the effort early, and it was his speech to the crowd of his loyal supporters that drew the loudest applause. [Applause] Then some have asked, "What can I tell my friends about this election?" And I've said to people and I say to you, if you're speaking to a businessman you tell him that when Ronald Reagan was governor of California -- and I know what I'm talking about. I don't care what he says in his slick TV ads. When he was governor of California, taxes went up in every category: the sales tax, cigarette taxes, bank and property taxes, the individual income tax went up in California in the eight years while he was governor. In the eight years he was governor, spending doubled in California. That's a fact. The California Legislative Analyst's own office has concluded that a higher

percentage of the spending increases were real and that you couldn't say it's because more people moved into California. It was because there was more spending per capita than Ronald Reagan is willing to admit today. He did sometimes have some surpluses that he returned to the people, but those resulted from the revenues which were collected because his own analysts were unable to estimate revenue and Reagan had proposed or accepted a new tax that brought in too much money. And that comes from the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate of August the 24th and you know the newspapers never tell stories. [Applause and laughter] [applause] Look, I remember some of these things. If you're talking to a farmer and I hate to say i, but I know some farmers who are thinking about voting for Ronald Reagan. I think they think a cowboy has something to do with being a farmer. But a celluloid cowboy has nothing to do with cattle, just bull.

Now if you're talking to an oil and gas man, and these are the people that I can't understand, if you talking to them about why they should not vote for Ronald Reagan, you tell them that Edwin Edwards told you that he was born in 1927 and every Republican president since I was born, except Herbert Hoover, was responsible for some disastrous action or legislation which hurt the oil and gas industry and hurt us in Louisiana. So if you run into one of the 250,000 people in this state whose livelihood depends upon the oil and gas industry and the support services and the catering services and the secretarial area and the lawyers, the people who work on the rigs, who supply the materials and the goods and the employment, who own stock in oil companies, who get a royalty check every month. You tell them that after 25 years of oppression from Washington D.C., this man, Jimmy Carter, with the help of a Democratic Congress

finally removed the controls on natural gas and oil. Now that didn't help just Louisiana. It didn't help just the oil industry. It didn't help just the royalty owners. You know who it helped the most? Let me tell you who it helped. Everybody in this country with a car. And let me tell you the last thing and then I'm going to give him to you. If all that doesn't happen, if you're talking to a senior citizen or a farmer or somebody on REA or some disadvantaged person who doesn't know the attitude of the Republicans hard-hearted as it is against trying to do things for people. If they don't understand the concern of the Democratic Party for the average citizen who has a need for government, I'll give you a clincher and I think it'll work in about 80 cases out of a hundred. If they shake their head and none of that is bought, you say well let me last thing I'm going to tell you is this. Edwin Edwards told me we ought to do it. [Applause] [Applause]

You live in a state that is the lowest taxed on a state level in the United States of America. Ronald Reagan came and comes from a state where by virtue of his policies before the tax revolution there was the second highest state in the nation on a state level for taxes on its citizens. That's a poor example to bring all the way across the country to Washington, D.C. We do not need that. [Applause] The farmers, the businessmen, the senior citizens, laboring men and women, minorities, people in the oil and gas business, do not need a national Dave Treen. [Applause] President Carter was also seeing the Louisiana contest from the perspective of Edwin Edwards, perhaps because the former governor enjoys a much higher standing in the public opinion polls than the President. You might think this is a campaign between me and Governor Reagan. As a matter of

fact, we're just surrogates. The contest in Louisiana, and I'm thankful for it, is between Edwin Edwards and the Republican governor who took his place temporarily. [Applause] And I don't want you friends of Edwin's and mine to let him and me down, right? When I ran for... [fades away] While it might be easier for Carter to run in Louisiana on Edwards' record, he eventually addressed his own problems. But again it was clothed in an appeal aimed straight at the philosophical differences that separate himself from Mr. Reagan. We've got problems in this country, yes. I make mistakes in the White House, yes. Every president has. But the principles that have guided me have been the same as the ones that guided you. This next election will show what kind of country we have. We are a strong country. We are a prosperous country. We are a country blessed by God.

We're the greatest nation on Earth. And with your help we'll make it even greater in the future. Thank you very much. [Applause] While candidate Jimmy Carter was having a love feast with state Democrats in New Orleans, Ronald Reagan was visiting a conservative stronghold in North Louisiana. Reagan is not taking Louisiana's electoral votes for granted. His visit to Shreveport this week was the candidate's third trip to the state during this campaign. Reagan was greeted by a small group of demonstrators, principally pro-ERA supporters. But inside the gold dome on Centenary's campus, the welcome was enthusiastic. Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States, Governor Ronald Reagan. [crowd noise] [applause] At this rally, as at the one in New Orleans, there were state political leaders present, the

most prominent Louisiana's Republican Governor Dave Treen. Treen told the audience that Louisianians think like the GOP nominee when it comes to issues such as the economy, big government, taxes and energy. Leadership which will put our great nation back on the road to economic growth, to prosperity and to peace and security for ourselves and for our children. So let us now and in the last few days of this campaign do everything in our power to demonstrate that majority sentiment that I know exists in the state of Louisiana, but that could be frustrated if we do not have a good voter turnout. Let's demonstrate that majority sentiment on November 4th, and let us now welcome

our great friend of the state of Louisiana, a tremendous American, and the man I believe in my heart will be the next president of the United States, Governor Ronald Reagan. [Applause] [Applause] Thank you very much. Reagan's speech was his standard fare, but it appeared to be what the crowd came to hear. He promised to keep the federal government out of private education and vowed to exempt small oil royalty owners from the federal windfall profits tax. But candidate Reagan acknowledged that in Louisiana, as in the rest of the country, he must appeal to more than Republican voters. But I realize in this place I will be talking to people who are Democrats, who are independents, and who are Republicans now in this two- party state. And I'm delighted that it is so, because we can't do what has to be done by either one of the parties alone. And I know that there are millions of patriotic Democrats in this country who are just as unhappy with the way things have been for the last few years as some of the others of us are.

Reagan commented on federal energy policies, remarks that were in direct rebuttal to President Carter's claims in New Orleans the previous day. As for oil and natural gas, the President sent a letter to the then governor of this state promising when he was elected that he would deregulate natural gas. And he added a program that increased the regulation actually on natural gas. Oil -- we're told that the reason we have inflation is OPEC. We're dependent on OPEC. They're going to get $80 billion of our money this year for oil. He would have us believe that we're an energy-poor nation. You in Louisiana know better than that. You know that, you know that the government has held up on the leasing of the continental shelf and that only 2 percent of the continental shelf has been leased out for oil production.

And yet you know the source of supply that it is right here in the Gulf for your own state. On the larger question of the economy, Reagan said the man who is asking you for four more years is incompetent to do the job. But whether the Louisianians will give Ronald Reagan that job is still in doubt. The Shreveport Journal poll this week showed Carter leading Reagan in the fourth congressional district, and Carter's campaign chairman, Robert Strauss, told a Baton Rouge press conference that his candidate was gaining in the polls. What appears to be developing in Louisiana is a polarization of sorts. Certainly the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, is tying his hopes in the state to a more popular political figure, Edwin Edwards. But not everyone shares the sentiment that this is to be a contest between past, present and future governors. Well, I think that's ridiculous. I don't know whether he meant it in jest or just what, but he may...Carter may, of course, be trying to attach himself to the popularity that former Governor Edwards does still enjoy in Louisiana and

to get some votes. But I don't think the election turns on that. I really don't. I can hardly imagine anyone saying that I'm going to vote for Reagan or I'm going to vote for Carter because of my preferences between Dave Treen and Edwin Edwards. There may be some, but I would imagine it to be a very minor number of people. One of the key issues certainly for Louisiana is energy. It was suggested at the Democratic rally that Republican presidents are the ones that had clamped the controls on the prices of oil and gas, and it was a Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, that finally de-controlled oil and gas and we should then be grateful because of that. What's your opinion? Well, that's, that's totally ridiculous. First of all, gas has been under price control for three decades, 30 years or so. On the de-control of gas, Carter made that specific promise three weeks before the election to Governor Boren of Oklahoma in a written telegram.

And for three years, he did nothing although a great deal of sentiment existed in Congress for that. Finally he was drug kicking and screaming into some sort of de- control. But to suggest that Carter was in favor of natural gas price de-control flies in the face of the record, which is, which we will bring out in the days to come. Dave Treen says if Ronald Reagan is in the White House, Louisiana will have a friend. But Treen isn't making any predictions on whether that will come to pass. I, you know, I guess it's the political thing to do to predict that your candidate is going to win, but I've never done that. I've never really done that in my own races. I don't know. It's going to be a very close race. I think that, I think the majority sentiment in Louisiana is for Reagan. But when two-thirds of the people that are registered get out and vote, the vote, the outcome in a close race obviously hinges on how much of the people that are for you get out. With one-third of the registered voters staying home and

that's probably what will happen, then it's anybody's race. It's very close. The polls show that, our polls show it to be very close. But the incumbent has a, has a lot of things going for him. I think there's a tendency to go to the incumbent, so you better be a little bit ahead going into that election if you're going to win because the incumbent has that pull. People tend to go back to the incumbent. Former Governor Edwin Edwards predicts the state will go to President Carter by a narrow margin. But if Louisiana is not securely in any candidate's column, her citizens may make up their minds by virtue of what they see on television in the next few weeks. Many political observers are placing increased significance on the scheduled presidential debate. But others are wondering if this reliance on the electronic medium is distorting the entire fabric of the political process. Television plays a far greater role in our politics, whether it's in campaigns or anything else, than it did before and we really are just

beginning to have a sense of how powerful television is in affecting our lives, whether it's intentional or not. It plays a central role in our lives. The average television set is on eight hours a day in a household in America. That's a full working day. So in that sense, candidates adjust themselves to be able to communicate on that medium. But whether you ultimately sell a candidate to the American public, I, I question that. I mean one of the things about television is it does...people do get a chance to see, see it in a very direct way. In the old days, even 20 or 30 years ago, most people in this country never saw the candidates, the presidential candidates. Very few people got to see them and hear them. Now you take a debate situation, if you ever get that kind of situation, or even in their own ads, people get exposed to them and people can can make their own judgments. I kind of believe that ultimately the public makes its own judgment. So there is a philosophy

of campaigns that is highly attuned to television. Words like packaging and media opportunities and getting candidates in the right visual setting because visual settings are so important for television are all part of politics today and they never were 30 years ago. Whether the voter ultimately makes the judgment based on those packagings is, is a different question and I think that's an open question at this point. I sat with Hugh Sidey who covers the White House for Time magazine a couple of weeks ago, and he suggested that the networks have taken over this campaign, that campaign '80 has become a giant show for the networks. Well, I think it's a little more complicated than that. I think it comes down to the fact that television is the medium that reaches everyone. So it's not clear who's taken over who in the sense that the candidates are doing everything they can to get their, their message out on television in the best way they can. And television is in there with

enormous power. There's no question about it. But, but the candidates have a lot of power also right now. Neither President Carter or Ronald Reagan, for example, have held very...there have been very, very, very few press conferences, for example, in the last few months. Both of the candidates have very tightly controlled what they want to say, when they say it. There have been some situations where it doesn't look like it's very tightly controlled in terms of what they've said. But they really have exercising a lot of power in this situation themselves. There's, you can't get away from the fact that television is a central part of American politics today, and it means that we have to figure out how our political process should function with that as a given fact. We're not going to get television out of people's lives. You're not going to get televisions out of the homes, but you can adjust the political process in a way that television doesn't

seem to dominate it as it does in some circumstances. I just feel that television is a central part of the politics in this country, and we haven't figured out as a society how to cope with that. For example, if television is the main form of communicating ideas to people in this country, it seems to be more and more, we haven't yet figured out how ideas should be communicated, how you can have a dialogue about ideas on television through the networks, how issues can be debated, how different points of view can be exposed other than in 30-second spots or in 40- second shot on a news program. We have an awful, awful long way to go in figuring out how our political system can function properly in the television age and the first step in doing that is to realize that television is such a central factor. Now we are starting to realize that in a way we never have before, I think in 1980. I

travel the country a lot and you...I have heard as much discussion about the influence or the role that people feel television is having in these campaigns as, as anything else. That's a big...that's, that's an important step, because I think we're becoming more sensitive to the fact that television does play such a central role in our politics. We have to figure out how politics function in that context. It is unlikely though that with just one week left in the campaign, we will find a better way to cope with campaign techniques tied so heavily to technology. In the end each voter must find their own solution toward making a presidential decision. It's fashionable these days to talk about the packaging of a candidate selling politicians like boxes of laundry soap. But if the public is aware that slick TV spots are selling them the product, there's still another far more subtle side to this issue. And, Ron, this week we saw in Louisiana both candidates come here to the state. They touched their foot

on the soil, but they were so insulated by aides, Secret Service people, the whole surroundings that that accompany a campaign that they might as well have been on the TV screen. Not only are they physically isolated by all of the staff and the protective people that surround them, they're also isolated on issues which are of concern to people on a local basis and if you want to get to them to get an answer to a local issue, the advance people first want to look at what kind of ratings you have if you're a TV station or how close the race is if you're a newspaper. It's fascinating how the subtle nature of this thing and I think that it must be carried out throughout the country on that same level. We found out though on one issue, the storage of nuclear waste in Louisiana salt domes, we found out more from Carter's campaign chairman Robert Strauss. He said that the President was opposed to the storage of nuclear waste and Ronald Reagan himself made that point in Shreveport. I guess the point was made by Wertheimer though that a lot of this is just a media event and I think we saw a lot more flash than show and substance in this past week. We're going to see more television focusing on the presidential campaign next week, certainly the

presidential debate. There are other things other than elections coming up, and we'll be talking about those on The State We're In: the Atchafalaya Basin and those four constitutional amendments on the ballot. We hope you'll join us next week on The State We're In. I'm Beth George. I'm Ron Blome. [Theme music] Production assistance for the preceding program was provided in part by Kaiser Aluminum.