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<text id=90TT3137>
<title>
Nov. 19, 1990: From The Publisher
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
Nov. 19, 1990 The Untouchables
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 27
</hdr>
<body>
<p> "No one in California this fall saw any sheep being
slaughtered on the roadway in honor of an arriving candidate,
the way they still like to do it in Turkey. That would not go
over in the shopping malls of Rancho Cucamonga." So observes
TIME's West Coast bureau chief Jordan Bonfante, who should know.
</p>
<p> Before assuming his current post in Los Angeles two years
ago, Bonfante served more than 13 years as a TIME foreign
correspondent--six years based in Rome, seven in Paris--and
covered political campaigns from Galicia to Anatolia. This year
he was charged with reporting not only the most important
gubernatorial race in the nation, between Republican Pete Wilson
and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, but also California congressional
races and ballot initiatives. To do so, he teamed up with
correspondent Jeanne McDowell and senior correspondent Edwin
Reingold, who spent 11 years as Tokyo bureau chief, as well as
photographer P.F. Bentley, a veteran of political campaigns in
Haiti, Panama and El Salvador in addition to the U.S. The team's
foreign experience gave it a rare perspective on U.S.
politicking.
</p>
<p> Many of the rituals are similar: the hominy grits served at
a black church breakfast in Oakland have their counterpart in
the cassoulet laid on at a campaign meeting in Toulouse. But in
Europe candidates still rely on speeches at mass rallies; in
California politicians talk not about districts but about
television markets. More important, European politicking is
ideological, while campaigning in the U.S. tends to be
pragmatic. As former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi once
told Bonfante: "Ours is a politics of ideas. Yours is a
politics of problem solving. We certainly could use more of
yours, and you would be better off with at least some of ours."
</p>
<p> On a personal level, Bonfante, McDowell, Reingold and
Bentley were struck by the informality of American politicians.
In California pols and reporters regularly call one another by
their first names, a practice almost unheard of in Europe or
Japan. In fact, the secretary of one Los Angeles politician
asked our man over the telephone, "Bonfante? Is that your first
name?"
</p>
<p>-- Louis A. Weil III
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>