"I Come for Help"

On his first political excursion into the South since his nomination, Jack Kennedy covered exactly six miles. Over the Potomac and into the Washington bedroom community of Alexandria he drove with Vice Presidential Nominee Lyndon Johnson to draw the sharpest bead yet on Vice President Nixon. A partisan audience of 15,000, overflowing the George Washington High School stadium, roared with every shot.

"Republican orators," said Kennedy, "are fond of saying that experience in foreign policy is the greatest issue in this campaign. I agree. But the issue is not merely the experience of the candidates. It is the experience which the entire nation has gone through in the last eight years. And what an experience it has been. Mr. Nixon is experienced in policies of weakness, retreat and defeat."

Kennedy presented a new version of the Vice President's overseas travels. "In Vietnam he urged the French to continue to fight. On Formosa he implied our support of an invasion of the mainland of China. In India he questioned Nehru's right to be neutral. In Venezuela his goodwill tour provoked a riot. And in the Soviet Union he argued with Mr. Khrushchev in the kitchen, pointing out that while we may be behind in space, we were ahead in color television. Mr. Nixon may be very experienced in kitchen debate, but so are a great many other married men I know."

Kennedy made no mention of civil rights. But he did delve into another problem that is troubling Democrats, i.e., the reluctance with which Virginia and some other Southern states meet the Kennedy embrace. "You began the Democratic Party," he said. "And I cannot believe that in the most dangerous times of our country's history Virginia is going to say, 'we will not join up again.'" Unfortunately for Kennedy, the lecture was largely a waste of time. The key man in deciding the state's vote, wily old Senator Harry Flood Byrd, had not even bothered to come to hear Kennedy speak.

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