Trying to Feel at Home

"I feel at home," Hubert Humphrey told a crowd of 1,200 in Wichita Falls, Texas, but it was perfectly obvious that he did not. As a notorious Northern liberal making his first campaign venture into the Deep South--a two-day tour of Texas and Arkansas--the Democratic vice-presidential candidate at first was as nervous as a spinster at a stag party. He stumbled over his words, mentioned President Kennedy when he meant Lyndon Johnson, seemed thoroughly ill at ease.

Not until he reached San Antonio did Humphrey begin to warm up. There he attracted 5,000 people, including many Mexican-Americans, to the Alamo, led them through his now familiar litany. "Most Americans," he said, "thought we should pass a civil rights bill. Most Americans, most Senators, most Congressmen thought that all citizenship should be first-class citizenship. But . . ." The crowd quickly responded ". . . not Senator Goldwater."

Pork Talk. Hubert spent much of his time talking pork. "You folks have been doing all right," he said in Waco. "You've got the Twelfth Air Force tactical unit and the Veterans Administration office right here." In Wichita Falls, he claimed that Texas got $873 million from the Agriculture Department last year. In Little Rock, he paid tribute to Democratic Congressman Jim Trimble's pork-barreling skills by marveling, "The way it looks, he's been backing up his truck to the Treasury."

Hubert refused to be drawn into arguments that might underscore his "foreign" background. In Houston, a reporter asked what he would do as Vice President if he had to break a tie vote in the Senate on a bill to slash the oil-and-gas depletion allowance. Said Hubert, who has regularly voted to cut the allowance: "I would vote as the President established the policy." It so happens that Lyndon is an old defender of the depletion allowance. In Arkansas, Humphrey brushed aside questions about Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus' segregationist stands. "I didn't come down here to get into a squabble with the Governor," he said. "I think Governor Faubus has done some very good things in your state." He really had no chance to get into a squabble with the Governor, for Faubus was bedridden with a cold, never did get to see Hubert.

Death Sentence. Like Goldwater, Humphrey wound up his week with an appearance at North Dakota's National Plowing Contest. Like Barry, too, he avoided coming to grips with the farm problem, regaled his huge audience with slaps at the opposition instead of specific programs.

Hubert quoted an old--and since modified--Goldwater statement calling for "prompt and final termination of the farm-subsidy programs." This, he told the farmers in his best approximation of cathedral tones, "is the death sentence for agriculture. It would impoverish farm people, wipe out billions in rural land values, ruin business on rural America's main streets, and solve absolutely nothing." And how would Hubert solve things? "You had better make sure that Lyndon Johnson remains as President of the U.S."

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