Our national political correspondent, Robert Ajemian, got his first up-close look at the special tensions and frustrations of presidential campaigning when he covered Dwight Eisenhower's drive for the White House in 1952. He recalls one occasion when an exhausted Ike roundly chewed out some of his aides on a Manhattan street after fumbling an important speech because of a glitch in a TelePrompTer machine. Having witnessed similar episodes in other campaigns--as correspondent, political editor and later assistant managing editor at LIFE, Ajemian confesses: "I admire politicians enormously. They are the best of the survivalists. They get battered and second-guessed and in the process develop this marvelous psychological armor. It is fascinating when they allow you to look behind it."

Ajemian is already deep into his seventh presidential season. For this week's cover story on Ronald Reagan's reach for the Republican nomination, which was written by Associate Editor Frank Merrick, Ajemian interviewed the candidate himself, while Correspondents John Austin, Jess Cook and Roland Flamini talked to Reagan's aides, friends and political adversaries. For Ajemian's personal assessment of Reagan's potential as a survivalist, see page 20.

Was it really Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, who shot down John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963? Twelve years later, doubts about the assassination stubbornly persist. A five-page story in the Nation section this week re-examines the evidence, which still persuasively supports the Warren Commission findings. Senior Writer Ed Magnuson and Reporter-Researchers Marta Dorion and Patricia Gordon spent many weeks reviewing the Warren Report, examining blowups of the Zapruder film and talking with ballistics and medical experts. Magnuson also drew on interviews by TIME correspondents with various experts and assassination theorists round the country. In Washington, Correspondent Hays Gorey sat down with Edward Kennedy for a rare conversation with the Senator on his own view of the tragedy in Dallas.

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