Newest IOP Fellows Tell Stories of Political Life

All but one of the six new Institute of Politics (IOP) fellows became politically aware during the 1960s and all but that one older political observer have come to the Kennedy School with a political bias.

The six new IOP fellows told their life stories last night to an audience of more than 300 Kennedy School students and Harvard freshmen at the institute's introductory forum, "Personal Perspectives on Politics."

The mix of journalists and politicians told of their lives entwined in the American political system and the personal changes they made as a result.

Covering the political system as a reporter prevented John J. Casserly from setting down for more than two decades. But now the columnist for the Arizona Republic has made the West his home and has turned his life toward trumpeting its promise as the future of America.

Casserly called himself an "objective observer" of events and thus set himself apart from the other fellows, who said they became involved in the events around them. The Korean War, to the young reporter Casserly, was nothing more than a "great story."

The only other pure journalist at the forum, Richard Cohen, senior political producer for CBS News, said, however, that he empathized with the people touched by events he covered. "I was impresed by the dignity of people," who suffered, whether Poles waiting in line for food or Palestinians in Beirut, Cohen explained.

The politicians among the fellows all told a story of political activism during the 1960s, inspired by figures as different as John F. Kennedy '40 and Barry Goldwater, followed by success in mainstream politics during the '70s and '80s.

In 1964, destroyed politically by Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon B. Johnson in the Presidential election, the new right began to investigate new ways to build a political coalition, Lee Edwards, a member of that coalition and editor of the Conservative Digest, told the forum.

He said nurturing President Reagan and perfecting the dynamic of single-issue politics accomplished the new right's goal of changing the American political agenda. But while providing the new right with power and influence, Edwards said, it has also put the conservatives into a state of disarray, which might be their undoing.

John A. Wilson and Karen Paget were political activists during the 1960s on the liberal side of the spectrum. They have continued their activism, they say, but this time from within the governmental structure.

The last speaker at the forum was Barbara Patton, New York state Democratic assemblyman, from a mostly Republican district on Long Island. Patton, a Black woman, told of her years as a regular Democratic party worker in New York City and of her family's impact on her politics.

Patton said she became a leading advocate of the elderly because of the loyalty she had toward her grandmother.