894 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

such things as meals and certain low-priced commodities that are
in common usage — that are excluded maybe under our system —
certain semi-medical tilings. I think you've got to figure out what
you want your tax to produce, and I'm not exactly sure that making
it too restrictive, as the type you speak about, is good, because that
goes back into the theory of spreading the load among the people
numerically and not with any regard to ability to pay. Everybody has
to eat; of course you can argue you don't have to eat your meals in a
restaurant. But when you get into the areas of exemption that are
necessities and you remove those exemptions, I think you are into a
situation where you are back prorating the cost over a numerical
setup with no regard to the ability to pay.

(Personal Popularity)

Q. Governor, you have become kind of a controversial figure —
(Governor interjects: Oh, I've always been one. Reply: No you
haven't; not really) — because of some of the positions you've taken
— starting back at Bowie, your reaction to the problem over there;
the problem of the Negroes who walked out on you; your apparent
switch from Rockefeller to Nixon were to a more middle-moderate
position and lately your statement about Upward Bound. I have a
two-part question: How do you feel that you stand with the public
now because of these positions, and how do you rate your popularity
now as opposed to when you took office and its relationship to the
people who voted you in as opposed to Mahoney?

A. I really haven't given it a great deal of thought and I am not
really concerned about how I stand in popularity now because I am
not running for anything right now. I try to call the shots the way
I see them. I had a fellow say to me the other day: how come you
have changed your stance from that of liberal to conservative? — and
I said well I really haven't; it's just that I've stayed still while literally
thousands of people have rushed past me in a wild dash to the left.
And I believe this is happening particularly with regard to certain
of the media; I think the media are involved in a headlong rush to
the left — great numbers of them.

Q. Well, you say you have stayed still while others have rushed past
you to the left. How do you reconcile that with a statement you made
a week ago that you feel more liberal now than you ever have?

A. More liberal — in open housing — there's one area. Certainly I
haven't moved to the right. That's what I meant to imply — that I
haven't moved to the right.