Muskie Hits the Trail

Everywhere he went he was recognized. Marooned by a fog at London's Heathrow airport, he sat with his wife, who was catnapping, her head resting on his shoulder. But soon he was surrounded by a gaggle of American youngsters heading home from a skiing trip. They excitedly demanded autographs, and Senator Edmund Muskie happily complied. The lanky Democrat from Maine was also recognized by a London shop clerk when he stopped to buy a sweater, by tourists at Jerusalem's Shrine of the Book, and even by occupants of a kibbutz in the Negev.

The trip was designed to maintain Muskie's momentum as the front-running challenger to President Nixon's reelection bid next year. The unexpected impact of Muskie's election-eve telecast in November had caused his strategists to take advantage of his early visibility and move up the long-scheduled tour by several months. The trip is also meant to build credits for him as a potential statesman, give him a firsthand feel for basic world problems and permit him to meet several world leaders.

A Little Wary. By hitting the campaign trail so early--even if it began some 5,000 miles away in Jerusalem --Muskie also hopes to convince potential donors that it is not too early to place their money on him. Washington Lawyer Berl Bernhard quietly opened a campaign headquarters for Muskie nine months ago. So far, $250,000 has been raised, but one Muskie fund raiser estimates that another $1,500,000 will be needed even before the primary elections begin. It will not be easy to raise that sum. The men being solicited, notes an aide, are "all a little wary. They want to make investments, not contributions--they want to be sure."

The trip also tested Muskie's style and stamina. He arrived in Tel Aviv at dawn, bleary-eyed after flying all night. Yet he gracefully handled an airport press conference that he had not expected. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, facing aggressive questioning by students, he coolly avoided saying anything that could possibly affect the delicate negotiations toward peace in the Middle East. Accused of being a latecomer in opposing the war in Viet Nam, Muskie candidly conceded that he was "guilty of misunderstanding" the situation in the early 1950s, but argued that "if your specification for public office is complete consistency, you're going to find few promising candidates in this room." He was frequently applauded.

Three Religions. To further his fact-finding and get-acquainted goals, Muskie spent 90 minutes in a private discussion with Prime Minister Golda Meir, dined with Foreign Affairs Minister Abba Eban and spent more than an hour with former Premier David Ben-Gurion. With temperatures in the high 80s, Roman Catholic Muskie performed an ecumenical triple play: he took off his shoes to enter the Moslem Dome of the Rock, perched a yarmulke on his head at the Wailing Wall and talked with a Christian priest at the shrine of the Holy Sepulcher.

This week Muskie was scheduled to fly to Cairo and hear the other side of the Middle East controversy from top Egyptian officials. He then will go to Moscow, where he hopes to see Premier Aleksei Kosygin, and to West Germany for a visit with Willy Brandt.

The rest of the tour was on the mind of one alert student at Hebrew University who asked Muskie, amid laughter, a key question: "I would like to hear what you will tell the Egyptians when you go to Cairo." Muskie smiled, gulped a glass of water, and showed his ability to debarb a question. "As Adlai Stevenson once said," Muskie replied, "I can hardly wait to hear myself."

Despite Muskie's fast start, the competition is already gathering. Last week South Dakota's Senator George Mc-Govern resigned from the chairmanship of the Democratic Party's reform commission so that its work would not be jeopardized by his candidacy. McGovern, who intends to stake out a position to the left of Muskie, is expected formally to announce next week his intention to seek the presidency.

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