Notes
The travails of Mrs Geraldine Ferraro have rendered Mr Walter Mondale's campaign even more hopeless than it was already. As yet the only failings that can be attributed to her are having been less than forthright about her stake in one of her husband's real estate companies, having underpaid her income tax for one year and having received but subsequently returned illegal contributions to a Congressional campaign. What all of this signifies for her or for her political future is not yet clear. Nowadays investigative journalists uncover suggestive material hoping to make their reputations as well as lots of money by feeding the apparently insatiable public appetite for the disgrace of politicians. When this fails to happen a vague impres- sion is left behind that there nevertheless exists something unsavoury in the past of the person concerned that ought to dis- qualify him from holding public office. It is difficult, however, to feel sorry for people like Mrs Ferraro who have brought this fate upon themselves through enacting successive pieces of legislation which de- mand of public officials the exercise of virtue hard to attain by the most unworld- 1Y, let alone by those who belong to a People who prize material success so much. This clash of values is not the only paradox to have come to light as the events have unfolded. It has probably been as disen- chanting for Mr Mondale as for the rest of us to have to witness the spectacle of a woman revealing that she owes her eleva- tion, not to her powers of enticing men through the exercise of the mysterious charms of her sex, but to the solid hand- some income coming in from her husband's real estate business of which she herself is a half owner. For the Democrats the disclo- sure of this fact will probably do more to dissolve the glamour and the excitement of having a woman on the ticket than any Possible discovery of undeclared earnings 0,.r unpaid taxes on her part. Her nomina- nco owed its attractiveness less to the gesture towards sexual equality than to the addition of a smattering of je ne sais quoi to Public life. Now it turns out Mr Mondale need not have troubled himself — his campaign has been joined by a politician as LYPical and uninspiring as he is himself.
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