Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em

From the protected podium of their Chicago convention hall, a platoon of Democratic orators laid about them right and left. Samples:

The Administration: "This bunch of racketeers" (Harry Truman); "twiddling thumbs while vast natural resources of America [are] being tinkled away like Christmas bells" (Tennessee's Governor Frank Clement); "a vast intellectual desert" (Truman); a "billion-dollar circus" with "the most bizarre political sideshows ever staged" (Oklahoma's Senator Robert Kerr); they have "forsaken the best interests of the people . . . sacrificed the natural-resource heritage of the public" (Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse).*

Eisenhower: A "genial, glamorous and affable general who had joined the Republican Party after he had reached the age of retirement from the Regular Army" (Clement); "he was born in the district that I represent, and everybody down there that remembers him says he was a good baby. Then he moved off to Kansas, and after he is 60 years of age, he decided he'd be a Republican" (Texas' Sam Rayburn); "he cannot Hagertize his way through this whole campaign" (Clement).

Nixon: "The vice hatchetman" of the Republican Party (Clement); "the chief function of the Vice President should not be that of a political sharpshooter for his party. It should not be that of providing the smear under the protection of the President's smile" (Candidate Estes Ke-fauver); "the White House pet midget, Moby Dick Nixon and his whale /- of a pup, Checkers" (Kerr).

Dulles: "Unquestionably the greatest unguided missile in the history of American diplomacy" (Clement); "Daredevil John Foster Dulles -world-famous escape artist with his breathtaking, death-defying brink-of-war act" (Kerr).

Circus-minded Robert Kerr of Oklahoma found a niche in his political sideshow for others in the President's Cabinet and aides: "Bull Dog Charlie Wilson and his dog act -energetic bird dogs, howling kennel dogs"; "grinning Jim Hagerty and his most fascinating medicine puppet show"; "NoseDive Benson, the flexible man"; "Give-a-Million McKay, the give-away king"; "hapless Harold Stassen, the dying young man on the flying trapeze"; "the little strongman, Sherman Adams, the one Republican who won't run for Vice President. He declines to stop being President."

* Campaigning for governor in Texas, Democrat Price Daniel complained: "I don't know how many of you saw or heard Senator Wayne Morse when he spoke last night at the Democratic National Convention, but he sits right next to me in the Senate -and that's another good reason for my wanting to come home."

As every moviegoer knows, Moby Dick is the whale.

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