Nixon & the Press

To judge from the summary of editorial comment, sniffed the Pecksniffian New York Post, "the G.O.P. has clearly renominated Abraham Lincoln." The composite image of Republican Presidential Nominee Richard Milhous Nixon that emerged from the nation's press last week was hardly Lincolnesque. But with few exceptions, U.S. newspapers liked the way the Republicans ran their convention, ratified their choices, and cheered the first speeches in what looked to be a rousing good campaign. Said the Philadelphia Bulletin in an editorial: "They simply put the best foot forward."

Just as Jack Kennedy's nomination was greeted with general approval, so the Bulletin's sentiments on Nixon found echoes all over the U.S. Republican papers made no bones about their enthusiasm--or their hopes. The Los Angeles Times found him "the only man in the history of the Republic who has had 'on-the-job' training," and added: "He has tact and the ability to make the right decision before the crisis engulfs him. The talent will serve him well when he is President." The liberalRepublican Chicago Sun-Times agreed: "Vice President Nixon has demonstrated that he has the great quality of leadership a political party must have in its candidate for the presidency. He is the best-trained man in history." Glowed the Indianapolis News: "A forceful leader, a hard campaigner, and an articulate speaker." The Denver Post lauded Nixon's "political skill," the Christian Science Monitor his "depth of thinking," the St. Paul Dispatch his "ability to unify divergent groups," the Portland Oregonian his "experience, vigor, intelligence."

New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James Reston, who does not conceal his partiality for Democratic Nominee John F. Kennedy, weighed the two candidates and found them just about equal: "The job [Kennedy and Nixon] have to do cannot be done with personality or rhetoric, but only with cool analysis, efficient hard work, and political skill: and both have unusual capacity for precisely this kind of exercise. Both analyzed the problems of the nation in their acceptance speeches extremely well. Both concentrated on the future and left most of the usual nonsense about Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman, the party of the depression and the party of war, to their backward-looking brethren."

Willing to Listen. As expected, there were voices of reserve, and some of dissent. But the criticism was calm and surprisingly muted, with few angry attacks. "We did not like the Richard Nixon of 1946 to 1952," said the New York Times on its editorial page. "We have reservations about the Richard Nixon of 1960." Yet the Times, like most other papers, was willing to listen. "Whether or not there is a 'new' Nixon, there is undeniably a Nixon who has studied hard in the school of the nation's needs, and profited from the result." A few papers brought up the old idea that the U.S. public mistrusts Nixon. "He still needs to convince the country, not by tricks but by solid performance, that he is fitted for the responsibilities of this great office," said the Democratic St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Others, notably the anti-Administration Washington Post and Times-Herald, complained about Nixon's hard-driving campaign methods. Said the Post: "Mr. Nixon often has exhibited what may be termed an instinct for the jugular. Whether such atavism will again break through the veneer of civility remains to be seen." But they could not complain too hard: the same description fits no one better than Democrat Jack Kennedy.

For the moment at least, that was about all the fault that the faultfinders could muster. After attending the orderly, well-managed convention in Chicago* and listening to the Vice President's acceptance speech, Nixon's critics had very little to say against him. "Soap salesman" was the worst that New York Post Columnist William Shannon could come up with. He was, said Liberal Post Columnist Max Lerner, "ambivalent," but "eloquent" nonetheless. Syndicated Cartoonist Herbert Block ("Herblock"), whose caricatures of the Vice President rank second to none in savagery, drew Nixon looking almost human last week, otherwise treated the doings in Chicago with--for Herblock--tolerant humor (see opposite).

Power & Appeal. What greeted Nixon extended to his choice of U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge for Vice President. "An urbanite, a liberal and an internationalist," approved the New York Times, to which the Hearst newspapers added: Lodge's "good looks, poise, charm and intelligence are now a household image. Nixon-Lodge possess every bit as much potential power and voter appeal as Kennedy-Johnson."

By week's end, having exhausted the subjects of a convention with no surprises and of candidates with few visible flaws, the papers passed on to weightier matters. Quoting an Associated Press wire from Washington--"Richard M. Nixon's press secretary handed newsmen an imposing list of world leaders with whom the Vice President has talked"--the New York Post plonked: "If it's the people you've met who make you important enough to be President, we suggest a Third Party ticket composed of Leonard Lyons and Earl Wilson." Wrote Syndicated Columnist Inez Robb: "It's a fair question to ask what Richard M. Nixon has got that John F. Kennedy hasn't got. One simple and obvious answer is Pat Nixon."

*A convention that several papers noted was in sharp contrast to the Democratic meeting in Los Angeles, among them the New York Dally News: "The Democratic Convention was a sloppy, disorderly, time-wasting performance. In Chicago this week, the Republicans ran a fairly orderly and businesslike convention."

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