Word: statehooder
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...front of the Pieta with a hammer in his pocket isn't alone in wanting to go down in history. Presidents can feel the urge with equally disastrous results. Richard Nixon's need to keep the tapes was his downfall, and Gerald Ford's last grand gesture, proposing statehood for Puerto Rico, was his last blunder. Ford had an enthusiasm for drives and campaigns with the flair of Chamber of Commerce resolutions. And, whether impeaching Earl Warren, Whipping Inflation Now, or inoculating every American for swine flu, they tended to fizzle out quickly. Still, when he announced during a skiing...
Like last summer, when he didn't notify Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon about his plans to invite heads of state for a summit conference at the Rockefellers' resort, he caught even statehood's advocates by surprise. So it seems unlikely that Ford simply meant to pay off Governor-elect Carlos Romero Barcelo, a statehooder and a closet Republican, for the convention votes Puerto Rican delegates gave him. A day or so after his pronunciamento, Romero's Washington commissioner Baltasar Corrada del Rio held a press conference to say that statehood now would be premature...
Right after Ford's announcement came a second surprise, the publication of a poll conducted by Gallup in the United States, in which 59 per cent of the Americans interviewed said they favored statehood for Puerto Rico. Now the question was phrased as follows: "Puerto Ricans recently elected a pro-statehood governor. Do you favor statehood for Puerto Rico?" Only an enemy of democracy could have said no. And in other polls, about a fifth have said they favored independence, with an equal number who had never heard of the island. Many Americans do not understand, for example, that Puerto...
...Assad. At the moment Assad and other Arab leaders are opting for peace. The Syrian leader and Egypt's Anwar Sadat recently smoothed over a lengthy feud involving Syrian intervention in Lebanon; last week Jordan's King Hussein and Sadat met to discuss peace strategies and Palestinian statehood...
...Ford manages to get his tax and gasoline price proposals into legislative form by Jan. 20, they will be dealt with by a new President and a new Congress, with their own ideas about the nation's needs. As for Ford's well-intentioned championing of statehood for Puerto Rico, it left some Puerto Ricans muttering that the White House was trying to force them into a "shotgun wedding." Newly installed Governor Romero, a longtime statehood advocate, offered his opinion in his inaugural address: he pointedly chose not even to mention the Ford proposal...