Sampling the Winds

U.S. newspapers, magazines, radio and TV weren't expected to observe the month-long moratorium on politicking, since they analyze and sift the political winds the year round. If the U.S. press seemed to be treading lightly on the subject of politics after President Kennedy's death, that was only because most politicians weren't giving them much to report--except Lyndon Johnson, who is already a past master at combining the nation's interests and his party's fortunes.

Thus, when the moratorium ended last week, it was hardly surprising that the press leaped enthusiastically back into the business of keeping the current political score. With undisguised impatience, the New York Daily News exhorted Republicans "to make up for lost time" and also suggested a first move: "An all-out attack on Chief Justice Earl Warren's commission to investigate the Kennedy murder, plus a drive to persuade Congress to give Warren & Co. the heave." So that none of its readers would miss the point, the News detailed the rationale behind its strategy: "In view of the Earl Warren Supreme Court's long-standing tenderness toward Communists, any report this commission may give birth to will be open to suspicion of pro-Communist and anti-conservative bias."

Out of Action. With President Johnson a seeming cinch to lead the Democratic Party's campaign in 1964, most newspapers went elephant hunting--and found plenty of game. Columnist Roscoe Drummond reignited the torch that he has been carrying all fall. "The unresolved question" about Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam, wrote Drummond, "is not whether Mr. Lodge is going to resign his ambassadorship and become an open, active and campaigning candidate for the nomination--but when." In some quarters, added Drummond hopefully, Lodge was considered "a more formidable contender" than Nixon, Goldwater or Scranton.

Senator Goldwater was widely, and perhaps prematurely, held to have been nudged well out of the action. "The Draft Barry Goldwater Drive moved forward again," reported Richard T. Stout of the Chicago Daily News, "but with a knock in the motor." But there were dissenters from this view, among them U.S. News & World Report, which declared that the U.S. Senator from Arizona "remains out in front as the truce ends."

On the other hand, Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, heretofore a reluctant possibility, now seemed to some editorial analysts to have moved a lot nearer the money. Said the New York Herald Tribune: "He appears to have just the combination of qualities, both personal and political, that the Republican Party needs to oppose Lyndon Johnson."

All-inclusive. Governor Scranton was just one of a bevy of Republican presidential contenders whom pundits measured like handicappers at a racetrack. Sample form sheet, from Scripps-Howard Correspondent Jack Steele: "Goldwater still the front runner. . . Rocke feller's chances seem to have been helped little, if any, by the sag in Goldwater's fortunes. . . Nixon has gained most on the surface, but has stirred little enthusiasm among party pros." As for Scranton and Ambassador Lodge, Steele saw "no sign that either has stirred masses of voters."

The all-inclusiveness of the Republican listings was deplored by Columnist David Lawrence, who spelled out his fears that the choice might be made for the wrong reasons. "All that seems to count," Lawrence complained, "is that the prospective candidate performs well on television or appears to be a man of congenial and pleasing personality. The quest is apparently for someone with no political liabilities. What America needs is a system that will insure the selection of a competent President of experience, and not just a candidate with personal appeal but without prior training in the national government. These are days when wrong decisions can mean war or national bankruptcy or other catastrophe to the American people."

"Candle Every Egg." As to the Democratic 1964 campaign picture, the editorial parlayers occupied themselves mostly with guesses about Johnson's vice-presidential running mate. California papers re-examined Governor Edmund G. Brown and chauvinistically decided that he had gained national weight. "Brown has several assets," wrote Richard Rodda of the Sacramento Bee. "He is Governor of the largest state in the nation, he is a liberal, a Catholic, and has defeated two formidable Republican opponents, William F. Knowland in 1958 and Richard M.

Nixon in 1962."

The Chicago Daily News's Edwin A. Lahey drafted a list of all the Democrats' names in common currency--Minnesota's Democratic U.S. Senators Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, New York Mayor Robert Wagner, Adlai Stevenson, Pat Brown, Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver. Lahey concluded that Humphrey and McCarthy have "all the qualifications" for the office, but that Shriver might get the nod. Of course, added Lahey, President Johnson would do the actual picking: "One may assume that he will personally candle every egg that is set before him to be hatched as a vice-presidential nominee."

Having the Most Fun. But canvassing vice-presidential prospects was unrewarding sport to a few press appraisers who sought livelier games. U.S. News divined the Democrats' campaign issues ("peace and prosperity"), the campaign slogan ("Why change?") and campaign strategy: count on most of the South, sew up the big-city vote and bag California. Jack Williams, national political correspondent for the Kansas City (Mo.) Star, quoted a rural Kansas editor's prediction that next fall the Democrats might harvest a fine crop of Kansas hay. Six members of the New York Daily News Washington bureau took their own pulse, came up with this fearless forecast: Johnson and Shriver over Scranton and Goldwater--or Goldwater and Scranton.

As usual, however, the editorial cartoonists appeared to be having the most fun (see cuts). And, as usual, their work bore in it the assurance that as long as they were laying about with their lances, no presidential candidate, whatever his persuasion or party, could hope to achieve a national image any larger than life size.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.