Money in the Till

To distribution points across the U.S.

last week went 100,000 copies of the Democratic Party's convention program, probably the slickest of its kind ever run off a press. Bound in hard white linen, bordered with a tasteful gold line, and bearing about as much resemblance to the G.O.P.'s run-of-the-mill convention program as an expensive Shakespeare folio does to the program for the Slippery Rock-East Stroudsburg football game, it will be available for purchase when the Democrats convene in Atlantic City, N.J., on Aug. 24.

Blue-Chip Prices. Of the book's 200 pages, 98 contain ads, for which many blue-chip U.S. firms paid blue-chip prices. Coca-Cola laid out $25,000 for its four-color, back-page layout. Pepsi got the first ad page for $20,000. Others--Ford, Xerox, Union Pacific, etc. --went for $15,000 a page, three times as much as the G.O.P. charged. The ads will put close to $1,500,000 into the Democratic till, and the party hopes to boost its gross well beyond $2,000,000 by selling hard-cover copies for $10, soft-cover versions for $5. The Republicans, by comparison, took in only $300,000 in advertising, charged $5 for their programs.

Lavishly illustrated, the Democrats' book was put together by Texan George C. Bevel Jr., a Manhattan and Washington publicity man who lined up a host of big-name authors to write the text. Lyndon Johnson personally selected some of the authors, personally approved all of them before they got the go-ahead. Political Writer Sidney Hyman contributed four articles on such things as the development of the Democratic Party and a history of dark horses; Harvard Historian and ex-White House Aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has an essay on John F. Kennedy, to whom the book is dedicated; bouncy blonde Hearstwriter Marianne Means discusses famous First Ladies; Freelancer John Bartlow Martin, who was U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic under Kennedy, has turned out a piece on the Kennedy record.

Pure Puff. Some of the material is informative and some of it is pure puff. And nothing is quite as puffy as Nobel-prizewinning Novelist John Steinbeck's panegyric, "A President--Not a Candidate." Sample Steinbeck observations about Lyndon Johnson:

"He loves to hunt, but not necessarily to kill ... He does not kill for sport--only when he wants a piece of venison or a bird to eat."

"What does he hate? Well, he hates gossip, for one thing. Tell him a piece of malicious gossip and you make him your enemy."

"What does he read? History, sociology, economics and some biography."

"Is he sensitive to criticism of himself? Not if it is deserved--not if he can learn from it."

Sort of gets you.

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