President Clinton

Your article “Clinton to Nudge Enlightened Capitalism Along” (March 3) is full of amazing statements, buzz and code words: enlightened capitalism (companies that bow to every whim of the administration), covenant between employer and employee (permanent employment), critical mass (enough docile CEOs so that a meeting will make a major media event), corporate citizenship (doing it our way), a sense of shame (do it or we will make you, one way or another), and “They haven’t come up with much” (they didn’t say what we wanted to hear).

President Clinton, the unemployment rate in Europe, where it is practically impossible to fire an employee, is twice that in the United States. This should be enough said.

The president says about Americans: “They like to copy things that work from one another.” American success is built on innovation, not copying. Besides, if they did copy each other the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, would attack them, tying the companies up in investigations and courts forever, depleting vital cash resources responding and protecting themselves.

NORBERT E. TALBERT

Diamond Bar

* After seeing the Orange County poll where Clinton beats Bob Dole (March 7), I say let the Republicans have the “Reagan Democrats,” and give the Democrats the new “Clinton Republicans.”

TONY CUMMINGS

Rancho Cucamonga

* I was confused but now I think I understand. Pat Buchanan, the Northern Republican Catholic, is running as a big-business-hating, pro-labor, fundamentalist, Protestant Democrat, in the mold of George Wallace, while Southern Protestant Democrat Bill Clinton is running as a Northern establishment Republican in the Rockefeller mold. No. I’m still confused.

JONATHAN DOBRER

Encino

* It’s the “foreign policy, stupid!” It’s still “balance the budget, stupid,” and “it’s the economy, stupid.” So what has he really done in 3 1/2 years?

MARJORIE J. PETRY