KINDER'S COMMENTARY: CENTRAL HIGH STUDENTS OFFER STIRRING VETERANS DAY TRIBUTE

Monday morning's Veterans Day ceremony at Central High School was one of the finest such events I have ever attended. My heartiest congratulations to Julia Jorgenson and her Renaissance Program students, the Chamber Choir and everyone involved for a stirring and unforgettable commemoration.

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Election perspective

Bill Clinton is the first Democratic president to win re-election since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. More amazing still: In winning that victory, Clinton became the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland to win while voters were installing Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

Thus can the elections of 1996 be said to have essentially ratified the results of the 1994 elections by re-electing Republican House and Senate majorities for the first time since 1928. Nationally, Democrats, who lost two Senate seats while their president was winning re-election, have to be wondering when they will ever take back the U.S. Senate. The numbers today look good for Republicans to hold and even widen their House and Senate margins in 1998.

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GOP's statewide woes

For the second straight presidential election year, Missouri Republicans, winners of so much during the 1980s, failed to win even one statewide office. This despite the fact that at least three of the five statewide GOP candidates were potentially as attractive as any the party has ever offered at the state level. In the down-ballot statewide contests, it is tough to win when Republican nominees for governor and president are getting 40 and 41 percent.

The five re-elected Democratic officeholders once again show that, in politics as in so many other fields, "nothing succeeds like success." And the search will be redoubled for strong and confident Republican candidates who can lead the Missouri GOP back to statewide victories.

Congratulations are in order for re-elected Secretary of State Bekki Cook, a friend who enjoyed plenty of Republican backing in Cape Girardeau County and throughout Southeast Missouri. I personally appreciated an Election Day call to me from Bekki's husband, John, who volunteered his opinion that this newspaper had played Bekki's race down the middle and fair for both sides, without making it personal when we disagreed with her on important issues.

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Kelly High grad to Congress

One huge bright spot for Republicans both in Missouri and nationwide was the victory of Southeast Missouri native Kenny Hulshof in the 9th District of Northeast Missouri. This district stretches from Columbia over to Franklin and St. Charles Counties and north to the Iowa border. Republicans have held this seat just once before, from 1920 to 1922, partly because it includes the overwhelmingly Democratic "Little Dixie" counties of Central Missouri. Back in 1968, a 29-year-old Audrain County native named Kit Bond narrowly lost a race for this seat in his first bid for public office.

Democrats are certain to throw everything they have at trying to win back this seat in 1998, but they will find Kenny as tenacious as he proved in winning the seat this fall. The Hulshof win, combined with Jo Ann Emerson's surprisingly easy retention of a GOP seat, narrows the Democratic majority in Missouri's congressional delegation to 5-4, while on the horizon may be the widely rumored 1998 retirement of 20-year, conservative Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton in the 4th District in West-Central Missouri.

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Exaggerated reports?

Listen to the radio any time on each and every Election Day of my memory and you'll hear reports that "voting is heavy all over." Such reports abounded on Nov. 5, not only from news media but also in anecdotes related across Missouri. When hearing these reports, I always smile and wonder: Are they factual? They almost never are.

They certainly weren't true this time. According to Stapleton's Missouri Political Report, voter turnout in our state this year plummeted by a huge 250,000 from the voters who turned out in 1992.

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Contenders in 2000?

A Washington, D.C., friend who talks to everybody who matters in that town reports that in the first week after the election, four GOP presidential hopefuls met with their respective inner circles of advisers to talk about a race in 2000. They are Michigan Gov. John Engler, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and former Vice President Dan Quayle.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers, and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.