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Editorialsn : M %u00abj m uiiinuiiu %u25a0 mmiii me; m u * nm u u.Every election time should be a soul searching moment for both voters andfor the officials they charge with the responsibility of protecting the publicgood.There may seldom be a more serious soul searching moment in politics thanthe one facing both candidates and voters in Brooklyn%u2019s 14th Congressionaldistrict in the Democratic Primary on September 12. Because of the basicissues involved in the race and because of the tone of the campaign itself, weare departing from our customary election-eve endorsement policy to speakour piece this week on this campaign.Election campaigns are a process of taking what is generously called%u201c issues%u201d and using them as tools and weapons to seek out that one orcombination of things that is going to get an individual voter to back aparticular candidate. Any subject can qualify as an issue, but it is only thoseof us on the receiving end of all this campaigning who can really decide whatthe essential issue %u2014 that basic, rock bottom decision-maker %u2014 really is in agiven campaign.From what we see and hear, much of it in the Sound-Off column and onthe news pages of this paper, there are a lot of what pass as issues in thiscampaign that strike us more as rhetoric, subjects designed to appeal toemotion and knee-jerk reaction, not reason. Aside from the issue of %u201cTheIncident%u201d , some of these %u201cside%u201d issues raised against incumbent FredRichmond include: the fact tht he is white in a district that has a heavily blackpopulation; that a former Republican cabinet official has written in a memoirthat Richmond urged him to let New York City go bankrupt; that Richmondhas significant personal wealth and freely spends it through his privatefoundation on projects in his own district. Some of the equally tangentialissued raised against challenger Bernard Gifford include: responsibility forcrippling fire fighting effectiveness in New York; blame for the managementills of the New York City school system which produced irregularities in schoollunch programs and custodian hiring practices that resulted in fraud andabuse; that he is black, but not REALLY black; and that his stand for PatMoynihan for U.S. Senate disqualifies him from being considered a %u201c real%u201dliberal Democrat.And now to speak of %u201cThe Incident%u201d : the single %u201c issue%u201d that is the reasonthere is a serious campaign at all this year. A %u201cside%u201d issue too, we think. Weknow about Richmond%u2019s offense what we have read in our own pages, where,incidently, more information on what happened and how it was handledappeared than in all other newspapers and magazines in New York Citycombined. Believing in the basic honesty of most prosecutors and policedepartments, including the agencies in Washington, D.C., that acted anddisposed of the Richmond case as they did, we accept the matter as over. Ithappened; whatever single personal trauma or crisis that proceeded oraccompanied it is behind; the knowledge of the case is clearly presented asbackground to the voting that will take place on September 12. Few, if any,will go to the polls without knowing about it.All the discussion of each of these issues is, we think, rhetoric, thatobscures how we intend to reach our own decision on who to support. Wethink there is only one real basis for deciding how to vote in this 14th Districtrace: Does the past and present record of the challenger suggest morepromise for the people of Brooklyn than the past and present record andreality of a two-term incumbent? True, there are distinct differences betweenthe candidates in terms of personality, age, background and, yes, even color.But the question these differences speak to is whether the here-and-nowreality of these two men says the voters should throw out the man they electedto Congress twice before in favor of the challenger. We don%u2019t think so.Assessing the record and the reality, the factor we think most important is:has what happened to Richmond the man on this side of the person, privatedrama turned public, impaired Richmond the Congressman%u2019s ability tofunction effectively %u2014 as effectively as he has increasingly done over his twoterms? We don%u2019t think so.Most people who follow civics and politics in the 14th District, even thosewho are long-time traditional political enemies, concede, if sometimesgrudgingly, that Fred Richmond has been a good Congressman %u2014 maybeeven a great Congressman %u2014 for the 14th Congressional District. W e thinkthe record of Fred Richmond, at home in the district, and in Washington,where he has been an increasingly effective consumer advocate, merits hisunqualified re-election to Congresses this year. W e urge our readers tovote to re-nominate him in the Democratic Primary election on Tuesday,September 12.Walking Small by L J. DavisDescartes was a lucky dog. His was a simpler world, a place inhabited only by what he knew. To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever asked him to be a cub scout master; he was not confronted by that dark and uncertain night. Evidently he did not live on a bus stop, either, and was therefore spared the small agonies of citizenship at its rawest: drunken softball teams celebrating on his stoop at two in the morning, beer cans in his shrubbery, purses in his garbage cans, unimaginative insults to his dinner guests, voyeurs on his ironwork, barf on his stoop, and an occasional pop bottle through his front window. These are not things that are susceptible to the comfortable certainties of solipsistic speculation; indeed, the entire history of philosophy would have taken a different turn if philosophers were compelled to live the way we do now.If Bishop Berkeley had lived on a bus stop, it is doubtful that idealism would ever have gotten to first base. True, if no one is there to hear the pop bottle crash through the front window, it is altogether possible to claim that the event, unwitnessed, did not occur, but only if you don%u2019t have to clean up the mess and call the glazier afterwards.Urban life has much to teach us, but the abstruse verities of philosophy are not among its lessons. A sense of proportion isessential to the philosophical bent, and in a city where the measure of man consists of everybody else%u2019s crackpot obsession, a sense of proportion is possible only if one can remain as invisible as Claude Rains. This trick can be accomplished by going to%u2018A sense ofproportion isessential to thephilosophicalbent...%u2019France, hanging around American tourists, and pretending to speak nothing but French. Closer to home it is a bit more difficult if not impossible. Time was when one could escape the ruck of battle by affecting either invincible stupidity or impregnable intelligence, but those days are gone. As Kurt Vonnegut has pointed out, everybody wants his dignity. A laudable goal. The only trouble with it is that every nut already assumes that, likeWerner Erhardt%u2019s truth, he already has it, which pretty well puts paid not only to philosophy but objective reality.Objective reality is frequently dumb, often boring, sometimes funny, and only rarely noble, beautiful, brave, and interesting. As a case in point, I submit the solemn, findings of a feminist conference recently held at the university where I teach all summer. In a nutshell%u2014a good place for them, by the way%u2014they boiled down to simply this: the word %u201cchairperson%u201d was unmasked as a snare and a delusion and held up before a deriding nation as the sexist fifth columnist that it is. You may not have noticed%u2014I certainly didn%u2019t; I was probably distracted by the grating of my teeth%u2014but %u201cchairperson%u201d clutches to its busom the adder of a masculine pronoun. The correct usage is %u201cchairperdaughter,%u201d and don%u2019t you forget it.A small point, you might say. True, and doubtless the participants in the conference let the fine light of their collective intellect play over other issues of greater trenchantness and urgency; it would be nice to think so and even nicer if anybody could remember what they were, but unfortunately the pursuit of dignity somewhat dazzled the observers and none of them could remember anything else.Objective reality tells us many things. For instance, it tells us that it is counterproductive to drown out the President of the United States when he not only has nothing to say, but is trying to say it in a manner that suggests his larnyx is located in his socks. Left to himself, the President would look silly; assisted by the outraged dignity of others, he pockets every vote in Utah. Anita Bryant only looks like Aimee Semple McPherson if you leave her alone; assisted by the dignity of her enemies, she comes to resemble Joan of Arc or, at the very least, the immortal Phyliss Schafly. Right, and there is no difference between Salvatore Stallone and the Belevedere Apollo.I realize that it must seem a long way from the beer cans in my shrubbery (much less Descartes) to these seemingly cheap points, and I will desist. Chalk it up to a sour mood and the month of August; after all, people who put beer cans in shrubbery have their dignity too, and if you don%u2019t believe me, just ask them. I actually did so once, and it is instructive to report that for my pains I received one of the most comprehensive lectures on the ethical system of Jean-Jacques Rosseau I have ever heard. In case you%u2019re wondering, it all had to do with a sense of proportion combined with the ability to see the other fellow%u2019s point of view.It is lucky for Rosseau that my time machine was in the shop.Inklings by Gene SuchmaP a %u00ab 1Q; THE PHOENIX. September 1,1978