Others Who Stood in the Spotlight

The Winning Ways of John Paul, Superstar

Just back from the last of his international journeys in 1979, the Pope strode to the window of his Vatican apartment and addressed the waiting crowd in the chill night air of St. Peter's Square. "As Jean-Paul Sartre says, 'You have to know when to stay home,' " John Paul II told the throng, his face creasing with the luminous smile that has become his trademark. "We have earned a good rest, both you and I."

So he had. For John Paul, a vigorous 59, his first full year in Peter's Chair had been marked by a swirl of activity, a blizzard of words and a sure sense of how to work crowds that numbered in the millions. Even in Italy, the people fondly embraced this "foreign" Pontiff as one of their own. In a supposedly secular age, he became the West's most impressive leader, and already he must be ranked as one of history's most popular Popes.

John Paul combined the talents of showbiz superstar and avuncular, if stern, pastor. Despite his unyielding stands in matters of dogma and discipline, he proved wildly popular in human terms. Everywhere, he uncompromisingly addressed the key issues troubling the Roman Catholic Church. In Puebla, Mexico, he told Latin American bishops that while the church must preach social justice, it can never accommodate theologies that are inspired as much by Marx as by Jesus. In his homeland of Poland, during the first visit by a Pope to a Communist-ruled land, he encouraged East bloc Christians to persist in their struggle for religious liberty.

In the U.S., where he became the first Pope to be received at the White House, he was an inspiring preacher of good will and compassion, but also a firm advocate of strict church discipline. Though his doctrinal positions against birth control, divorce, and married and women priests are opposed or ignored by many U.S. Catholics, his visit was still a huge success. In overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, his long-range goal was restoration of harmony between the world's 700 million Roman Catholics and the 125 million adherents of the Eastern Orthodox faith, who have been divided since the 11th century.

If anything marks the 264th Pontiff more than his magnetic appeal it is his steely determination to reassert the powers of his office after the experimentation that followed the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s. Thus, though John Paul is concerned about the growing shortage of priests, he insists that controls on their conduct must be tightened, not eased. In September he called in the superior general of the Jesuit order and demanded that its members correct "regrettable shortcomings" in discipline and faith. With John Paul's approval, the Vatican has also grown more critical of liberal theologians; last month the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that Hans Kung of West Germany had diverged too far from church doctrine to be considered fit to teach Catholic theology.

Whatever the disputes within the church, however, John Paul is a surefire drawing card on the road. In 1980 the Pontiff can look forward to visiting the Philippines, Brazil and some of the other 23 nations that have asked him to drop in.

Under the Gloves, Solid Carborundum

She came in like a whirlwind from the radical right, leading the Conservative Party to a thumping victory in May. Only four years earlier she had boldly seized the party's reins from Tories of more traditional gender and status. Now here was Margaret Thatcher--a woman--sitting in the seat once occupied by Pitt, Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill.

Maggie Thatcher, 54, looks as if she is cut from the same bolt as the Queen, but under the white-gloved exterior is solid carborundum. In a political era of blurred images, Britain's Prime Minister is all sharp edges. She came in as a crusader for individual and economic freedom, an evangelist for strict monetarism who would steer Britain hard to starboard, away from the welfare state. "It is a herculean task," said she, "but we are not fainthearted pilgrims." Opinion polls suggest that many hearts remain faint; her government's support has fallen to 40%, her own approval rating to 37%. But she is not deterred; she pleads with her people --and all the West--to "keep a steady nerve" for "the dangerous decade of the '80s."

Taking office with a comfortable 43-seat majority and with the Labor Party divided, she moved swiftly to give the British citizen more say on how his money is spent and to trim the central government's powers. She slashed income taxes from an average of 33% to 30%, cut the top tax levels from 83% to 60%, whittled projected public spending for the coming fiscal year by $7.7 billion, virtually doubled the value added tax (sales tax) to 15%, partially denationalized British Aerospace and British Airways and promised to trim the bureaucracy. With inflation rising to 17.4% promised to trim the bureaucracy. With inflation rising to 17.4% by year's end, she unflinchingly put up interest rates to alltime highs, about 20% for personal loans, 15% on home mortgages.

As the grocer's daughter from Grantham set Britain on a different course, she earned sobriquets like "Attila the Hen." But it is not Thatcher's way to sugarcoat the bad medicine she is administering. "Things will get worse before they get better," she has warned. Every indicator suggests that Britain is in for a recession, 20% inflation and a grim winter of strikes and strife in 1980-81. Yet she insists that her strict monetary measures will transform Britain from what she calls a "wealth-consuming" into a "wealth-producing" nation. The stakes are high; other governments have run aground on such economic shoals.

Thatcher's boldest foreign policy stroke was perhaps her most surprising move, and it has led to a proposed settlement for Rhodesia after 14 years of futile efforts. It was Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington who skillfully handled the negotiations, but the agreement was made possible by the unexpected flexibility of Thatcher, who had long been seen as a closet colonialist. An unyielding hawk who considers Soviet expansionism a growing threat, she increased Britain's defense budget by 3% and led the fight to modernize NATO's intermediate nuclear weapons. "They call me the Iron Lady," she says defiantly. "They are quite right--I am!"

Her first year has stamped her as a controversial leader, but Maggie Thatcher does not object to that description either. Says she: "I am controversial. That means I stand for something."

Despair in "The Year of the Child"

He has never seen a movie or been to an amusement park. He can neither read nor write. He is only twelve, but he has already witnessed a hundred lifetimes of despair. In 1979, proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of the Child, Ou Rithy, a slight Cambodian child, became part of one of history's greatest mass flights.

Since the Communist takeover of Indochina in 1975, nearly 2 million people have left Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos as Hanoi has moved relentlessly toward domination of the entire region. The biggest exodus occurred this year in the wake of two campaigns: Hanoi's attempt to rid Viet Nam of "unreliable" elements, mainly ethnic Chinese, and its 1978 invasion of neighboring Cambodia.

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese paid their life savings to bribe their way out of Viet Nam. Most left aboard overcrowded, barely seaworthy vessels. A new phrase--boat people --entered the language. In their search for a haven, as many as 250,000 to 500,000 of these people drowned or perished of starvation on the high seas. There is no closer estimate, which in itself says much about the horror. Said Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of the tragic spectacle: "If you don't have calluses on your heart, you will bleed to death."

Most of the Cambodians fled on foot, as did Ou Rithy and his family. When the boy was eight, his father Ou Shhav tearfully announced that the Communist Khmer Rouge had won the civil war that had raged for five years. Ou Shhav, a U.S. embassy employee, had been unable to evacuate the family to safety in Thailand.

For four years, Ou Shhav, his wife and his children carefully concealed their connection with the U.S.; disclosure of this would have meant instant execution at the hands of the genocidal Pol Pot government. One of the five children, Ou Vilay, a nine-year-old girl, collapsed and died of heat prostration while working in a rice field. Ou Rithy was separated from his parents and made to work and sleep in the fields. Once every three months he was permitted a brief reunion with his family. Occasionally, he was called to public meetings by Khmer Rouge cadre and forced to watch as people were bludgeoned to death.

Last June the family escaped through thick jungles into Thailand, only to be forced back into Cambodia at the point of Thai guns. For 24 days Ou Rithy's family walked deep into Cambodia, the father carrying the youngest brother on his shoulder, and the mother hobbling on a foot through which an ulcer had eaten a hole. Most days the entire family subsisted on a condensed-milk can filled with rice. In desperation, they decided to make another bid for freedom, and on Oct. 23, the six exhausted members of the family again crossed into Thailand.

They were part of the flood of 600,000 Khmers who reached the Thai border this fall, many of them emaciated members of Pol Pot's reeling army. Like the 134,000 Laotians in crowded camps in Thailand, they face a bleak future. Thailand, bearing the heaviest refugee burden of any of the non-Communist countries of Southeast Asia, cannot keep the fugitives indefinitely. Their chances of resettlement in the West are small. The U.S. has agreed to accept 14,000 Indochinese refugees a month, and countries like France, Australia and Canada promise homes for thousands more. But that is not nearly enough. Ultimately, most may be repatriated to their desolated homeland, where hundreds of thousands already face starvation.

Ou Rithy and his family may be more fortunate. His father's long service as a telephone repairman for the U.S. embassy places him in a special category. In their cramped lean-to in Thailand's Khao I Dang camp, where 80,000 refugees are living, Ou Rithy spends a part of each day trying to learn English. He knows eye, ear and cat, and as he pronounces the words, a tiny smile of accomplishment lights his face. Such an expression is rare on a Cambodian child's face today.

A Standout Figure on the Inflation Front

At a daunting 6 ft. 7 in., he had for years been literally a standout figure in the clubby world of international banking and high finance. But the general public knew next to nothing of Jimmy Carter's newly appointed Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Paul A. Volcker, until he abruptly strode stage center last autumn to lead the Administration's faltering fight against inflation.

A former bank economist and later president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Volcker, 52, boldly committed the Federal Reserve in early October to a policy of battling inflation head-on by making money and credit both scarce and costly. His tactic was to tighten sharply the complex procedures that the board uses to monitor and manage the growth of the nation's money supply. Since March, the nation's basic measure of money, the so-called M 1 (consisting of currency in circulation and funds in commercial-bank checking accounts), had been expanding at a breathless annual clip of nearly 9%, although the economy as a whole was growing by less than 1%.

Though widely considered as long overdue medicine, Volckernomics caught everyone from corporate treasurers to Zurich goldbugs off guard and pushed Wall Street into a brief but panicky tailspin. Interest rates--the actual cost of money --rose to their highest levels since the Civil War. With loans suddenly more costly, housing sales began to suffer, as did installment buying. As the year drew to a close the economy began to show more and more signs of slipping into recession.

By forcing interest rates up and slowing economic growth, the Fed declared war on the nation's years-long inflationary binge and the attitude of "Buy it now before the price goes up." Instead of spending their paychecks as fast as they got them, people would find it smarter to save their money, either in various high-interest bank accounts or perhaps in high-yielding money-market mutual funds. To stay competitive, businesses would have to begin slashing prices instead of raising them and plowing more money into upgrading and improving outmoded plants and factories. All in all, it seemed a sound strategy to help right the nation's topsy-turvy economy.

So far, Volcker's bold money-management techniques have been working well; the growth of M l has been slowing as expected. Yet inflation continues to surge at a double-digit pace, in part because it can take nine months or more before tighter money begins to curb rising prices.

Meanwhile, the economy remains alarmingly vulnerable to external shocks and stresses. For now, the biggest single threat to Volcker's inflation-fighting tactic is dramatic increases in the cost of imported oil, which has doubled in price during 1979 and is expected to drain the U.S. of more than $83 billion during 1980. That money is in effect being taxed out of the economy altogether, and if the Fed chooses not to ease off at least somewhat on its tight-money policy, the economy might slip into a more serious recession than can be tolerated. Yet the public might misread any easing of the restrictions on money as a retreat. That could fire up inflation worse than ever, and that is what Paul Volcker is pledged to avoid.

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