Irked Kennedy debates with tape-recorder

Press, 9 February 1980, Page 6

Irked Kennedy debates with tape-recorder

NZPA Washington I Armed with a mischievous! grin and a tape-recording of a 1978 Carter press conference, Senator Edward Kennedy followed the President to a podium yesterday and staged an electronic mock debate with the President’s recorded voice over inflation and other domestic issues. Mr Carter, who had declined the Massachusetts Democrat’s challenge to debate him before a meeting of some 1500 consumer activists, preceded the senator in a back-to-back appearance that was the closest the two have come to a direct confrontation in the campaign. The President drew warm applause from the members Of the Consumer Federation of America with a sober pledge to veto legislation at present pending in Congress that would cripple the powers of the Federal Trade: Commission, a principal consumer watch agency. But it was Senator Kennedy who had the same audience laughing and cheering moments later for the gimmick with the tape-recorder and his barbed comments! about the President’s refusal! to meet him in open debate. { After the President had;

[finished his speech and; swept out of the crowded: room with his retinue of Secret. Service agents to the strains of the Marine Corps band. Mr Kennedy mounted the same stage and demand- ■ ed in mock outrage: “Who was that man who just rushed out of here? I think he said he was double-parked, but some say he was Jimmy Carter.” Decrying the President’s refusal to debate with him openly, Mr Kennedy read a question that was put to the President on inflation at a press conference in Chicago in May, 1978. Holding a portable tape-recorder up to the microphone, h? played a recording of President Carter’s response. In it, the President described the thenprevailing inflation rate of 9 per cent as a “temporary aberration” and predicted it would decline to 6 to 7 per cent. “Now for a comment from Senator Kennedy,” the Massachusetts Democrat said, launching into an assault on the President’s anti-inflation programme, which he des-{ cribed as “a calamity.” Mr Carter, in his remarks learlier, had blandly ignored I his rival's repeated demands [for a debate. He focused inistead on his administration's!

I i record in defence of tonl! sumer interests, his opposition to weakening the Feder:al Trade Commission, and his determination to veto a [ water projects bill, which he [described as “wasteful and inflationary.” His only glancing reference to Senator Kennedy was as “a good consumer advocate” who had worked with the White House on legislation to lessen Federal regulation of the trucking industry. . Mr Kennedy, on the other ‘ hand, mounted perhaps his sharpest attack on Mr Carter . to date, charging him with i “sheer hypocrisy” in claiming that he does not have time to debate his rivals because of international ■ events. He contended that if Mr Carter did not have time to debate and campaign openly, • he should follow the examples of Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968 “and withdraw his candidacy' in 1980.” President Carter was running furiously on the sidelines of this campaign, Mr Kennedy’ continued. “He does not have an hour to debate. but he has hours upon ; hours to phone voter after ■ [voter in Maine and New {Hampshire.”