Message and messenger

Re “It worked for FDR,” Opinion, Nov. 8

In this article, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign of vagueness and evasion is defended as good politics. Although vagueness may increase someone’s electoral chances, it does so only because no one can judge a candidate’s ideas without detailed information. When a candidate withholds information necessary for evaluation, we should ask when that increases their appeal. Candidates might know the details of what they intend but fail to reveal them. If that is necessary to appear most attractive, those details must be adverse. If they made a more persuasive sales pitch, they would be widely trumpeted, not withheld.

Alternatively, candidates may not have specific, workable plans. If so, even they, much less voters, cannot be confident that the candidates can deliver on their promises.

Informed electoral choices require nuts-and-bolts details. It is foolhardy to vote for candidates withholding specifics. Although vagueness may be considered good politics, it virtually ensures bad policy, if Americans’ welfare is given any weight.

Gary Galles

Professor of economics

Pepperdine University

Malibu

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As someone who was a child during those very grim times that James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn so correctly portray, I submit that the reason Franklin D. Roosevelt beat President Herbert Hoover was Roosevelt himself. I still can recall his strong, confident, reassuring voice booming forth from our radio and seeing his charismatic personality on the movie newsreels. Hoover lacked those attributes. In fact, since those times, only three presidents have approached Roosevelt’s political skills -- John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who also defeated an incumbent Republican president. In most elections, the messenger supersedes the message.

Terry Malone

Anaheim