Safe from Tigers?

Like Little Black Sambo's tigers whirling around the palm tree, the Democratic candidates chased each other madly through the primaries last week, generated most of the political motion, and produced most of the headlines. In the face of such furious activity, Republicans felt a certain uneasiness. In Vice President Richard Nixon, they knew, they had a strong and battle-tried candidate, but was the G.O.P. losing political advantages, marking time? The latest Gallup poll showed Nixon trailing Democratic Front Runner John Kennedy 47% to 53%--putting Kennedy a poll ahead of Nixon for the first time since Nixon's trip to Moscow last summer.*

Sensing the doubts, Dick Nixon set out last week to dispel them with a pledge of a dynamic, hard-hitting campaign that is already in the works. "Anyone who does not recognize that we are in for the fight of our lives must be smoking opium," he told a huge Republican rally in Lincoln, Neb. "I believe we will win, but we must expect this to be one of the closest and hardest fought campaigns in America's political history."

In launching his campaign, Nixon said, "We will be proud to run on our record. But we must not stop there. A record is something to build on, not to stand on. Standpat, hold-the-line thinking is not enough to meet the great challenges confronting the American people at home and abroad."

Green Light. One of Nixon's most vexing problems has been to find a tactful way to avoid being a prisoner of the Administration's record. On the heels of his Lincoln declaration, Nixon got a welcome green light from the White House. "He would be absolutely stupid," President Eisenhower told his press conference last week, "if he said that you were going as far as the record of this Administration would carry you and then stop." Added Ike: "If he doesn't say that he is going to build on what has been so far accomplished, I think he would be very foolish."

Two days later, at a luncheon of the board of directors of the National Federation of Republican Women, came a second White House endorsement. Said Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty: "Personally, I sincerely believe that the Vice President is the only person, in either party, with the years of training and experience . . . and the wisdom that comes from experience ... to qualify him to succeed President Eisenhower."

No opium smoker, Nixon was already drafting specific planks in a program that will stress many of the same ends of national well-being proclaimed by his Democratic opponents but will emphasize voluntary, nonfederal means. Items:

P: Plans for urban renewal and medical assistance for the aged, stressing voluntary participation by states, municipalities and individuals, instead of programs keyed to federal intervention.

P: A farm program recognizing the farmer as "a person who is not getting his fair share of America's increasing prosperity."

P: A system of fostering economic growth, "not through increasing the size of Government, but by expanding the opportunities for creative enterprise by millions of individual Americans."

Low Key. As he shapes his program in Washington, aided by an ever-growing staff of experts and private research groups, Nixon plans to continue his low-key campaign, appearing occasionally at large public functions and working closely with Congress until adjournment. If he is going to base his case on the Eisenhower record, reasons Nixon, it behooves him to help make that record as good as possible.

After he is formally nominated next July, Nixon promises to begin a campaign that will take him "into every state, city and town that limitations of time, space and physical endurance will permit." As an adjunct of that all-out campaign, there is talk that he will charter a Boeing 707 --a campaign plane that will enable him to jet in 1960 style from a New York predinner meeting to a Chicago dinner session to a major evening political speech in Los Angeles, and back to Washington in the space of a single campaign day.

* Only in the Midwest was Nixon leading--51% to 49%.

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