Striking the Theme

President Kennedy wended west last week, thinly disguised as the U.S. conservationists' symbol of Smokey Bear.

Over the deepening autumnal landscape of the upper Middle West, the northern Rockies and the Far West soared the White House caravan of three sleek 707s (Kennedy's Air Force One, a backup plane and a press plane). Wherever the "Conservation Tour" set down, folks seemed a bit awed--and more than a bit puzzled over why all the fuss. They should have known. Kennedy was looking forward to next year's elections. It was no coincidence that in 1960 Kennedy lost eight of the eleven states he visited last week. It was even less of a coincidence that in nine of those states Democratic Senators face hard campaigns for reelection.

At times, in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wyoming, Kennedy seemed to be trying harder to invoke the conservationist image of Republican Theodore Roosevelt than of the Democratic Party's openhanded patron saint, F. D. Roosevelt. Kennedy seemed ill at ease in this guise--and his audiences sensed it.

"Soder Ash." In a 30-minute Duluth speech, he was not once interrupted by applause. At the University of North Dakota, where next day he received an honorary doctor of laws degree, the President's reception was equally cool. At Cheyenne, the people scarcely understood that he was talking about one of Wyoming's chief industries when he referred to "soder ash."* At Laramie, he twice stumbled over the word "electrometallurgy," finally ad-libbed: "The words are getting longer as the months go on." Smokey Bear was turning out to be a real turkey--and the President knew it.

And so, in Great Falls, Mont., where he visited the white clapboard house of Patrick Mansfield, 88-year-old father of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and posed for the classic campaign shot with Blackfoot Indians from his honorary tribe (his tribal name: "High Eagle"), the President forsook conservation. He talked of the greatness of America, of the missile threat, of the frustrations of the present age, and of his hopes for the future.

"I hope," he said, "that we will take this rich country of ours and improve it through science and find new uses for our natural resources, to make it possible for us to sustain a steadily increasing standard of living, the highest in the world, and based on that powerful fortress, to move out around the world in defense of freedom as we have done for 18 years and as we must do in the years to come."

In 1960 Kennedy's campaign cry had been to "get America moving again." Now, for 1964, it was to "make a strong America stronger." His listeners seemed to respond. That night, in the giant, timbered Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, after a stirring delivery of America the Beautiful by the Mormon choir, John Kennedy delivered what might be called his first major campaign address for next year's presidential election.

Real Events. "We must recognize that foreign policy in the modern world does not lend itself to easy, simple, black and white solution," he said. "If we were to have diplomatic relations only with those countries whose principles we approve of, we would have relations with very few countries in a very short time. If we were to withdraw our assistance from all governments who are run differently from our own, we would relinquish half of the world immediately to our adversaries." The purpose of foreign policy, said the President, is not to provide an outlet for U.S. sentiments, but to shape real events in a real world. "We cannot adopt a policy which says that if something does not happen, or others do not do exactly what we wish, we will return to fortress America. That is the policy, in the changing world, of retreat, not of strength."

The consequences of such a policy, he added, "would be fatal to our security" and "we would be inviting a Communist expansion which every Communist power would welcome, and all of the effort of so many Americans for 18 years would be gone with the wind."

In his prepared text, distributed before the speech, Kennedy had used two quotes from Barry Goldwater and then denounced them. He did not use the quotes in his delivered speech, and he did not mention Goldwater by name but, in one of the hoariest traditions of U.S. politics, Kennedy aides told reporters that the whole speech could be considered an attack on Goldwater.

That attack was couched in high-flown phrases. The most striking thing about the world in 1963, the President said, "is the extent to which the tide of history has begun to flow in the direction of freedom. To renounce the world of freedom now, to abandon those who share our commitment, and retire into lonely and not so splendid isolation, would be to give Communism the one hope which in this twilight of disappointment for them might repair their divisions and rekindle their hope." But in continuing its commitment to support the world in freedom, the U.S. was "heeding the command which Brigham Young heard from the Lord more than a century ago, 'Go as pioneers to a land of peace.' "

For a full minute, the citizens of Salt Lake City cheered. The choir burst into The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The enthusiasm was understandable. For the Salt Lake City audience had heard John Kennedy strike his campaign theme for 1964.

* Meaning soda ash, which is recovered from natural sources and used for making such things as glass, soap and paper.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.