Off the Treadmill

The man in the Homburg hat, the Chesterfield coat, the blue suit and the shirt with French cuffs was back driving his Cadillac to his salmon-pink summer house on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario. Behind him were two months of exhausting campaigning, a 6,000 mile trail that had led him into 148 cities in 40 states. William Edward Miller, 50, the bantam gut-fighter who had been put on the ticket "because he drives Lyndon Johnson nuts," had come home to roost, and not a day too soon to suit him. "The British have the right idea," he said. Presidential election campaigns have become "too long, too expensive, too arduous and too boring for the public.".

Miller should know. Initially, he had envisioned a month of talking to G.O.P. groups, binding up the post-convention wounds as only a former G.O.P. National Committee chairman with acquaintances throughout the party could do. Then an all-out campaign to woo independent and Democratic votes, backed up with a heavy nationwide TV coverage. Instead, Miller found himself on a weary treadmill, trying to explain the various positions taken by his standardbearer.

Early he settled on a basic stock pitch, made it over 150 times until he groaned, "God, I'm tired of hearing that same speech." Week after frustrating week he was scheduled into small rural towns across the nation, carried on with grim determination to do his mediocre best, until the spark had gone, the acid evaporated, and only a handful of home-town cronies aboard the silver-and-blue campaign plane were left to dispel the gloom. "I know exactly what I'm going to do if I lose," he quipped to a friend, "but I don't know what the hell I'll do if I win."

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