Clements' reputation as a man who rides tall, talks tough, and shoots from the hip. "I can assure you," he said back then, "that I am not in- secure about anything." Clements, tough-talking and blunt, promised to become a spokesman for Texas on na- tional and regional affairs. He has done that on matters dear to Texas, especially on immi- gration and energy issues. Clements appears to have learned that being governor is not like being chairman of the board. You don't just order the legislature to implement your ideas. It appears that he has learned to work with the legis- lature on a give-and-take basis. The governor is a blunt man who ruffles many a feather. But when you measure lead- ership and managerial abili- ties, for all of his tough talk and political in-fighting, Cle- ments comes out ahead. It is on this basis that we support him for a second term in office. Edward H. Harte Publisher Robert E. Rhodes Executive Editor Stephen W. Sullivan General Manager John B. Anderson Managing Editor/Administration John R. Thomas William E. Duncan 'Caller Managing Editor Times Managing Editor John L. Stallings Associate Editor/Editorial Page Clements should be given second term The Caller-Times endorses Gov. Bill Clements for a sec- ond term in office for dis- playing dynamic leadership during his first term, even though we have on numerous occasions disagreed with him on specific issues. Mark White is an affable and dedicated politician who has proven himself capable as ;the state's attorney general, • and yet he appears to have a ; hesitant, ill-informed ap- ▪ proach to the problems facing Texas. The ideological differences ; between Gov. Clements and --White are so blurred as to be almost trivial, which puts the focus on style, rather that sub- stance. It is in this area where Cle- ments moves ahead. He has passed the test of his first term in office with good — but not great — marks. He pre- pared a program and put it be- fore the legislature, which is something not all governors of Texas have been able to man- age. By the force of his per- sonality, he has given the gov- ernor's office greater power and made Texas government more cohesive. When discussing the prob- lems of prison reform, of crime, of water shortage, of il- legal immigration, Clements is not timid about advancing hiS own ideas and programs. One of the governor's weak- nesses appears to be that he is at times too forceful, too un- willing to compromise. There was a remarkable scene when Gov. Clements, shortly after he took the oath of office, leaned over at a meeting in Washington and told New York Gov. Hugh Carey to, in effect, shut up and listen. This shocked the New York governor and helped establish In many states, the office of lieutenant governor is little More than ceremonial. That is most certainly not true in Texas. Here, the lieutenant governor occupies one of the three most powerful positions in the state. As presiding of- ficer of the Senate the lieuten- ant governor is in a position of legislative — not executive — leadership, able to a large de- gree to determine the flow of islation in the state. Before the Republicans won at the ballot box with Ronald Rea- gan in 1980, they had already won in the field of new ideas. A whole galaxy of bright young conservatives — academics, writers, and politicians — came forward to analyze the post-war trend toward Big Brother govern- ment, and to argue persuasively that Great Depression remedies had less and less relevance to the America of 1980s. So, having won the debate, the Republicans went on to win the elections. Now it is the Democrats' turn to look for new ideas with which to win elections. So far nothing has been articu- lated that particularly blows one's mind. But before the next presidential election the liberal tradition will once again make it- self heard in the marketplace of ideas, to the betterment of the re- public. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returned to work with a vengeance last Monday. Not only is the docket unusually crowded. but it includes a heavy load of business normally left for deci- sion by the Legislative and Exec- utive branches. In the case of the present court, weaknesses in the other branches count more than judicial activism for the overt intrusion into mat- ters of public policy. So, though the court is not ideal for settling such issues, it deserves sympa- thetic scrutiny — especially from the enlightened sector of the pub- lic. The size of the docket is per- haps the only non-controversial feature of the court's work. The term opened this year with 126 cases accepted for argument, and 12 more were added on Monday. So the season starts with a record number of cases. Six of the nine justices, indeed, have broken the usual silence by commenting publicly — and in most cases crit- ically — about the heavy case- load. Many reasons account for the spurt in the court's business. A statute passed in 1978 raised the number of federal District and Circuit Court judges from 496 to 648. So the Supreme Court has that many more diverse findings he liberal tradition in Ameriea has generally considered itself tfi, conscience of the nation. It criticized what it thought was %long and has demanded that we live up to our ideals and prin- ciples. :t led the way under Franklin Rcosevelt to a juster distribution of the national income. In later years it helped open up American sodety — business, education, and public facilities — to all Americans. The liberal tradition has, in short, many causes for pride. However, the liberals' role of Court itself. During the decade of the 1970s under Chief Justice Warren Burger, the court has av- eraged 28 decisions per year by a 5-4 vote, or a plurality. That con- trasts with an average of 11 for the court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the decade of the 1960s. The narrow decisions, not to mention the proliferation of split decisions, means that there is an abundance of uncertain rul- ings that the court is prone to re- consider and refine over and over again. Then there is the increasing in- volvement of the justices in public policy issues. According to a cal- culation by Bruce Fein, a legal scholar here in Washington, the docket this year includes cases on abortion, antitrust, bankruptcy, drug abuse, drunken driving, im- migration, job rights, prisoners' rights, state support for religious schools, taxes and voting rights. Because American society in the 1980s keeps throwing up such issues in constant profusion, the critics of our society has led some of them to a sharp dilemma: Can you persistently criticize the United States on the inside and then bring yourself to defend it on the outside. Many liberals have not been able to do so. Recently Elinor Langer, a col- umnist for Mother Jones, put it succinctly: "The left has never solved the problem of how to criticize Amer- ica internally and support the de- fense of it externally at the same time. In order to be taken ser- iously politically the left has to agree that the United States is worth defending; this does not necessarily come naturally." Nathan Glazer touched on the same subject when he said, "Even the left has to worry about military strength. Some of them (liberal thinkers) worry about Cuban-style regimes taking over from revolutionary movements. controversial matters is usually by the narrow majorities, which call for more and more re- finement in still further rulings on the same subject. As an additional index of the court's plunge into public policy, Mr. Fein cites the number of fed- eral statutes held unconstitution- al by court decision. The Burger Court, during the decade of the 1970s, invalidated 18. That is just short of the 20 held overruled by the Warren Court in the 1950s. But both are far higher than the norm for years past. In the period of more than 70 years leading up to the Civil War. in fact, the Su- preme .Court invalidated only two statutes. A crucial difference on that score sets the Burger Court apart from the Warren Court. The War- ren Court was activist in ap- proach, and deliberately reached out to improve public policy. The Burger Court is far more prone to judicial restraint. Public policy issues have been thrust upon it, not drummed up. The reason is that the president and the Congress have recently been pulled into many areas of new responsibility. It is general practice to frame laws that are loose in definition and open-ended in application. Environmental law offers many examples. Al- "Does the left . think that Russia's military strength is of no significance for democratic val- ues? There has been a collapse of the idea that socialism will pro- vide a better life. Russia does not suggest a better life, nor Cuba, nor China." I hope Langer and Glazer are right, and that Americans will not turn back to liberals for lead- ership unless those liberals are ready to declare that there are American values worth defending and that the tenderness some of them showed in the past for the regimes of Lenin, Stalin and other socialist dictators was misguided. • • ,0 So far the Democrats: re- thinking of their positions seems to focus on economic issues. In general they want us to become more like Japan and less like Great Britain. They want better husbanding of the nation's human resources — by education and by health ser- vices — and for *renewing the na- tional infrastructure of highways, bridges. waterworks, etc. Demo- crats will, very properly, remind us in 1984 that we lag in research and in teaching of the sciences and engineering. And they will have recommendations for mod- ernizing our obsolete inclugrial plant. • • • All the re-thinking by both neo- liberals and neo-conservatives could be derailed, in my opinion, by the tremendous growth Of the anti-nuclear movement. This is a "grass roots mgvi e - ment" par excellence. It is f mind - ed on widespread fears ann- derstanda ble frustratins. Everyone hates war. Everyone is tired of living with the nuelear ; threat. I can conceive of the anti-nable- ar movement mushrooming to such gigantic proportions that. it could simply take over the Dehio- cratic Party. It could become the single-ire political question of our tirne-- and right soon. — — (Edward H. Harte is publisher of the Caller-Times.) wow. maws* as to when and how regu=lis are to be applied. The judicial process, by iraexy nature, is not ideal for decieSan such matters. It depends ottttgli- vidual cases which arise more or less at hazard, and which get de- cided one by one — not in the comprehensive manner most fa- vorable to general policy. Court decisions tend to go up or down, and do not set out general rules for a variety of cases in open to the Legislative or Execu- tive branches. Moreover, judicial decisions are framed in a highly restrictive circle. Judges and lawyers are almost everything. The diverse crowd of interests and professions that form the es- sence of American society are largely excluded. • Criticism of court rulings comes easy in these conditions, So a couple of cautions are in Since the justices are only filling vacuums, not grabbing turf, it is unfair to attack them as usurpers of authority — the Imperial Judiciary. Those with advanced ideas about prison reform, school prayer, civil rights, and freedom of the press, are to be espeqtAllY circumspect in criticism. For the court is far more sensitive to the values dear to enlightened 'per- sons than are those elected yo; ie Congress and the White House by