Notable Quotables - 11/12/1990
The Crash of Reaganomics?
"If there's
anything that we heard out there at the polls today, it was the sound of
Reaganomics crashing all around us. If there's anything left of Reagan's
trickle-down theory, Dan, it seems to be anxiety which seems to be trickling
down through just about every segment of our society."
- Ed Bradley during CBS News election night coverage, November 6.
"We have a lot of
turnovers where Republican Governors raised taxes and they have been turned
out."
- Lesley Stahl, also during CBS election coverage.
Hating Helms, Hoping for Harvey
"What Helms has
done is taken the words 'North Carolina values' - a beautiful phrase that
evokes the small-town, good-hearted sense of place that one feels when one
travels the state - and redefined them as the values belonging to a certain
group of North Carolinians, mostly white, mostly male, mostly unhappy with the
changes of the last 30 years. To Helms and his supporters, 'North Carolina
values' seems to translate into a status quo view of the world in which
blacks, women, and poor people know their stations in society."
- Reporter Juan Williams in The Washington Post Magazine, October
28.
"I think the
question there, I mean there are several of them, but one of them is whether
old time Southern racist politics can work, because Helms really let loose
this week with some base, hate, racist ads."
- Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer on Fox's Off the
Record, November 4.
"Helms' attack on
what he calls pornography has a lot of appeal here, especially in rural areas.
But most people say they are more concerned about the things that affect their
lives more directly, the economy, education, the environment. North Carolina
is almost dead last in scholastic aptitude tests, has the worst infant
mortality rate in the nation. Those are Gantt's issues."
- NBC's Andrea Mitchell, October 30 Today.
"This has really
been a heart-breaking race....What happened here was a very strong racial
message from Jesse Helms in the closing ten days of the race and it focused on
something that we've found, found previously in Louisiana with the David Duke
campaign."
- Mitchell during NBC's election night coverage, November 6.
"In victory, Jesse
Helms was no more gracious than he had been during his slashing
campaign...Gantt's surprisingly strong showing will encourage more black
candidates to run for office, but this contest also proves that race is still
a powerful issue in American politics."
- Mitchell, NBC News at Sunrise, November 7.
"Everybody seems to
agree on the general dimensions of that race, and we also seem to get common
agreement that it is going to be one of the most important indicators of
whether we have progress in racial voting or not."
- CNN reporter Ken Bode during election night coverage, November 6.
Big Green
"Clean air and
water, pure food and natural beauty, which most Californians were all for a
few months ago, have been made to seem a radical and expensive idea that has
to be rejected at the polls on Tuesday. The stakes are very high in California
because environmentalists know that if the Big Green initiative happens to
pass there, the idea of cleaning up the air and water could spread like
wildfire to all the other states. The forces opposing it know that too."
- Charles Kuralt on America Tonight, October 31.
"Proposition 128 is
the biggest test yet of public concern about the environment and of whether
that concern will translate into political change."
- Reporter Ned Potter on ABC's World News Tonight, October 30.
Face Reality: Raise Taxes
"The fact is that
most government spending cannot be cut. The way out of the mess is for the
government to raise some money through taxes and at last that's being done.
And there's encouraging news in the returns from yesterday's elections. Six
states from Massachusetts to California rejected measures designed to limit
taxation. Can it be that the great tax revolt of the 1980s is coming to an
end? If true, maybe the country can get on with the business of balancing its
books in a sensible and logical way."
- John Chancellor on NBC Nightly News, November 7.
"Some of the blame
for this 'have everything attitude' could easily be placed on the Reagan
Administration and a compliant Congress. You remember, 'morning in
America.'...Face reality, like Governor Jim Florio has in New Jersey and
you've got a revolt on your hands. The recession has cut revenues there, so
he's trying to raise taxes I order to still deliver the services the people in
New Jersey say they want. That, of course, is political heresy."
- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, November 2.
"The public's angry
denial of the budget truths they've been asked to face is perhaps the most
dangerous legacy of Reaganomics and of President Bush's rabid anti-tax
campaigns."
- Newsweek economics columnist Jane Bryant Quinn,
October 22.
"Congress, driven
by the twin threats of incipient recession and the electorate's rising rage at
weeks of political gamesmanship, finally summoned up the nerve to Do the Right
Thing about the deficit - even if it meant raising taxes in an election
year."
- Reporter Tom Morgenthau in Newsweek, November 5.
Carter the Prophet
"Jimmy Carter the
President wasn't particularly well liked. Carter the prophet was right on the
money. The gas lines of the Arab oil embargo apparently left little lasting
impression, though....Just this week, the Senate killed a bill that would have
forced car makers to significantly improve gas mileage. Maybe we just don't
care that much."
- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, September 28.
Loving The Nation
"Ever since the
Civil War...Americans have been reading a magazine called The Nation.
It's always been a platform for speakers who have been ahead of their time.
This morning we'll look at a new book that reminds us how important that
platform has been."
- Today national correspondent Katherine Couric on the far-left
magazine, October 22.
Setting the Abortion Debate Terms
"We're not going to
resolve the issue. I know that. But you know better than I that there are
millions of us in the country who have not yet made up our minds about how
much government interference in our lives there should be, either to protect a
woman's ability to have an abortion, or to make it even more difficult, even
illegal."
- Peter Jennings' introduction to a panel discussion after the ABC special on
abortion, The New Civil War, November 1.
Rather Goofy
"Let's go down to
Texas and let me show you actual votes in and tabulated. This was a race
considered so nasty it would gag a buzzard....This race is so close that
everybody's having a 4,000-calorie attack down there."
- Dan Rather during CBS News election night coverage.
"I wouldn't touch
that line with a 12-foot pole, which as you know is a pole I reserve for those
things that I certainly wouldn't touch with an 11-foot pole."
- Rather's response to whether he had a favorite candidate for President,
same night.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Callista Gould, Jim Heiser, Marian Kelley, Gerard Scimeca; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Administrative Assistant
