An Ovation For Bert

No hard feelings--at least not in public As Bert Lance strode into the grand ballroom of New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel last week, more than 800 young brokers and bankers burst into prolonged applause. The warm welcome by members of the Investment Association of New York meant mainly that Lance still had friends far from his native Georgia. Partly out of respect for his feisty fight against leaving Washington, but more clearly out of appreciation for the conservative economic views that he had voiced as Jimmy Carter's Budget Director, the audience gave Lance three standing ovations and interrupted his 24-min. speech ten times with whistles, applause and shouts of approval.

Lance referred to his Washington ordeal only by indirection and with some country Georgia jokes about plucked chickens and soon-to-be-slaughtered lambs. He told of the elderly woman who picked out a chicken at a meat market, peered under its wings, poked its breast and tested its thighs, then rejected it. Complained the butcher: "Lady, I don't think you could pass a test like that." Lance also told of a zoo visitor who was pleased at seeing a lamb and a lion sharing a pen and praised the zookeeper for fulfilling the biblical prophecy that natural enemies would one day live peacefully side by side. "But sir," replied the attendant, "we put in a new lamb every day."

Lance suggested more seriously that his own experience in Washington should not frighten other businessmen from serving in the governmental zoo, even if a meat-market kind of inspection is required. But he warned against the tendency of Government and business to act as adversaries. More businessmen in Government service, he suggested, might reduce the friction. Argued Lance: "There are things that only business can do, and things that only Government can do. Government must be open and responsive and willing to hear what you have to say."

Would he be willing to return to Government in view of what happened to him as Budget Director? Said Lance: "The important thing for me and for you is to be able to say in the future, 'Yes, I am willing to be part of the process.' " -

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