Out of Action

Just when the adjournment of Congress promised a wide-open campaign trail, Richard Nixon discovered that he was not only running against Jack Kennedy but against a crippling opponent named hemolytic Staphylococcus aureus. A few days after he banged his left knee on an automobile door during his quick campaign trip to Greensboro, N.C., he began to sense that something was wrong. The knee swelled, but instead of going to a doctor, Nixon just bandaged the leg himself. Ten days after the accident he turned himself in to Walter Reed General Hospital for tests. A doctor drained off a sample of fluid from the knee for laboratory analysis, discovered the presence of the "staph," a ubiquitous microbe that can cause a varied assortment of minor and major ills--from boils to pneumonia to fatal blood poisoning.

Nixon checked into Walter Reed's presidential suite (carefully paying the $34-a-day rental out of his own pocket) for a fortnight of treatment. His left leg was put in traction to keep the knee immobilized, and he was soon responding to injections of penicillin and erythromycin.*

He had plenty of visitors. President Eisenhower came, proclaimed that Nixon "looks fine.'' Staffers showed up to work over campaign schedules and speeches. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen came in together, and Johnson afterward joked that he had asked for tips on how to run for Vice President from a man with a lot of experience at it. New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller showed up sporting a big "I'm for Nixon" button on one lapel and an elephant-shaped "Nixon" pin on the other, told newsmen that he was planning to make 120 speeches for Nixon during the remaining 60-odd days of the campaign.

A fortnight lopped out of Nixon's own busy campaign schedule might be considered a serious political misfortune, but Nixonmen argued that he could profitably use the hospital stay for needed rest and staff work. With Nixon abed. Running Mate Henry Cabot Lodge spent the Labor Day weekend touring Catskill mountain resorts and New York public beaches in company with Rockefeller.

Under Nixon's new plans he and Lodge will formally open their campaign early-next week with ceremonies at Baltimore's Friendship Airport. Then they will part company, with Lodge heading for Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Florida, Nixon setting out on a whirlwind tour that will take him to 18 cities and towns in 14 states over a span of six days. That schedule is typical of the grueling pace that Nixon has set for himself from the time he gets out of Walter Reed right down to election eve.

-One of Staphylococcus aureus' unpleasant traits is a tendency to develop strains resistant to antibiotics. But antibiotics worked in Nixon's case.

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