Punditry & Partisanship

The U.S. newspaper political columnist is paid to have opinions, and objectivity is neither required nor expected. Particularly in national election years, the pundit is seized with an unconquerable urge to 1) gird his partisan loins, 2) sashay, spear in hand, forth into battle on behalf of his own political beliefs, and 3) relate the whole struggle in uncompromising terms to the state of the nation. Last week, with decision day at hand, the pundits were performing with great zest.

Like the Washington press corps as a whole, the pundits are mostly Democratic. Among their ranking members is the New York Times's Washington Bureau Chief James Reston. "There is a basic difference between the two candidates which no ob ligation to objectivity can conceal," wrote Reston last week. "The two men have reacted differently to the savage pressures of the last two months. Nixon is aiming lower and concentrating on stopping bad things, while Kennedy is concentrating on starting new things. The Vice President is still painfully selfconscious, while Kennedy is increasingly self-assured. Kennedy seems to be growing in this struggle."

The Athletic Syndrome. One of the most pro-Kennedy of all the pundits, both before and after the July Democratic National Convention, is Syndicated Columnist Joseph Alsop, who insists that he believes only in "factual impartiality." To Alsop, Kennedy is a "marvelous natural athlete," Nixon a "self-made athlete, somewhat synthetic, if you will." The Nixon campaign pitch, Alsop finds, has "much emotion but almost no facts at all. It has the uniformity, and. some would say. the approximate intellectual consistency of toothpaste." But Kennedy's language is "elevated, even literary, for this man is something of an artist with words." Last week Joe Alsop, who likes to set himself up as the most doorbell-ringing of all the political pollster-reporters, could see only one storm cloud on the Kennedy horizon--the religion issue.

By personal inclination, the dean of the pundits, Walter Lippmann, 71, has in the past often stayed rather above and beyond the smoke of political battle.* This year Lippmann is blazing away for Kennedy. He is one of the few pundits who have made a personal declaration in print: Kennedy, wrote Lippmann, would "make much the better President.'' To Lippmann, it "has been truly impressive to see the precision of Mr. Kennedy's mind, his singular lack of demagoguery and sloganeering, the stability and steadfastness of his nerves, his coolness and his courage --the recognizable marks of a man who, besides being highly trained, is a natural leader." By contrast, Nixon is "an indecisive man who lacks that inner conviction and self-confidence which are the marks of the natural leader." Last week, on the question of how the U.S. should treat Castro's Cuba, Lippmann dolefully disagreed with Kennedy's solution, nonetheless declared Nixon's both "false and insincere." On Quemoy-Matsu. Nixon has simply been "slanderous" toward Kennedy.

The Normality Pitch. On the minority side of the pundits, Nixon's leading advocate is Columnist David Lawrence, a Virginia Democrat of the Harry Byrd school. "On the issues as presented." wrote Lawrence after the second television debate, "Vice President Nixon won the first and second rounds, though he lost them both to his youthful rival if facial appearance and hand gestures are really vote-getting factors." Lawrence has also accused Kennedy of strengthening, however innocently, the cause of world Communism: "If American 'prestige' isn't at a low point in the world yet. it soon will be if those who are making it the central issue in a political campaign continue blindly to pursue that course."

To a milder Nixon sympathizer, U.S. prestige is not the campaign issue at all. Last week the New York Herald Tribune's Roscoe Drummond solemnly informed his readers what the real issue was: "Which man and which leadership--Nixon leadership or Kennedy leadership--can most be trusted to do the job wisely and vigorously." Although he leans in the Vice President's direction, Drummond has managed to dispense a sort of bland justice: "Vice President Nixon is too intelli gent to believe everything is as snug and rosy for America as his speeches imply. Senator Kennedy is far too intelligent to believe that American prestige and influence are falling apart."

The only ranking political pundit who is not yet wearing his campaign button on his lapel is the New York Times's imperturbable elder statesman, Arthur Krock, 73, another Virginia Democrat. He has enlisted his column largely in the cause of clarifying the campaign issues. Since Labor Day, Krock has analyzed the farm policies of both the candidates, both party platforms, the party civil rights planks in detail and the Quemoy-Matsu issue in its historical context.

Krock has scored both candidates for putting on "dull" campaigns: "New ideas to deal with the great and growing problems of these times have been conspicuous by their absence." But the reader looking for candidate form charts has been disappointed. "I don't think it's my function to tell people how to vote," said the Times's Krock. In this judgment, he seems a minority of one.

* Ever since his famous 1932 judgment that Franklin D. Roosevelt was "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President."

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