Reagan not out yet Sir: Really, if the Spectator is
going to comment with its usual astuteness on American politics, the least it owes its readers is someone with a fair understanding of the subject. Henry Fairlie, having delivered his appoggiatura of Campaign '76 with the prediction that Reagan would be eliminated by the end of March, now returns in the end of March to announce that he was right, in spite of monumental evidence to the contrary.
The facts are that Ford has won two primaries (Florida, Illinois) and Reagan one (North Carolina), with New Hampshire a Virtual tie. But Reagan has also won six states that do not hold primaries, against zero thus far for Fprd, with majorities of up to 80 per cent of their convention delegates: Alaska, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington. Some polls indicate Reagan leads in Texas and California, with more than 300 delegates between them. Ford is still a .ikely winner, but Reagan is anything but eliminated.
Mr Fairlie now takes to comparing Jimmy Carter with Roosevelt, a comparison devoutly to be cherished by Mr Carter but a false one nonetheless. Franklin Roosevelt had ideas—he expressed them, he implemented them.
Henry Fairlie hails this as the dawn of a new political vision, this sad and obvious confession that Carter is a nothing—like Ford, just another droning mediocrity dredged up by the pulls because he has a face like Kennedy's and an ability to be, like Ford, a resolutely ordinary, consummately unprincipled non-leader. The British people are no doubt familiar with the type: they've only just got rid of someone like him. Richard M. Langworth
'Dragonwyck', Hopewell, New Jersey United States
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