The Third Force

Tom McCall has long been among the Republican Party's most effective and innovative Governors--and one of its more painful embarrassments. In McCall's eight years in office, Oregon adopted one of the nation's first comprehensive land-use plans, banned nonreturnable beverage containers, placed its entire 300-mile shore line in state ownership to protect it from developers and publicly discouraged the influx of new residents and even tourists. It also summarily closed a polluting paper-pulp plant and forced other firms to comply with tough environmental standards.

At the same time, McCall has infuriated fellow Republicans by openly feuding with party leaders, notably Ronald Reagan, endorsing euthanasia, stressing environmental protection over economic growth, making other highly unconventional pronouncements and failing to support some of his party's candidates for office. This year, barred by law from seeking a third term, McCall refused to endorse his party's conservative gubernatorial candidate and was not at all distressed when Oregonians elected Democrat Bob Straub.

Neon Sign. Now 61 and a man without a party, McCall will leave the statehouse on Jan. 13. His future is as misty as the Willamette Valley at dawn. He underwent two cancer operations in 1973, but still appears healthy and trim at 6 ft. 3 in., 200 Ibs. Last week McCall was being mentioned as a potential recruit for the Ford Administration. In addition, McCall has been offered a college presidency and a professorship in communications (he was a newspaper and television newsman for 25 years before being elected secretary of state in 1964). But the prospect he talks about most is his hazy concept of a "Third Force" in American politics, a kind of nonpartisan alliance of reform-minded citizens. Last week at his office in Salem, the state capital, McCall discussed his plans with TIME Correspondent John Austin.

What is this Third Force he talks about? Says McCall: "I think it should be an influence on both parties, like a neon sign that comes on saying, THESE ARE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, no matter what party you belong to. These commandments would include protecting the environment, stressing energy conservation, developing a new openness in government, creating a national presidential primary and national initiatives, eliminating the seniority system in Congress, protecting consumers."

McCall has discussed this Third Force with various political figures, including Elliot Richardson, John Gardner, Ralph Nader and Eugene McCarthy. "Just the fact that we all agree that this raises important issues, that's a Third Force in itself," he says. "I know it sounds amorphous as hell. So you have to ask the people if they want, say, a non-returnable-bottle bill or coastal protection. Then you attach those specifics to the abstraction. You make them realize that without the Third Force ethic--that government can be responsive, that America can still work--you cannot realize the specifics."

When asked what can be done to revive the G.O.P., McCall turns skeptical: "The question is, are we still on the ship or are we already in the lifeboats? No fundamental changes can occur until someone admits that we're no longer on the ship. But a party leader can't say that. He has to say that we must broaden the base of the party. I've heard that for 25 years."

If for any reason Ford does not run, McCall would favor Rockefeller as the Republican nominee. "He's a good administrator who knows what it is to be eyeball-to-eyeball with the tremendously difficult problems of a Governor. But I think it's going to be Ford. He comes across as everybody's old football coach, but there's more to him than that."

Sometimes he regrets his notorious outspokenness. "I wonder if I should have been quite so independent and candid. The press reported me so honestly that I became somewhat careless." He recalls his characterization of a 1970 Spiro Agnew address to Republican Governors as "that rotten, bigoted little speech." Sighs McCall: "I was going to be elected chairman of the National Governors' Conference, but when I made that comment, I went out into the boonies." McCall has also had misgivings about his pro-euthanasia remark. "It did upset my wife Audrey. She's usually around to step on my foot if I go overboard. But not this time. The next day she read about it in the papers and said, 'Oh, Tom, you didn't say that!' "

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