One Shrill Call

Most politicians run for office for the same reason that other folks run for a commuters' train: to keep their jobs or win better ones. Politics is their business, and to its fortunes they commit their education, their economic well-being and their egos. Since they are loth to admit this, they profess to hear the shrill call of public invitation. By last week the whistle was singing in the ears of several political commuters. Examples:

P: Oregon's Republican Senator Guy Cordon let it be known that he based his decision to run for a third term on the conviction that "the voters of Oregon should have an opportunity to express themselves on the questions of fundamental political philosophy ..."

Tennessee's ex-Governor Gordon Browning, defeated by Frank Clement in 1952, published a 2,200-word excoriation of the Clement administration, reporting: "People in vast numbers are restless to know who will challenge the present state administration, and are demanding to be told." To relieve the suspense, bull-necked Gordon Browning decided to provide the answer: "Aiming at putting an end to this tragic farce,[the people] have turned to me with proper petition to offer myself as a candidate for governor."

P:When Illinois' Democratic Senator Paul H. Douglas found that "the acute problems of the times have shaped my resolution," running for re-election became a matter of simple duty. Said Paul Douglas: "No one . . . can shirk the hard fight ... if freedom is to be preserved and prosperity maintained."

P:New Jersey's Republican Senator Robert C. Hendrickson observed that for almost 20 years he has been looking for a chance to quit government. But every time he saw his chance coming, he was "met by some new challenge.'' The challenge now offered by a second term "is the continuance in our Federal Government of the high standards now established." Hendrickson discovered a helpful fact: "For New Jersey, certain definite advantages . . . would be wiped out overnight . . . [by] changing Senators just at a time when our rich experience and our seniority status in the Senate is of greatest value to the state." (Lackluster Bob Hendrickson now ranks only fifth on both his committees, and not even the seniority system is likely to make him influential.)

P:In announcing for a third full Senate term, Iowa's Democrat Guy Mark Gillette, 75, said he had formerly hoped that "by the end of my present term the progress toward world peace would be well advanced, but the goal is still far ahead of us." Because of this miscalculation, Minor Statesman Gillette reluctantly steeled himself to the prospect of carrying on with "the great unfinished work." Said he: "If the studies and experience of these many years have brought something of value, [it] belongs to the people of Iowa. I have no right to refuse to serve them further, if they wish it."

The candidates' announcements appealed, by their wording, to an ancient political myth that jobs should seek the man. But even so popular a figure as Dwight Eisenhower learned in 1952 that there is another and stronger belief that candidates should ask for office and even be prepared to fight for public favor. By their timing, months before most of the state primaries, this year's candidates reflect how well they know that men must seek the jobs.

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