Breaking Precedents

With less than a month to go before Election Day, newspapers across the country were continuing to get off the fence and lining up behind a presidential candidate. The effort was upsetting precedents, leaving more than one patch of pants on the barbed wire. The Los Angeles Times, which had backed Nelson Rockefeller against Goldwater in the California primary, decided to stand by individual liberty, private enterprise and Barry Goldwater, thus remaining in the G.O.P. column for its 84th year. The New York Herald Tribune, with an even longer record--more than 100 years--as a Republican stalwart, said: WE CHOOSE JOHNSON. Confessed the Trib: "Travail and torment go into those simple words. But we find ourselves as Americans, even as Republicans, with no other acceptable course."

In the crucial Midwest, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Democratic since Alf Landon) predictably chose L.B.J.; the Toledo Times broke a 116-year-old tradition and followed suit, while the Cincinnati Enquirer opted for Barry, and the Wisconsin State Journal decided, "We cannot honestly recommend either candidate to--the voters." Not surprisingly, one of the nation's largest Negro newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier, editorialized for Johnson. Also in the L.B.J. column were the Louisville Courier-Journal, and New Hampshire's Concord Daily Monitor. LIFE Magazine, which said of L.B.J. last week: "We think he deserves his own full term as President," this week came out for ticket splitting in favor of five G.O.P. Governors and Senators.

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