Louisiana: The State We're In; 252

Production funding for this program was provided in part through contributions to friends of L.P.B. The following program is an L.P.B. Public Affairs production, Louisiana, the state we're in, with Beth George and Ron Bloam. Good evening, Beth George is off for a few days this week, but she'll be back on the program next week. This week, the state we're in will look at visits to Baton Rouge this week by former President Gerald Ford, by investigative columnist Jack Anderson, and will profile the new LSU Athletic Director Paul Dietzel.

But first, these highlights. Saturday is election day across Louisiana as the state switches for the first time to an open primary. In addition to the congressional races, hundreds of local offices are also up for grabs. That race for the U.S. Senate turned into a game of political hardball this week as both sides have traded charges. The latest dispute between the two candidates began when Senator J. Bennett Johnston ran this ad, attacking the legislative attendance record of challenger representative Woody Jenkins. The ad claimed that Jenkins had the worst attendance record in the legislature enlisted 16 major votes he supposedly missed. As it turned out, some of that information was incorrect, and an angry Jenkins called the press conference Wednesday to denounce the Johnston ad. And we're just hoping the truth will get out because we think it's news that he's been placing false ads in the newspapers around the state of Kansas, but we can't afford to spend $15,000 to buy news paper. As we think he should spend $15,000 to retract this false ad. It is dirty politics.

It's either intentional or it's negligent, and either case it's bad. According to the public affairs research council, Jenkins voted against 11 of those 16 issues which the ad said he missed, but PAR data also showed that he did indeed have the worst attendance record for the 1976 session, a fact that the ad turned into a generalization that appeared to cover a six-year period. The Johnston campaign committee was obviously should grant their error on the 11 major issues, but in a meeting with reporters, Senator Johnston minimized the mistake and the apology. The thrust of the ad is completely correct. I have cleared up the error, which is the 12 individual votes, which were totally unintentional and information was given to me by someone else. If I thought the thrust of the ad was wrong, I would run ads changing that, but I think the thrust is entirely correct. No, the ad is not going to run anymore. The New Orleans teachers strike into this week after some 4,000 teachers voted overwhelmingly to accept a 7% pay raise. No mediators helped work out the settlement, which ended the two-week-old walkout.

The U.S. Senate will vote on a proposed natural gas compromise on September 27th. That bill would deregulate new gas prices in 1985, but would place new controls on the industry. That gas compromise came under sharp fire from former President Gerald Ford when he came to Baton Rouge this week. He sounded a lot like Governor Edwards on the issue, so he asked the governor Friday if he now wished he'd supported Ford over Carter. Yes, no, you cannot judge a public official on one issue alone. I made the decision to support President Carter for a number of reasons. One, it was obvious to me in the last 10 days of the campaign he was going to get elected. No matter what happened in Louisiana, I've been known the compromise, and I thought it important politically for the state to be in the Democratic column.

Second, I already had an entree into the White House if Ford got elected because he landed in Tarstown, and we were just kind of hedging on our bed. Public land, probably. I always had some reservations about President Carter because while he's a very fine decent fellow, I questioned whether or not he had the—I don't know what it is, the willingness to offend and injure and be bloody as is sometimes required and as President Nixon one time said in order to make the hard tough decisions to be President, and I think his greatest failing is his intense effort to try to please everyone and to try to make things work without letting out blood. In this day and age, it just doesn't happen. It's unfortunate, but those of us in public life sometimes just cannot be nice guys. On another matter, the governor predicted that Muhammad Ali would win the big fighting

New Orleans, and he had this to say about all the fuss surrounding the event. Watch it on, San Antonio television. I kind of like to think about how some blacks have been talking about how white folks have been ripping them off for a hundred years while they're getting back. I saw that seriously. I saw the fight in Las Vegas, I know he all surprised to hear that. I thought, and I know nothing about fighting except political fighting, and I have the scars to prove that. I thought that Ali could have beat spanks in Las Vegas, had he taken the fight more seriously. I recognize I'm pontificating about an area I know nothing about. On another item, the governor says that industries which create too large an environmental risk will no longer be welcome in Louisiana. As we mentioned earlier, former President Ford paid a visit to Baton Rouge this week for a non-political speech to the Baton Rouge Management Industrial Management Council before meeting with the business group Mr. Ford held a press conference.

Former President Gerald Ford began his meeting with the Baton Rouge press corps by discussing the Middle East Peace Summit being held at Camp David Maryland by President Carter. First let me say I hope and trust that the conference at Camp David goes well. It's highly important for us to be helpful as a nation in making progress in the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East, and therefore I hope as an American that the President is able to get some real headway in progress at Camp David. I must say from what I hear and what I read, things don't seem to be moving as hopefully as the President might have anticipated. What the consequences will be, it's very difficult to know, I obviously would forecast that if the President gets some progress that it will be beneficial to him.

On the other hand, if the conference breaks up with no progress, I think it will be disadvantages to the President not only domestically but internationally. Mr. President, do you think that's bad strategy for the President to go ahead and call the summit without having had his Secretary of State laid some firm groundwork for some kind of settlement? I don't like the second guess of President, he's got enough people around the country who are doing that, in this case because the stakes are so very high. I would say that I'm sure that Secretary Kissinger and I would have been very cautious about going to a summit at Camp David without having an agreement virtually reached between Israel and Egypt before the conference began. That would have been a better procedure. But President Carter decided to apparently take a big gamble, and as I said a moment

ago, I hope he's successful. Yes, sir. Mr. President, as a former member of the War and Commission, how do you feel about the recent revelations that a critical analysis reveals the possibility of a second gunman participating in the Kennedy assassination? Well, as I have read from the various testimony that's been taken and the so-called new experts who have been brought in, the weight of the evidence seems to confirm beyond any doubt, the conclusion that the War and Commission came to, that there was one gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and that there was no second gun or second person. That seems to be from what I read, the weight of the evidence, and I'm delighted as a former member of the Commission to find that this new committee in the Congress has confirmed our conclusions and our recommendations.

Yes. Sir, do you feel that the House assassination committees hold up here in the necessary if they're drawing the same conclusions as the War and Commission? Well, I was not an advocate for the commissions or the committees undertaking at the cost of some $6 million to the American taxpayer, but the House of Representatives decided to do it, and all I can say is that it's encouraging to me that all of this new investigation has confirmed our conclusions and our recommendations. The former president also talked about the Senate natural gas compromise now before Congress and he called it a serious mistake. My position on the so-called energy bill is that it's a disaster, it ought to be defeated by the United States Senate and by the House of Representatives if it gets to the House. It's a bureaucratic monstrosity, it is unsound economics, and it's a jerry-rigbed proposition that ought to be sent back to committee and forgotten about it.

And therefore, I hope every member of the House and every member of the Senate Democrat and Republican votes against it and sends it back to a burial. Mr. President, do you think that I'll pull the question? Do you think that Jimmy Carter is going to be a one-term president? I would hesitate to say that at midterm, I can only say that the polls and surveys indicate that during the first 18 or 20 months of his term in the White House, his polls are less than any one of his four predecessors at that point in their service. What impact that'll have on President Carter's decision? I would hesitate to say that's a decision for him to make. The first impact will have on you. Well, it gives me lots of options and lots of time to make a decision. Although Mr. Ford avoided any commitment to future political plans, he may have come

closest to revealing his true thoughts in this response. Well, if you can't be there, what I'm doing is very enjoyable. I participate in politics. I make a few speeches for charity and community organizations and other such groups as the industrial group tonight. I'm improving my golfing and skiing, and my wife Betty and I are having a little relaxation after some 28 years of real rough political life, so we may or may not do it. We like what we're doing, and on the other hand, we enjoyed being in Washington. Mr. President, that rough political life has taken its toll on your wife. How is Mrs. Ford these days? She's doing very, very well. She had a tough problem. She faced up to it.

Our children and I are very proud of the way she handled it. And I can say, without any hesitation, she's in the best health she's been in a long, long time. Executive columnist Jack Anderson had his site set on another president this week, President Carter. He says that top advisors Hamilton Jordan and Charles Kerbo have been trying to help fugitive financier Robert Vesco. Jordan calls the story a lie, and Anderson is responsible. And while the story unfolded in Washington, Anderson spoke at LSU. He may be America's best known investigative reporter, and he texts his role as serious as any religious crusader. Jack Anderson is Washington's night of journalism for ever charging the towers of government and the secrets they hold. You should understand, therefore, that what we report in the first story is often just the tip of the iceberg. We are the ice breakers. We try to get a piece of the story. Let the government tour the big corporations, the oil industry, for example, here.

Or the labor unions would rather that you not know about. When Jack Anderson came to Baton Rouge this week, he brought with him a warning of government efforts to silence and discredit the investigative press, primarily through the use of court orders demanding reporter's notes. Now, the day that we divulged our confidential sources on that day, we'll lose them, isn't that obvious? And if we don't have confidential sources in the government, we have to rely on official sources. And if we rely on official sources, we'll get nothing from the government that the government doesn't want us to know. Now I want to know what the government doesn't want us to know. You should want to know what the government doesn't want you to know. Because these are your servants. The president is on your payroll. The joint chiefs, the FBI director and the CIA chief, they're on your payroll. They work for you.

You're the boss. You're the sovereigns. And you're entitled to know what they're doing. And you're entitled to know when they screw up. Anderson also talked at some length on the presidency, calling President Carter a boy scout who is firm when he should be flexible and flexible when he should be firm. He's taking a cram course on how to become president of the United States. Maybe in another two years, because he is brilliant, he'll be a good president. Maybe by the end of his term, he'll be qualified for the job. He is not yet. It is a bleak picture of our government and our capital that Jack Anderson paints. And after the speech, we wondered if it's really all that bad. Mr. Anderson, you portray Washington as a very sinister place with some sinister people. Do you mean to do that? No, not really. I think that, oh, Washington is typical of the rest of the country. People there are made in our image. We probably have about the same percentages of right and wrong there.

The temptations are greater there. And therefore, the sinners are perhaps more notorious. The opportunities are greater, so the good are better. The bad are worse and the good are better, but the percentages are the same. We seem to have a little trouble, at least to me, in pinning down Jimmy Carter. It seems like you like him yet, you're personally disappointed in the way he's performed. Well, I think Jimmy Carter is a decent, well-meaning man of conviction. He's a fine human being. The only thing I have against him is incompetence. And I think he is capable of being competent. He's right. He's brilliant. He's just inexperienced. I think after four years of on-the-job training, he might even become a very good president. He is not yet.

Hey, Kent McDoule at the Journalism School of American University has labeled you as a scoop junkie. Do you agree with that? I don't even know what he means by that. Well, he says that you live for scoops. You tend to pass up the more the subtle story. Well, we're right. Strong head. Oh, every day. No, we don't need a strong headline every day, but we need to be read. I think that a newspaper column that is not read, it doesn't have much impact. In order to have impact, in order to clean up government and write wrongs, all of which you're goals of ours, you have to be read. I think we have done a lot of good. I wouldn't stay in this business if I didn't think so. Like Jack Anderson, Paul Dietzel is a man with a mission. He was head coach of the LSU Tigers from 1955 to 1961. Now he's back as athletic director and the subject of this week's profile. In three of his six years with the Tigers, Paul Dietzel took his team to three New Year's

Day bowl games, winning two and collecting the title, Coach of the Year. But in 1961, the Alliance ended and Dietzel moved on to West Point and then South Carolina and Indiana. This year, Paul Dietzel is back and telling the public it's good to be home. We're planning for a great season at LSU. It ought to be a lot of fun. I think it's going to be a great, the biggest crowd ever to see a football game in Tiger Stadium. I know I'm an official member of the LSU family because in the last week I've gotten four campus tickets and yesterday my car was impounded. Mr. D, so how does this time coming back to Baton Rouge differ from when you first arrived here? When you originally came to LSU, there's the old sailing and saying, you can't go home again. Do you find that you can? How are your feelings different from this time when you return? I don't know whether you can or not, but we have. And I might say that I'm, and I really delighted to be back in Louisiana.

This is, I think I'm going to change my biography and say that I'm actually a native of Kaplan, Louisiana because very basically, you know, our families, both hands and mine are all going now and our children, our daughter lives in Houston and our son in Columbia, South Carolina. And so we are, where our home is where we are and frankly, I think we had a direct choice on where we would like to spend the nicest part of our lives, which is right now. And we chose Louisiana for one major reason. We just like it here better than anyplace else. And if there, you know, I don't know how people could be any nicer than they have been to us, we've been extremely warmly received as the people in Louisiana can do better than anyplace I've ever been.

You've received a warm welcome returning here, but in addition to all the adulation that to one receives and connection with athletics, you can also receive a great deal of criticism. You always have your Monday morning quarterbacks. Do you find that there is indeed a great deal of pressure on you in this job? Well, I would say that there is tremendous interest in football down here. And I like that. I mean, you know, I, it's kind of like the, I feel very similarly to that is, you know, it's, it admonishes us in the Bible, it says, I would rather have you hot or cold don't be lukewarm or I will spew you out of my mouth. And I think that one thing about you don't have to worry about the tiger fans, they're not going to be lukewarm. It is very true that they get very upset when we lose, not anymore upset than I do. And I, they just kind of reflect the same way I feel the fact that they don't like to

lose. I would hate it if they didn't care. And I don't, as far as pressure is concerned, I, you know, I don't really pay much attention to pressure and never have. And I think I, if someone tries to pressure me into doing something, I unfortunately probably react the other direction. You know, I just, my reaction to pressure is that I don't really react very well to it. I don't succumb to it. And I guess the reason is I'm just very stubborn and I am going to do what I think is right and what is best for the institution, not for what Paul Dietso wants to do, because what I want is really unimportant. What is the best thing for L.A. issue, I think is extremely important. And that doesn't always measure up to what every single fan wants to have happen. But by the same token, how in the world could you possibly please every single fan?

Can you imagine trying to please 76,050 people why you'd go crazy? And I just think you, you have to do what's best for the university, for the program, for the athletic department, and you have to realize that yes, football is very important, but L.A. issue is a lot more important. And football is just one part of the L.A. issue scene. It's just one face on it. I have to ask you this question. I know everyone was interested in when they first heard that you would be named athletic director. What is your relationship with Charlie McClendon? I know you all were personal friends before, as your relationship changed, what is it like now? Well, our relationship is really no different now than it was when I was here before. And as a matter of fact, it's precisely the same. Before, Matt and I were great friends. I mean family friends. We did things together as families, and Ann and Dorothy Fay have been good buddies all through the years.

Dorothy Fay is a lovely person, and I'm married to one of the greatest girls in the world. He greatest, really, I think, for some prejudice, because we've been married for 34 years. But nonetheless, then I was the head football coach and Charlie McClendon was the first assistant. He never worked for me then. He just worked together. We were a team. Now I'm the director of athletics, and he's head football coach. He's not going to work for me now, but we're going to be a part of a team. And in fact, I've never had anybody that worked for me. I just don't believe in that. I think you should work together. I think the secretary out here and I work together. We don't really such a thing the other way around, because I want everybody to be a partner because that way, it's just as much there, baby, as it is mine. And it's just as much their problem as my problem. I don't have all the problems. I don't have to burden all the responsibilities. I have other people who share the same responsibilities. Now, somebody has to call the shots, and naturally, that somebody has to be the director,

and that's where I finally come in when we can't get settled on anything else. But I think the relationship we have is basically precisely what it was before. We're friends. And there's one thing that's going to be kind of easy for Charlie Mack, and that he does not have to worry about whether I'm on his side. He doesn't have to worry about whether he's going to get my support. That's just the way I am. And it wasn't making it ever through the football coach, if it were with Charlie Mack, then we're not the coach. Whoever the football coach is going to get, would get my 100% support as it turns out, Charlie Mack is here, and it makes it heck a lot easier, because we know each other. How involved are you going to get? Once the football coach, don't you want to get down there and draw plays and suggest no? Absolutely not. I could. I coached for 27 years, and I was a hit coach for 20 years, and when 20 years was up, my goal was to be a football coach and a major institution hit coach for 20 years. When I got to 20 years, I had put in my time, and basically, I really have never looked

back. I've never tried, I've never had a second guess myself. You know you ask about pressure. When you get in the business of athletics, you know you're in a business where everyone's second guess is everyone else. That's the way athletics are. It's open, it's easily seen, and so that's this the way you are in athletics. When I was here before, all the quarterbacks who ran the football team were on 3rd Street. They were called the 3rd Street quarterback. I never pay attention to them, because they could call the plays on Monday. I had to call them on Saturday night, and it's different after the event anybody can become an expert. So I've never allowed myself a luxury of second guessing myself. And when I finished 20 years of the coach, I became an athletic director full-time before I was an athletic director and a coach. And frankly, I haven't had time to miss it because I thoroughly enjoy being an athletic director. It's fun, it's different every day, to me it's extremely challenging, but it's not

a problem. It's not hard. I don't think being an athletic director is hard at all. As a matter of fact, I find it relatively easy. Of course, I guess if you spent 34 years in the business, it isn't as complicated as it might seem. Now, if I had to do your job, I might be fine at very complicated because, see, I don't understand. I don't even know what your job is. But I do know what my job is, and I understand my job, and frankly, as far as telling someone trying to get me to do what their wishes are, I just can't believe that someone that sells cars or runs a bank or whatever, I don't think they should be able to know as much about athletics as I do just by a mistake. I'm a stake, I'll know more about today. Well, so I'm just going to have to do what I think is best. And after that, I don't second guess myself. I do the best I can, try to be the best athletic director I can, and I just don't worry about the results.

Finally, how do you feel about the first football game and about playing Indiana? Man, we've got to beat them. I'll tell you one thing, I want to win that game so bad. I will probably not be anywhere near as nervous about other games as I will this one. Not because it's the first game, but because it's Indiana. And also because I know, unfortunately, a great deal about the Indiana team, and I know how good they are. And I know how badly they want to win and how much preparation they have put in to try to win the game. And as one of the young fellas told me, as I was leaving Indiana, he said, no, coach, you know, we love you, but we're going to come down there and whip your butt. Now I'm just repeated direct statement, and that's the way they feel. So I really expected it's going to be a real battle, and all I care is that LSU is at least one point ahead at the end of the game. Next week, the state wherein goes to a Bluegrass Music Festival.

Until then, I'm Ron Blum. Good night. The preceding was an LPB production. One funding for this program was provided in part through contributions to friends of LPB.