No Longer a Hot Subject

New York's Jacob Javits, an able Senator and prodigious vote getter, would have been glad to be the nation's first Jewish Vice President. But a highly conservative Republican presidential candidate probably wouldn't want him, a red-hot liberal wouldn't need him, and a fellow New Yorker like Nelson Rockefeller couldn't run on the same ticket with him. So Governor George Romney's impressive third-term victory in Michigan seemed like very good news last fall. Why not a union of Republican moderates around a Michigan-New York axis? The crux of this strategy was Rockefeller's public renunciation of all presidential aspirations, thereby leaving the field clear for Romney, and his agreement that Javits should become the favoriteson nominee of New York's 92-vote delegation to the 1968 G.O.P. convention--a good bargaining position for the V.P. spot.

Now Javits has decided that it isn't going to happen. For one thing, a man simply does not actively seek the vice-presidency, and Javits concluded that he was making himself look a little foolish. The vice-presidency "is no longer a hot subject," he said in an interview last week. "My present political concern is re-election"--meaning a run for a third Senate term next year.

Javits gamely insists that he and Rockefeller still consider Romney the best moderate candidate. "We have no fallback position," he said. "There are no alternatives." None, that is, unless Romney happens to stumble. Then Javits would not have to look far for an alternative--namely, Nelson Rockefeller.

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