Poet, author, former U. S. Senator from Minnesota and

Poet, author, former U. S. Senator from Minnesota and candidate for the presidency, Eugene McCarthy now lives in the F. T. Valley near Slate Mills. a consensus can be useful, but it in no way compares to a supporting mandate. A mandate is more personal than a consensus, somewhat like a one-person dog. It is more loyal, as a rule, than is a consensus, which is much like an aardvark, ill defined and likely to disappear, usually by burrowing into the ground, when the person who has attached himself or herself to the aardvark is not watching. The attachment between the consensus and its principal is always one-way. It is not mutual.

The difficulty of finding or holding a consensus was demonstrated in a New York Times’ story of April 29, which reported that a group of Republican Senators were busy looking for a consensus, while Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida, a Democrat, who, it was implied, might have been able to help the Republicans find the consensus, was hunting wild turkey in Virginia. Whether Senator Chiles was using a voice caller, or one of Lynch’s fool-proof-box turkey callers, was not noted in the New York paper. Nor was it noted whether callers used on wild turkeys sometimes attract a consensus or two.

It was, however, the loss of the mandate, or the absence of one, that really hurt the Carter Administration. President’s need a mandate or two as medieval kings needed a falcon or two for support and Haile Selassie a brace of lions on a golden chair to sustain his majesty.

According to the former vice-president, President Carter was further handicapped by having “no agenda” to lean on after being elected.

Obviously an Administration which had lost both its charisma and its aura early and which never had a mandate or an agenda to lean on was sure to falter.