Oregon daily emerald., October 12, 1973, Page 10, Image 9

Politics in the air - Seattle hosts
GOP starring John Connally
Text and Photos
By GEORGE BUDDY
Of the Emerald
SEATTLE—It must be one of the last really
fantastic hotels left on the West Coast. The Place is
filled with bars and barber shops and ballrooms and
giant mirrors and bushy chandeliers and you go out
of your mind. The lobby in the Olympic Hotel is so
big that the assistant manager has a desk right in
the middle of the floor. And it must be close to an
army of waiters, clerks, maids, cooks, and
managers that runs the hotel in perfect order.
There’s only one thing wrong with the Olympic--it
has pay toliets.
They say up here that the Olympic, grandeur
and all, might be tom down for an office building.
The owner is the University of Washington, and it
would evidently rather make money than keep
memories alive. But the building leaks, people say,
and it costs too much to run and mostly it just costs
too much.
For the immediate future, however, the
Olympic is doing good business. All the top
Republicans from the western states are here now,
all the state committee women and national
chairmen and national committeemen; they’re
here to have a conference on winning elections, and
maybe some of them are a little scared they won’t.
Most of the Republicans, though, are pretty con
fident that no matter what happens, they’ll like it.
Panels, Flipping Charts Combine
The two-day conference is split into morning
general sessions for speeches by party principles
and afternoon panel discussions. The panels, filled
with the appropriate experts, cover topics such as
“the Value of Womanpower,” “How to Deal Ac
curately and Factually with the Press,” and
“Winning Techniques.” Robert Odell, the executive
director of the party’s finance committee and
remembered principally for his dexterity in flipping
the charts at the Watergate hearings, talks about
“Broadening the Party Financial Base.”
ANALYSIS
But the Republicans are serious about what
they’re doing here, and it would be a mistake to
laugh at them. You don’t laugh at the people who
run the country.
The big story Friday morning is John Connally.
He denies it, but a lot of people are saying he’s
running for president unannounced. Connally has
been spending his time recently running around,
that much is certain. The Texan has pulled into a
dozen places or more just within the past month,
telling everyone how good a Republican he is,
despite his Democratic past. Now he’s in Seattle
saying the same thing.
Tall and handsome Connally is “good press.”
The Seattle papers like him and say so: “Big John
Rides Into Town,” the Post-Intelligencer tells its
readers, and the cutline under the photo describes
the man as “a crowd-pleaser” and “charismatic.”
The night before, Connally held a reception in the
hotel for the conference participants. All the local
Republicans from Butte, Montana and Elko,
Nevada got a good chance to see Big John up real
close, the P-I says, and a lot of them liked what they
saw.
“No.”
Now, after a long night of being tall and hand
some and aristocratic, Connally holds a press
conference to tell evervbody, once again:
“No.”
But why do you go around and—
“I’m traveling around the country saying a lot
of things I think should be said,” Connally explains
to the press.
Do you want to be president, Governor?
And Connally pauses, just for a second and
says: “I’m not sure I do—I’ve given it that much
thought.” And a moment later he adds: “It’s not a
burning ambition with me.”
Then Connally describes the job he has no
burning ambition for: “I view it as a very difficult,
hard task for any man to undertake.”
Well, the press wants to know, what do you have
ambition for?
Big John thinks that over once or twice and
replies: “I would like to be a force in political life. I
have a desire to be a well-respected, hard-working
attorney. I have a desire to be a well-traveled man.
And I want to be a good livestock breeder.”
But, he concedes,many ambitions “will be un
fulfilled.”
By 1975, Connally says, he will decide—“pro or
con”—whether he will make the run for the
presidency. That will be ‘‘ample time,” he feels.
Then there’s the sticky problem of Vice
President Agnew. What if Agnew resigns or is
impeached, the press asks, would you be willing to
replace him?
Connally says he “wouldn’t even want to
speculate on that.” He has detected “no ground
swell” of support for the idea from high-ranking
party leaders, although he allows as how “a number
of them are kind enough to make that suggestion.”
No sir, the man just wants to travel around and
say what’s on his mind, and in between, sit down at
his big ranch south of Dallas and listen to the oil
pump out of the ground and watch the cattle breed.
All the time Connally sits at the table and an
swers questions, press photographers from the
papers and networks and local stations are going
nuts immortalizing the man on film. A couple of
them even go to the trouble of shooting into a large
side mirror to catch Connally’s profile. They never
did that for Harold Stassen.
At a later luncheon for the party members,
Connally defends the record of the Nixon ad
ministration in glowing terms. There are five
million new jobs, he says, and higher wages and a
stronger dollar. Inflation? Why, the U.S. is ’'doing
better than anyone else” in the world. Listen,
Connally says “you can’t expect your elected of
ficials to wave a magic wand and say there will be
no more inflation.” Besides, he adds, food prices
are coming down.
And the world situation just delights the man.
Think of it, Connally says, no draft.no fighting in
Viet Nam, good relations with China. “This ad
ministration has made historic progress that can
endure...”
Unfortunately, Connallysays, there are a few
problems. There’s a “crisis of cynicism” in the
country today and it’s upsetting just about all the
President’s great plans. And the energy crisis,
that’s another bad one. Of course, Big John knew all
about the oil shortage years ago: “A few of us tried
to say there will be shortages but nobody listened.”
Towards the end of his speech, Connally lets out
some of his philosophy: “When you reduce
everybody to a common denominator, you reduce
them to the lowest denominator.” Trying to figure
out that one could make you miss the rest of his
speech.
The evening hours are filled up with the usual
routine of parties and hospitality meetings in
various rooms throughout the hotel. In room 1025 of
the Olympic, the Oregon delegation is holding a get
together for everyone from the State. You go in the
door and two little old ladies greet you, just
brimming over with excitement and cheer. No
matter who you are, high or low, they let you know
you’re welcomed. And the national committeeman
from Oregon comes over and smiles and shakes
your hand firmly and lets you know how happy he is
that you’ve come. The room is pretty crowded and
there’s not much room to move, but somebody tells
you the drinks are over at the bar. Well, it turns out
they’re drinking cranberry juice. Oregon cranberry
juice. And somebody comes by with some roses that
look nice. Oregon roses, what else? Not much more
than a drink or two later, you realize that not only is
the cranberry juice from Oregon, but the vodka in it
is also. Up on the walls are posters of Oregon, and
for a while you gaze into the fir-studded hills and the
rivers and mountains and finally believe that you
are in Oregon.
upsiairs> in ii<so, a pany ior me press people is
going full swing. Unlike the people one floor below,
reporters don’t care where they get their stuff from.
All kinds of hard drinks and beer and soda are
dispensed by a hired bartender, while over on the
table sits a big spread of hors d’oeovres.Goodies like
crab legs and teriyaki steak and caviar grace the
white linen. It’s all left over from the previous
night’s reception for Connally. The turn-out was
evidently less than expected.
Ronald Reagan’s press secretary Ed Gray, is
there and he tells you about how nice The Governor
is. Gray says that Reagan doesn’t have anything
against long hair. The hair is okay, it’s how you vote
that counts. And The Governor does care about poor
people! Why he’s donated his own furniture to
penniless families—and nobody knows about it
because The Governor doesn’t want it to get out. But
no, The Governor doesn’t like Chavez and the farm
workers...
Next morning, the great throng of Republicans
meets in the magnificent ballroom of the Olympic to
hear from people like Pennsylvania’s'Senator Hugh
Scott and Washington’s Governor Dan Evans. All
(Continued on Page 11)
Charismatic Connally rides into town
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Education Hour 9:40
10:50 a.m. Service KORE -93.1 FM
Philip L. Natwick & Richard W. Rouse, pastors
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