Dole’s Leadership at Republican Convention

Your Aug. 15 editorial, “Substance Takes a Back Seat at Modern Conventions,” mistakes controversy and spin for substance. One could get the impressions indicated in your editorial only by watching the networks’ coverage of the event instead of C-SPAN. I was appalled as I switched back and forth from network to C-SPAN.

C-SPAN respects the intelligence of its audience. They gave us coverage of the GOP convention without the media’s elitist attitude of “such a dumb public that we must have explanations by self-appointed experts of what we just watched.” The Democratic “gate crashers” who were invited by the news organizations only added to the media’s insulting behavior.

Bob Dole will lead the country in the same quiet, determined way he led this beautiful convention.

VEDA STOVER

Whittier

* I wish to thank The Times for “Irked Delegates See Convention Tilted to Middle” (Aug. 15). My husband and I have just returned from two weeks behind the scenes at the Republican convention. We know many of the delegates from numerous states due to our years of involvement, and shared in their shock and sadness at the behavior of party officials. We witnessed, firsthand, delegates who had been elected as Buchanan delegates being stripped of their positions and being replaced with “insiders” who would vote for Dole--no questions asked. Certain delegates were told that their positions within the party were finished when they returned home if they didn’t vote for Dole. I was so dismayed by all of this that I re-registered as an Independent before I left San Diego.

Many of these delegates left families and traveled great distances to help shape the Re- publican platform, only to be told by Dole that he hadn’t read the document, didn’t intend to and wasn’t bound by it. If Republican officials believe that the charade that passed as a convention will ensure support for Dole, they are hallucinating.

JEANNE TUTICH

San Gabriel

* I don’t think Dole and I have been reading the same history books! Dole wants us to look back and relive the U.S. of a wonderful yesterday. We are both 20th-century men, and my history book tells me that the 20th century has seen us in World War I, Prohibition lawlessness and gangsterism, the collapse of our banking system, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. Just when was this “wonderful yesterday” supposed to have occurred?

I.D. WEINER

Los Angeles

* I’d rather have a not-so-polished public speaker who is honest and hard-working than a politically correct, sound-bite-conscious, eternally photo-opping, vacillating twit running my country.

And what’s wrong with taking the best values of the past right into the future? Values like honest trustworthiness, love and respect for God and country?

Why are so many blind to the sheer beauty of our wonderful country and failing to realize how precious our freedom is and how many lives have already been sacrificed to preserve our form of government? Wake up, America! This may be your last chance to vote for freedom.

ARLINE ELLIOTT

Los Angeles

* I am sick of the GOP harping on Dole’s participation in World War II when virtually every man now is his 70s or 80s served in that conflict. On the other hand, I found it admirable that Bill Clinton had the conscience to object to being part of the war in Vietnam. Can it be that the GOP is still unwilling to admit what a terrible mistake, and waste of lives, that was?

ROXANE WINKLER

Sherman Oaks