The Campaign Ahead

If the coming campaign pits Jack Kennedy against Richard Nixon, as most pundits and politicos are assuming, the struggle will be close and hard fought. Despite the U.S.'s overall 3-to-2 Democratic leanings, public opinion polls show Nixon and Kennedy running about even.

The Gallup poll, for example, gave Kennedy a 51-49 edge over Nixon before the summit collapse, now gives Nixon a 51-49 edge over Kennedy. Both men are able speechmakers and hardy campaigners, with youthful energy (Nixon is 47, Kennedy 43), and plenty of political talent. Each has a staff of bright, politically savvy young men to help out with the strategy and tactics. In terms of sheer political expertise on both sides, a Nixon v. Kennedy match could be one of the most fascinating and intellectual presidential campaigns in U.S. history.

In so even a match of men, the stand (or non-stand) they take on issues could count heavily. The convention platforms and the nominees' acceptance speeches, usually ignored by the voters, should merit scrutiny.

Second to Moscow. Issues were already crackling in the political air last week. In traditionally Republican North Dakota, farm discontent carried the Democratic candidate to a razor's edge victory in a special senatorial election (see Political Notes), a reminder that the farm mess ranks as one of the biggest unresolved domestic issues of 1960. In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson lured Congress into recessing until early August, leaving major welfare measures--federal aid for schools, housing and medical care--to be legislated in a post-convention atmosphere of partisan thrusts and parries.

On the Senate floor, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright charged that the Administration had dragged the U.S.'s international prestige to a "new low" by "bumbling and fumbling" during the U-2 dustup. The Administration's handling of the U-2 incident, said Arkansas' Fulbright, taking a slap at Dwight Eisenhower, showed a need for "much firmer direction of all governmental activities affecting foreign relations. If this is not to come from the White House, it should come from the State Department." Back came Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley, ranking Republican on Fulbright's committee, to defend the U-2 for a "record uniquely successful in history," and to characterize Fulbright's attack as "second only to Moscow" in its effort "to pin blame on U.S. policy."

From the Sidelines. Among domestic issues, the biggest question up for debate will be the role of the Federal Govern ment in the management of the nation's economy. Democrats have switched from depression-born bread-and-butter issues to "jam-and-jelly" issues on how the U.S. should live with its prosperity. As they see it, the Government should intervene to promote faster "growth" and shift resources from private spending to the "public sector." Nixon dismisses the idea of set ting a specific national growth-rate goal as mere "growthmanship," urges tax reform, and a chance for the time-tested U.S. free enterprise economy to grow without Government controls.

In their precampaign jabbing at the Administration record, Democrats were getting some welcome help from the sidelines. Big-time newspaper pundits sniped at the Administration's recent foreign-policy embarrassments (see PRESS). New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, as outspoken an advocate of faster "growth" as any Democrat, warned that the "relative military power of the U.S. as compared with the Soviet Union has steadily and drastically declined over the past 15 years" and called for a $3.5 billion boost in the next defense budget.

Off to Newport. Curiously, the Democrats were getting some help from Dwight Eisenhower, too. In a week when the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Republican Governor of the nation's most populous state challenged him on foreign policy and national defense, when the Russians torpedoed the Geneva disarmament conference (see FOREIGN NEWS), and when the Gallup poll reported a sharp drop in his popularity (from 68% approval to 61%), Dwight Eisenhower announced that he was planning to go off to Newport, R.I. this week for a month's vacation.

He thereby fortified the already widespread impression that he has resigned himself to a caretaker's role during the remaining half-year of his presidency. If Ike lets his Administration fade out in that drab role, he may do more than any Democratic candidate to damage his party's prospects in the November elections.

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