For President?

The presidential bug is no respecter of political party, reason or season. Last week, some three years before the next national political convention, Washington's political medicine men thought the bug had bitten these fellow townsmen:

Tennessee's Estes Kefauver, 49, who ran stronger than any other Democrat in the presidential primaries last year, never has stopped running, never has seen fit to kill off the spreading legend that Kefauver could have beaten Eisenhower.

Texas' Lyndon Johnson, 44, who last year drained the last ounce of publicity out of his thoroughgoing, watchdog committee on military affairs, as Senate minority leader in the 83rd Congress now shows a rare talent for keeping Northern Fair Dealers and Southern Democrats working harmoniously on his team.

Missouri's Stuart Symington, 41, Harry Truman's energetic Secretary of the Air Force, who won the Democratic nomination to the Senate last summer over Truman and Pendergast opposition, then won the election while Stevenson lost to Ike, now is speaking out plainly for a strong U.S. defense policy. Symington has even picked his 1956 opponent: Joe McCarthy.

California's William F. Knowland, 44, who used California's power in the 1952 G.O.P. Convention to strengthen his own position with GOPoliticos, has since deftly gained complete control of federal patronage in California. In the Senate he has made his mark as a champion of a strong U.S. foreign policy in the Far East (pro Nationalist China, anti Korean stalemate), and last week asked the Administration to condemn Russia as an aggressor in Korea.

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