We have then, too, the great bards of conspiratorial evil, king of them, for a season or two, Oliver Stone. He produced a movie a few years ago in which he asked the American people to believe that the assassination of President Kennedy was done by other than Oswald acting alone, that the police in Dallas were in on the fix, as also the FBI, as also the CIA, as also the doctors at Parkland Hospital and at the White House, as also President Johnson, members of the Supreme Court, and the World Almanac. Now the news here isn't that Stone, the fabulist, created an engrossing fantasy; it is that 70 percent of the American people, after viewing it, concluded that indeed the Warren Report was wrong and corrupt.
Asked for comment on the general scene, Oliver Stone, who also directed the movie "Wall Street," gave it to us straight: "In my opinion, I think (President Bush) has been a complete disaster on every level."
There is nothing in the Waco waters that will serve as an elixir to console the public during this period of quite genuine grief over the high incidence of corporate duplicity. To attempt consolation by the formula of Winston Churchill ("Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time") doesn't give instant relief, on the order of effecting the resignation of a president.
Mr. Bush can't do more than to say that certain growths in the capitalist system have been identified, and that to the extent it is possible to minister to them by legislation, that much is being done. Beyond that, at Waco, our governors can only reiterate their professions of faith in the American system, emphasizing that our commercial life is an aspect of our commitment to freedom in our political life, indeed in life itself.