If News Makes Names . . .

If, as a wag once suggested, news makes names, then the biggest names in U.S. presidential politics last week and in weeks past were Republican. G.O.P. Presidential Hopeful Richard Nixon made news whatever he did and wherever he went, addressing the Football Writers Association and attending the Baltimore Colts-College All-Star football game in Chicago, speaking on radio and television about his trip to Russia and Poland, even getting a surprise pat on the back from A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, who praised the work of Nixon's anti-inflation committee. Republican Hopeful

Nelson Rockefeller made headline news from Albany to New York City to Washington to Norway.

In contrast, Democratic candidates seemed almost locked in a closet--and indeed, one was. Massachusetts' Senator John Kennedy spent the week behind closed doors, trying to work out a labor bill as a member of the House-Senate conference committee. Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey was openly fretting because his Capitol Hill duties kept him off the campaign trail--and out of the news. If Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington had done anything newsworthy in the last month, it had certainly escaped the attention of most observers. Adlai Stevenson, returning from Europe, again denied that he was a presidential candidate, again left the door open to a draft--and managed a few sticks of type on the inside pages of some newspapers.

In fact, the top tidbit of Democratic presidential news last week was the settlement of a silly squabble over tickets to the 1960 national convention in Los

Angeles. At stake were 5,000 of 11,000 spectator seats which California Oilman Edwin Pauley claimed had been promised to his host committee. When National Chairman Paul Butler told him flatly to accept 1,500 tickets or lose the convention to an Eastern city, Pauley resigned, and a new committee, formed by National Committeeman Paul Ziffren and headed by former Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball, accepted Butler's terms. Main item of interest in the settlement: many Democrats thought that Butler and Ziffren, both longtime, diehard Stevenson supporters, had nipped a plan to pack the galleries for Stu Symington or Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson, both acceptable to Ed Pauley's good friend, Harry Truman.

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