Oklahoma ends liquor ban

The state of Oklahoma, known to the Western world from the Rogers-Hammerstein musical as the place where the corn grows as high as an elephant's eye and where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, Oklahoma went to the polls yesterday and voted 'yes' on an issue that has divided its people for the past 25 years.

It voted by nearly half a million votes to 400,000 to allow you, anybody, to buy a drink, an alcoholic drink, that is. Oklahoma was the last state to repeal prohibition. It did it in 1959 and since then it's allowed liquor to be bought at state licensed stores. It also allows private clubs where members may be served drinks poured from the private bottles they keep in lockers, but now the advocates of the new law say this flagrant hypocrisy can be done away with and people will be able to buy liquor, buy the drink, in a restaurant or across a bar, just like you and me.

It was done by voting for an amendment to the state's constitution which must be adopted county by county and though only 17 of the 77 counties of Oklahoma voted in favour, since these counties embrace 60 per cent of the population, most Oklahomans will join the human race while many rural counties will continue to support militant church groups and go on fighting the demon rum.

Well, folks, that's the big news from Oklahoma. And if that sounds like a bit of trivia with which to begin a newsletter, let me quote to you the top story the other morning on the New York Times's hourly radio bulletin. After a brief look at what's happening around the world and the nation, the announcer gives the weather forecast and then he said, 'To repeat the top story, Mr Chernenko has again appeared in public for the second time in two weeks'.

This was not meant facetiously, it was written straight and it was read straight and it did, indeed start another flurry of speculation in Washington about Mr Chernenko's health and who is really in charge of the store. It also inspired one network to trot out a brisk little television documentary, about a minute long, matching on a split screen pictures of two 73-year-old men in action, or at least in movement – Mr Chernenko, nodding and pattering and being helped down steps and Mr Reagan, striding and waving and tripping neatly down the steps of Air Force One.

Almost everything that happens these days seems incidentally to score yet another point for the president. He is, indeed, as somebody once said about Noel Coward, 'destiny's tot'. He's never seen in public to be glum or petulant or irritable or put out and Mrs Reagan confessed the other day that he's never that way in private either. Every time the Democrats toss some sharp arrow at him, it goes over his shoulder.

They thought they'd unloosed a cannonade at him the other day when Mr Mondale announced that he would see and talk to Mr Gromyko the day before the president sees him. The president grinned and said, 'Fine. I have no problem with that!' And, anyway, the thing backfired when Mr Mondale quickly assured everybody that, 'I will make it clear to Mr Gromyko that I speak only for myself and that there is only one President of the United States'. The White House must have loved that for it implies that there isn't going to be another one.

This unfortunate implication, unfortunate for the Democrats, was even reinforced by their own people the other night when they put out on a TV network, at enormous cost, one of their party political commercials so identified in a visual caption. It showed a carload of holidaymakers on a rollercoaster watching the present landscape open up as they ascended the first uphill grade. Mr Mondale's voiceover is saying something like, 'Everything looks fine now in 1984, the economy rising, more jobs and all, but what lies ahead in 1985?'

By that time, the car is at the crest of the grade and with a fearful crashing chord is about to take the big plunge down. An advertising expert, called in to give an objective criticism of this sliver of drama – he was, by the way, himself a Democrat – said that as a bit of persuasive propaganda it was simply awful. It practically conceded the election to Mr Reagan now. The message, he said, is, 'OK, America's in great shape now, so go ahead and vote for Reagan but you'll be sorry this time next year'.

So the polls still go on widening the gap between the two men, to the discomfiture of Mr Mondale and the misery of his advisers, but for the first time this week we heard a gambler's note of caution. It came from, of all people, Mr William Safire, a saucy expert on the English and American languages, once a speech writer for President Nixon, a fairly downright but adroit conservative who's employed by the New York Times as a gadfly to bite and harass their liberal editorial writers.

Mr Safire wrote the other day, 'Whenever I go to a racetrack, I bellow at the horse bringing up the rear, "Come on Silky" ' Silky, it appears, an actual horse, has been doddering away at pasture for years, may perhaps be no more, he never won a big race and made a habit of lumbering along and sniffing the flowers, but he also had the exhilarating habit, when the stretch came in view, of putting on a blazing finish. Sometimes, rarely, catching the front runner.

Mr Safire yearns, not as a man of political principle, but as a man who enjoys a horse race, yearns to see Mr Mondale emulate Silky. He goes so far as to rationalise how it might happen by analysing what he calls 'two conflicting itches' in the American psyche. One is landslidiitis, a cruel desire to hoot at the ineptitude of the horse bringing up the rear and the opposite itch, to root for the long shot. Mr Safire now sees us all in the full grip of landsliditis. What can change this fevered condition?

He believes a drastic change can be triggered by the television pictures of Mr Mondale being booed by an army of Hitlers, which has happened, by the arrogance of the front runner, his refusal to expose himself to on-the-record press encounters and by the continuous assault of some newspapers on Mrs Ferraro. Maybe, Mr Safire surmises, voters in doubt will begin to think that too big a win can be bad for a leader and worse for democracy. Then, he think, Silky begins to move up along the rail.

Well, at that point, even Mr Safire seems to fear that not even a healthy reaction of 'let's not be beastly to the rear runner' will be enough to stop Destiny's Tot from tearing past the post. There could be, he muses, some gaffe on the president's part, some sudden White House scandal. This is pretty desperate guessing, but then he mentions the forthcoming debates, for finally the two sides have agreed to debates between the President and Mr Mondale and between Vice President Bush and Mrs Ferraro.

These set-tos, I should think, would offer the last possibility of Silky's streak down the stretch. After all, in 1980, Mr Reagan came into the debates with President Carter as a comparative novice. Mr Carter was possibly the most intellectual president since Woodrow Wilson, certainly one of the most articulate. Mr Reagan was tentative, engaging and maintained his cheerful habit of quoting facts that are demonstrably false, but all it took to give Mr Reagan the popular edge was the line he said, with almost a rueful look, when he caught the president out in a couple of little slips. The line was delivered with a sigh and split-second timing, 'Well, there he goes again!' It convulsed the live audience and made the nation chuckle.

If something like that happens during one of the debates, Mr Safire sees the voters caught in a bind. Harbouring both the landsliditis and the Silky syndrome, they will root for the frontrunner and, at the same time, be cheering the pounding hoofbeats of the runner-up.

Well, I think there might be a good chance of this happening if the election were six months away. For, it's true, Americans don't like foregone conclusions and if they had another six months of Mr Reagan's grin and happy talk, they might grow bored to the point of anger and run and put their money on limping Silky, but there are only six more weeks and even Democrats who don't care much for the president don't care at all for Mr Mondale and as many as 30 per cent of them say they're going to switch to Reagan.

I don't remember a time like this, any time before a presidential election when issues had such a lacklustre appeal, when high-handed actions, even cruel actions, by an administration roused so feeble a response. Like, for instance, when this spring half a million disabled Americans found themselves suddenly stripped of all social security benefits, without, in very many cases, any medical review. The administration was cutting the budget.

New York city sued on behalf of these bereft victims of the budget axe. A federal court ruled that the Reagan administration had been underhanded and that its mass action was illegal. The administration grumbled and renewed the benefits but kept the disabled cut off from federally-funded medical care – the sort of care they needed most. Many federal judges ordered these funds restored. The administration didn't give in. It fought the court rulings case by case, but more often simply ignored the courts.

Well, now both Houses of Congress have passed a bill to put a stop to this mass withholding of all federal aid to the disabled. In almost any other administration I can recall, this would have been a thumping national scandal. There are others, the Democrats go on about them, but the people don't recall and Mr Reagan simply ignores them. No taint of illegality, let alone of cruelty, adheres to him.

He waves at us in his engaging fashion from the sunny side of the street and says to us what he's saying just now to all sorts of crowds, all over the country, 'You are what America is all about!'

Certainly that is a true line, whether he's speaking to a Baptist congregation, a football crowd, a collection of drug addicts, new citizens, old folks, the good, the bad, the plain or the beautiful.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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