Projecting the Image

Time was when top officers of national political conventions were picked because of their position of integral power within the party structure. For example, the permanent chairman has often been the party leader in the U.S. House of Representatives--Democrat Sam Rayburn or Republicans Joe Martin and Charlie Halleck. But such senior party citizens have a tendency toward bald heads, bulb noses, or gravel voices--and none of these come over well on television. The fashion nowadays is to select younger, better-looking men to project the party's image. Thus, the Republican National Committee last week named Oregon's Governor Mark Hatfield, 41, temporary chairman and keynoter and Kentucky's Senator Thruston Morton, 56, permanent chairman for the July 13 nominating convention in San Francisco.

Hatfield, a man of boyish good looks, will be responsible for whipping dele gates into a suitable state of partisan enthusiasm and wooing televiewers to the party cause. Actually, Republicans can expect little by way of breathless oratory from him. His delivery is cool, crisp and unemotional, whether on the political stump or talking to a group of his fellow Baptist laymen on the subject of "The Erosion of the Lordship of Christ in the Protestant Church." But Hatfield will give convention voice to the far reaches of the western U.S. And no one doubts that the welltailored, button-down appeal of middle-reading Republican Hatfield will be a rating builder.

Thruston (rhymes with Houston) Morton's Kentucky nudges the Mason-Dixon line, and his appointment offers calculated appeal to Southerner and Midwesterner alike. Morton is the seventh-generation member of a leading Kentucky family, a Yale graduate with citified manners and a Brooks Brothers look about him. Yet not even the backwoods folks of Kentucky mistake him for anything but what he is: a tough politician in a state that grows tough politicians. Big (6 ft. 2 in. and 190 lbs.) Thruston Morton is a shade to the rough-cut side of Mark Hatfield. But his vibrant voice and imposing manner behind the gavel will certainly project an image.

The third key conventioneer--Platform Chairman Melvin Laird, 41, a Congressman from Wisconsin--is balding and a bit on the pudgy side. But that makes little difference; his role will be performed mostly off-camera.

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