More Early Picks

"This 1964 campaign is loaded with uncertainties," said the New York Daily News, warming up its editorial columns for the long debate that leads to November. "But one thing seems at least 99% certain: that it is going to be our most exciting and fiercely fought presidential battle in decades. Excuse us a moment while we lick our chops." Early Rash. The News might well have added that much of the excitement and ferocity has been supplied by the press. Rarely in a presidential year have so many newspapers betrayed such impatient eagerness to referee the cam paign -- or to influence its outcome. The Chicago Tribune declared for Barry Goldwater even before he was formally his party's choice, and dozens of other papers have decided not to follow the time-honored custom of hearing the candidates out before making up their editorial minds.

The rash of early newspaper endorse ments may also have inflicted permanent damage to the image of a one-party press. Already in Lyndon Johnson's trophy room, for instance, are such normally Republican-sympathizing papers as the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, and three of the eight dailies in once Republican Vermont.

Last week Johnson picked up two more metropolitan Republican prizes: Walter Annenberg's Philadelphia papers, the morning Inquirer and the evening News. Said the Inquirer, which had never in 135 years backed a Democrat for President*: "This newspaper is convinced that it would be disastrous for this nation, disastrous for the two-party system, and disastrous for world peace, to have Barry Goldwater in the White House."

Sneaking Suspicion. Goldwater, in the meantime, has been gathering newspaper support all over that traditionally Democratic preserve, the South. Among his more recent converts are the Chattanooga, Tenn., News--Free Press and the Natchez, Miss., Democrat. Last week he got the support of four papers in Alabama and Mississippi owned by Ralph Nicholson.

What effect such impetuous and enthusiastic side picking may have on the election was a question for which at least one newspaper had a ready answer. "For many years," said the Wall Street Journal, "it has been our practice not to announce our support for any candidate in the quadrennial presidential campaigns. We don't propose this year either to tell our readers whom to vote for. One reason is that we suspect it would be futile. We even have a sneaking suspicion that most American voters are unmoved by the traditional endorsements offered by newspaper editors, labor leaders, businessmen or their next-door neighbors."

* The more youthful News, founded in 1925, swore allegiance to the Democratic Party from 1954 to '57, when it belonged to Philadelphia Contractor Matthew McCloskey, longtime treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. In 1957 McCloskey sold it to Annenberg and the paper returned to the Republican fold.

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