The Windup

"The most successful politician.'' said Theodore Roosevelt, "is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice." By last week Presidential Candidates Nixon and Kennedy had said pretty much all there was to say, and had said it--with the aid of the ubiquitous microphone and the frequently repeated speech--in the loudest of voices. On Nov. 8, the nation would know which one had plumbed the hopes and fears of America more deeply. The preelection arithmetic (see box) ten days before the balloting indicated that it was Kennedy who had hit most pay dirt.

Invigorated by the sweet smell of success, Jack Kennedy swept his campaign into a dizzying, whirlwind windup. For the first time, both candidates were now using the state of the economy as their basic issue, giving everyone some rest from Quemoy, Matsu and Cuba. Kennedy struck home with economic issues in hard-pressed areas of Pennsylvania and Illinois, and conjured up the spectre of an economy "slipping into its third recession in six years" in areas that were not hard-pressed but were beginning to wonder if they might be. By his own oomph--no less than by virtue of smooth organization in a traditionally Democratic city--he turned a visit to Manhattan into a mammoth, impassioned Democratic declaration of confidence. It reverberated along the Kennedy bandwagon tracks through the whole nation.

Vice President Nixon, on the other hand, was fighting a doubly defensive campaign: he was defending the record of the Eisenhower Administration and defending himself against the Kennedy onslaught. Taking to an old-fashioned campaign train, Nixon sought to bolster Republican areas in Pennsylvania. Ohio, Illinois and Michigan in hopes that Republican majorities might be able to tip state balances against Kennedy's strong hold on big cities. He called Kennedy's recession campaigning the "most disgraceful, irresponsible statement, probably, of this campaign, other than the one he made on the Cuban situation."

Huge crowds and deafening ovations, and particularly the strong, unequivocally political speech by Ike in Philadelphia, gave the Nixon camp fresh buoyancy, just when it seemed to be in some despair over the Kennedy bandwagon talk. The Nixon camp also set great store by the promised triumphal parade of Ike, Nixon and Lodge through New York City this week, and hopefully proclaimed that Kennedy had "peaked" too soon.

Aware of so many imponderables--including the hard-to-judge religion issue, the relative impacts of the Kennedy and Nixon personalities, the uncertainty over whether Ike could transfer some of his popularity and prestige to Nixon, the reluctance of so many voters to reveal their choice--the pollsters qualified their predictions and wished that they could avoid any stand at all. But the likeliest forecast seemed to run from a close Nixon victory to a Kennedy electoral landslide.

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