On the Track with George & Jack?

It is never too soon to begin thinking about the next presidential election, and Governor George Romney is one Republican who, fairly obviously, has started thinking. Romney has already started observing several tried and true rules for early season aspirants.

One rule is to go around the country making speeches--preferably "nonpolitical" and therefore noncontroversial. Since Jan. 1, Romney has had seven such engagements, including two Lincoln Day addresses. The subject: "moral principles." For example, he told a newspaper association meeting that "our drift away from principle, too often encouraged by the recurring examples of opportunism and expediency in high office, has produced corrosive contradictions within our national life that can destroy our free institutions."

Another rule is to talk up party unity. In the past, Romney has talked more often of "citizens' participation" than of the Republican Party. But no longer. He takes seriously his assignment as member of the postelection G.O.P. Coordinating Committee, and is seeking ways to bring dissidents of the right and left into a strong and resolute center. "We need to strengthen the Republican Party," he told a press conference in Detroit. "We need some coordinating thinking."

Another rule is to travel abroad, thereby achieving an aura of expertise in world affairs. At the end of April Romney will go to Europe with a group of Michigan businessmen. The experience will no doubt give Romney some new foreign-affairs talking points upon his return.

Still another rule requires that a potential candidate play an active role in key issues on which there is a national consensus. Romney was the first major political personality to lead a civil rights sympathy march last month after the Selma violence. Only last week, he visited the husband of Viola Liuzzo, told him that his wife was "like Joan of Arc."

A final rule is to round up party allies by enhancing the politician's eternal dream of even higher office. Last week during a trip to Washington to attend a Governors' dinner at the White House, Romney had a private conversation with New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits, a longtime supporter of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. It may have been coincidence, but Jack Javits the day before announced that he will not support a Rockefeller drive for the presidential nomination in 1968. And it is neither a coincidence nor a secret that Javits would love to be Vice President of the U.S. some day.

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