Harris lets ’em have it at library finale

 

By C.S. GILBERT

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

Dean of pollsters Lou Harris, as has become traditional, closed out the Friends of the Library Lecture Series 2015 in an interview with actor and radio host Richard Grusin on March 23. In the hour long program at St. Paul’s, Harris pulled no punches: he was critical of politicians past and present, the future of the USA and even a scathing assessment of his own profession.

 

“Three-quarters of our polltakers (today) aren’t polltakers, they’re people for sale,” commented the soft-spoken but very sharp-minded celebrity, now 94 and writing his memoirs at his Beach Club residence in Midtown.

 

Those memoirs are going to be something else, given Harris’ close, personal relationship with John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and a host of other national and international figures. He shared with the audience this go-round accounts of barely reportable, scatalogical behavior by LBJ, who seemed fond of bathroom humor and teasing female reporters, and he opined that, had he lived, JFK would have been counted among the nation’s best presidents.

 

Addressing a crowd of perhaps 200 avid listeners, Harris stated from the outset that he wanted to discuss two things: the crisis in the nation’s education and the radically changing demographics of the nation’s electorate.

 

Our educational system is in crisis, he said, explaining that two years ago the census bureau, charged with projecting figures for 2020, concluded that the public schools have changed from being majority white to nonwhite and indicated that the most dominant group emerging was that of immigrants. By 2016, that demographic will influence national elections.

 

Underpinning an education crisis is the fact that a shocking, and growing, number of teachers are unqualified. In the past even the American Federation of Teachers apparently admitted that 25 percent of teachers were not qualified; now, Harris said, the percentage is 54. Rich, suburban school districts fare best but basic literacy is at risk elsewhere and in the United States “we risk becoming the biggest banana republic in the world.”

 

Even more dramatically, he said, the leadership of women is emerging as a deciding force. “Women, women, women!” he emphasized, noting that 88 percent of the enrollment in journalism schools is female and that women are currently taking over in publishing houses and law firms. “The underlying thing,” he noted, is that the “anticipated life span” is increasing every year, with women in the lead. “Living to 100” will soon “not be extraordinary.”

 

That topic led, logically, to the potential presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whom Harris seems to know pretty well. She is “a good person on the issues, smart, a good politician. But she’s not a great risk-taker,” he concluded, adding the opiniuon that Sen. Elizabeth Warrenof Massachusetts, whom he called “a natural,” ranked higher along those lines.

 

Harris urged putting “real teeth in laws to end racism” and changing policies and culture that caused 16 percent of children go to school hungry. “If we can’t solve the racial issue, America is going to be” in for a serious downfall. He also damned “corporate America.”

 

During the concluding Q and A, Harris warned that the “GOP wanted to shut down the government and the armed forces,” leading to “murders on the streets” and deemed the current government gridlock as “nonsense.” He was also asked whether a presidential candidate could possibly win without running a negative campaign. This he artfully dodged, opining that “government can have aspirations” and speaking of “the promise of America.” Grusin restated the question, but Harris again declined to say yes or no, so Konk Life asked the question yet again as the pollster spoke with fans after the program.

 

Is it possible to run a totally positive campaign? “Maybe if I got involved,” he said. “I might, too.”

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