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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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The Latin American piece, which was a large piece, is illustrative that I am very receptive. We have another one right now on the books. Again, I would say that this is basically from a suggestion of his, although as it's worked out, not precisely. Nevertheless, he wanted a great big piece on foreign affairs. I didn't think that this was really practical, but I did think that he had a real point in feeling that we ought to have a thoroughgoing piece on at least one or various aspects of foreign affairs. This was got under way. So it stems originally from his own proposal, although the outcome is different. Instead of being a general piece, I have a very large piece on the Vietnam situation, all of which we have said in smaller pieces before, but here we put it together again, as we did in the Latin American piece. That piece will come out pretty soon. It still has a lot of work to be done on it, but it's a very big piece, putting together our view of the whole Vietnam problem, which is quite a problem, and I hope to get that into print within the next couple of weeks. And this, I think it would be fair to say, stems from a proposal of his. I'm all for new ideas.

Q:

One last thing. Your mention of de Gaulle made me think of it. De Gaulle's concept of grand design-as far as I can see up through the years, the interaction or conversations between the publisher and the editor of the editorial page has been about problems that are going to come up in three months or three years, perhaps. Am I right in assuming that there really isn't, besides sticking to certain principles, any great projection of planning into the future as far as the editorial page goes? Obviously there's a certain looking toward the future. But, for instance, shall we say you may take a stand in favor of Medicare for the aged, but you really haven't made up your mind whether in ten years you're going to want to bring the age downward? This sort of thing is left to the future.





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