I am responding to the recent review of David Boren’s book. The author is Boren’s good friend Andy Rieger, editor of the Norman Transcript.

Rieger echoes Boren’s claim that “our standard of living rises with each generation.”

Excuse me, but in what century are Boren and Rieger living?

The average purchasing power of American workers has been declining since the early 1970s, when annual domestic oil production peaked. After this event we became dependent on foreign oil, and the 1973 OPEC embargo triggered rising oil prices and consequently high inflation throughout the decade.

Oddly, in his column, Rieger does not appear to remember what he has written. Before the statement about the rising “standard of living,” Rieger tells us that Boren expresses concern about the “declining middle class.”

Rieger says that Boren “left Washington politics in 1994, publicly frustrated by the partisan gridlock,” but that now he has a ”rekindled interest in elective office.”

The fact is that Boren never lost an election in Oklahoma. He was a legislator and then governor. Later he was elected three times to the U.S. Senate and enjoyed national prominence.

Why in 1994 did such a seemingly invulnerable politician resign from this powerful office? Boren never disclosed the real reasons to us.

Boren has been trying to return to Washington ever since, and in the 1990s had a close association with Ross Perot. There was a Reform Party committee to draft Boren for the 2000 election.

Rieger tells us that there might be “an independent presidential and vice-presidential candidate but it won’t be Boren.”

That is most interesting. On Jan. 1, Rieger published a page 1 story with the headline: “Analysts speculate on Bloomberg-Boren presidential slate.”

The recent “bipartisan forum” which Boren hosted at the University of Oklahoma was nothing more than an expression of his never-ending fantasies, narcissism and hunger for publicity.

Michael P. Wright

Norman