Going Like '60

Robert Kennedy's strategy is to sweep the primaries, draw such big crowds and show such support in the polls that the convention delegates will have no choice but to leap aboard his steamroller. As he roared through Michigan, Indiana and West Virginia last week, the crowds and the polls, at least, were right on cue.

In Grand Rapids, 20,000 people jammed Campau Square. In Kalamazoo, a turnout of 12,000 brought an admiring exclamation of "fantastic!" from Michigan's former Governor G. Mennen Williams--and a frenzied mother of five invaded his car to capture his right shoe (size 8 1/2, with arch support). In West Virginia, he was greeted like a returning hero.*

Camp Followers. The polls were not quite as beneficent as Kennedy might wish. The first Gallup poll matching the Democrats since President Johnson's withdrawal showed the New Yorker ahead of both Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy in a three-way race (35% to 31% for Humphrey and 23% for McCarthy) and ahead of both again in a double race (45% to 41% against Humphrey; 46% to 37% against McCarthy). The margins were less than overwhelming, however, particularly since Humphrey is still not an announced candidate.

And the staff was growing. Speechwriter Richard Goodwin came over from the McCarthy camp, and Postmaster General Larry O'Brien resigned from Lyndon Johnson's Cabinet and began advising Bobby on the critical Indiana primary.

Even Robert McNamara has an eye on a new New Frontier and, in a statement filmed for TV campaign plugs last week, dropped his normally cool demeanor to give an uncharacteristically effusive appraisal of Bobby's role as a J.F.K. foreign policy adviser, particularly during the Cuban missile crisis. "He remained calm and cool," said the former Defense Secretary, "firm but restrained, never nettled and never rattled, and he demonstrated a most extraordinary combination of energy and courage, compassion and wisdom."

Genuine Concern. Everything was falling into place--with the exception of the primaries. California and Oregon look like easy wins, but Indiana on May 7 looks tough. Bobby professes little concern about McCarthy, but appears genuinely perturbed by Governor Roger Branigin, who is running as a favorite son. A popular Governor with more than usual patronage powers to spur the enthusiasm of party workers, Branigin originally was a stand-in for Lyndon Johnson. He and McCarthy together have a very good chance of winning enough votes to outpoll Bobby.

Thus Kennedy might win Indiana's delegates but lose the psychological victory he needs. For far different reasons, Bobby looks on Indiana as the key to his blitzkrieg strategy in the same way that his brother Jack regarded the West Virginia primary in 1960. Jack had to win West Virginia by a big margin to prove that his Roman Catholicism was no handicap in a predominantly Protestant state. Bobby wants to win big in Indiana to prove that he is not merely an urban phenomenon or a prodigy of the Eastern enclave.

McCarthy meanwhile is hedging his Indiana bets--"Each primary is critical but none is crucial"--while going on to show his ever surprising strength in other states. Solidly smacking the once fabled machine of Democratic National Chairman John Bailey, delegates pledged to the Minnesotan drew a full 44% of the vote in 30 Connecticut towns and cities last week.

Even if he gets no farther than he is already, McCarthy may well control enough delegates after the convention's first ballot to tip the balance in a close race between Kennedy and Humphrey. Which way might he go? McCarthy isn't saying, but the suspicion, shared by Kennedy's strategists, is that he would favor his fellow Minnesotan, Hubert Humphrey.

*Except by the Daily News, a Republican paper in Welch, which editorialized: "Bobby Kennedy is uninvited, unwanted, undesirable, unethical, unfit, unloved, unprepared, unshorn, unpopular and overrated."

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