The Temper of the Times
POLITICS
(See Cover) "It's at least six months ahead of what I've been accustomed to," says former Republican National Chairman Len Hall, who now heads Michigan Gover nor George Romney's Washington head quarters. Predicts F. Clifton White, who organized Barry Goldwater's first-ballot victory at the 1964 convention: "Nobody's going to get a hammerlock on this thing at an early date. It'll be a fight to the finish."
In other words, the 1968 presidential campaign is early, wide open and worth fighting. Thanks to last November's comeback, the G.O.P. controls half of the nation's statehouses, representing 293 out of the 535 electoral votes and 57.5% of the population. Recent Re publican gains in Florida's legislature and the narrow loss of a Rhode Island congressional seat that had been Democratic for 33 of the past 35 years point to continuing strength. "The momentum," says House Minority Leader Jerry Ford, "is still running our way."
On the Democratic side, Lyndon Johnson's candidacy for a second full term is a foregone conclusion--though Vice President Humphrey and Bobby Kennedy plan to be around in case the President is not. As for the G.O.P., Dick Nixon said in Tokyo last week: "We will have candidates running out of our ears." Everybody seemed to be running.
Early Exposure. As Hubert Humphrey ended a two-week visit to Europe last week, Nixon, continuing his world tour, began a month-long swing through Asia. Romney--at last--discussed Viet Nam in Connecticut, and Illinois' Republican Senator Charles H. Percy addressed party workers in New Hampshire. California's Republican Governor Ronald Reagan, in office just 100 days as of this week, has already paid three visits to Washington. President Johnson, only recently back from Guam, heads off this week to the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este for a meeting with Latin American heads of state. Of all the potential candidates, only New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller stayed put--waiting to see how the others run.
Two of the aspirants--Nixon and Romney--are openly seeking the nomination, despite the fact that they still emit "Who, me?" disclaimers for public consumption. Both are concerned at having launched their campaigns so early in the game, since relentless exposure over a long period can be deadly. But circumstances forced their hands. In Romney's case, it was a tide of favorable publicity and felicitous polls in the aftermath of his 570,000-vote third-term victory last November. Nixon was prematurely jolted into action by Reagan's sudden rise as a potential challenger for the conservative support that the former Vice President badly needs.
Reagan denies interest in the job. So does Percy. So does Rockefeller, who last year renounced presidential ambitions "forever." But as one G.O.P. leader observed recently, "Nobody ever made a Sherman-like statement except Sherman," and all three men would almost certainly accept the nomination. As Washington newsmen put it during last month's Gridiron Club dinner, in a song that was written with Rocky in mind but applies to all the naysayers:
He keeps on dreaming, and scheming,
He still wants that prize.
His lips tell you no! no!
But there's yes! yes! in his eyes.
The Bacon Fryin'. What puts the "yes! yes!" in so many Republicans' eyes is the belief that their revitalized party can capture the White House in '68. "Our people smell the bacon fryin'," drawls South Carolina's Republican chairman, Harry Dent. "We know our chances are good. The main thing is to put together a winning combination."
Whether they succeed depends largely on the effectiveness of the moderates, who have considerably more muscle than usual. They command such key states as New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon and Washington. Though the polls and the primaries will figure to a larger extent than in the past in determining the nominee, the moderates nonetheless have an opportunity to exercise pivotal influence in that choice by uniting behind the best possible candidate.
After that, the Republicans will need more than a little luck to unseat L.B.J.
Even so, they are convinced that a number of durable shibboleths about presidential politics will not necessarily be working against them in 1968. Among them:
sbTHE INVINCIBILITY OF AN INCUM BENT. Johnson will enjoy an immense publicity edge simply by occupying the White House. But during this century alone, two incumbents have been badly trounced (William Howard Taft in 1912 and Herbert Hoover in 1932) and a third (Harry Truman in 1948) barely escaped defeat.
sbTHE POWER OF PROSPERITY. Boom times do not necessarily ensure that the "in" party will stay in. The Democrats were drubbed in 1952 in the midst of an economic upsurge, and again in 1966 when times were good.
sbDEMOCRATIC UNITY. Politicians love to note that the Democrats fight ferociously among themselves all the way to the polls, then patch things up and vote as one. That point would no doubt be disputed by Truman, who in 1948 had Henry Wallace's Democrats-turned-Progressives sniping at him from the left and Strom Thurmond's Democratsturned-Dixiecrats from the right. Lyndon Johnson may face comparable defections next year, with the hot-eyed radicals of the New Left on one side and segregationists behind former Alabama Governor George Wallace on the other.
-REPUBLICAN DISUNITY. The fissures were all too evident in 1964, when Goldwater told G.O.P. moderates that they were welcome only on his terms--and Romney, Rockefeller and others "took a powder," as Barry put it. But in earlier campaigns, the party united behind Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey and Dwight Eisenhower, even though members of the conservative wing were deeply disappointed that their favorites were not nominated.
Republicans are heartened by the fact that the Democratic National Com mittee has atrophied, and party organizations in such pivotal states as New York, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio--and even Texas--have fallen apart. So far the only real sign of life is in its minorities and nationalities division, where Deputy National Chairman Louis Martin, a Negro, is working to boost Negro registration from 6,163,000 to 8,000,-000 by next year.
Once the Negroes are registered, however, there is some doubt how they will vote: a striking fact about U.S. politics in the past third of the century is that there is no longer any such thing as a deliverable vote. Particularly worrisome to Democratic chieftains is the increasing independence of the labor vote, a cornerstone of the urban coalition that Franklin D. Roosevelt structured a generation back. There were significant blue-collar defections last year in such Democratic strongholds as Denver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Louisville and Memphis. Often, rank-and-file resistance to Negro demands is responsible. In the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Democratic Senator Paul Douglas' 1960 vote of 19,678 was cut to 7,823 last year after a series of racial clashes. In a labor area in California's Alameda County, a 59% Democratic majority in 1962 shifted to a 65% G.O.P. margin after Stokely Carmichael staged a black-power rally there.
Please Shut Up-Perhaps the most significant fact for Republicans looking toward 1968, however, is that Lyndon Johnson, who three years ago won one of the most sweeping electoral and popular victories in U.S. history, today appears increasingly vulnerable.
In the past year, approval of his performance has slid in the polls from 56% to 45%. F.D.R. said in 1936: "There's one issue in this campaign. It's myself." In 1968, of course, there will be other issues, but a crucial one will nonetheless be Lyndon Johnson himself. Washington wags emphasize that point with a line they attribute to concerned Democratic officials: "Will the real Lyndon Johnson please shut up?" The real Lyndon Johnson is the one who was molded during 26 years on Capitol Hill; unlike most Presidents, he has shown few signs of personal or intellectual change in the White House. He is still the arm-squeezing, wheedling, wheeling-dealing Majority Leader, slinking into the wings when defeat looms and hogging stage center in victory. Stories of his vindictiveness, his pettiness, his tantrums when the press questions his decisions, have done little to improve that image.
Death & Burial. Around the U.S., there exists what California Pollster Mervin Field describes as "a general uneasiness"--over Viet Nam, high prices, an ever-rising crime rate, the seeming ineradicability of poverty, the restlessness of the younger generation, the increasing use of a whole pharmacopoeia of drugs, from pot to peyote. A Gallup sampling showed that 58% of Americans consider income taxes too high--and the figure will surely swell if Johnson decides to slap a 6% surcharge on income tax rates. If he does not, the Administration may well end the current fiscal year with a deficit of $13 billion, breaking Ike's peacetime record of $12.4 billion in 1959. And some Republicans claim that it could go as high as $25 billion, fueling a serious burst of inflation.
Viet Nam remains at once the biggest, least predictable issue. Should the war last five to ten years, Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, newly elected chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, warned last week, "this disaster could, indeed, mean the death and burial of the Democratic Party." Few other Democrats share that gloomy view, but the war could cost a covey of doves their Senate seats in 1968. With 23 Democratic seats at stake v. only eleven for the G.O.P., the Democrats' 64-36 Senate majority could be drastically trimmed.
Republicans are uneasy as well. When it comes to taking a stand on Viet Nam in 1968, avers Minnesota's G.O.P. chairman, George Thiss, "about the best we may be able to do with it is what we did last year--weave and dodge and duck and pray."
Unthinkable. Actually, no would-be candidate can avoid taking a stand--and with 67% of the public on record in favor of continued bombing of North Viet Nam, a soft stance may amount to a political death wish. Oregon's Republican Senator Mark Hatfield, who is articulate, attractive and only 44, has virtually ruled himself out of presidential consideration--at least for 1968--with his dovelike stance. Bobby Kennedy, who led Lyndon Johnson in popularity polls last October, has fallen behind in the latest samplings, partly because of his criticism of the war.
Similarly, George Romney's five months of ambiguity on Viet Nam cost him considerable support. When he finally stated his position last week, at a dinner celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Hartford Times, it was hard to distinguish from the middle-of-the-road course that Johnson has followed--and the President promptly thanked him for his "strong endorsement."
Romney argued that it was a mistake for the U.S. to become involved in the first place, and maintained that Congress should have been asked to declare war once the involvement in Viet Nam grew as deep as it did. Nonetheless, said Romney, "it is unthinkable that the U.S. withdraw" at this point. "Our military effort must succeed." Defending the need to bomb the North, he added: "We must use military force as necessary to reduce or cut off the flow of men and supplies from North Viet Nam, to knock out enemy main force units, and to provide a military shield for the South."
Among other potential Republican candidates, Nixon strikes a tougher stance, calling for a blockade of Haiphong harbor and intensified bombing of the North. Reagan says that "a cause worth fighting is a cause worth winning." Rockefeller stands with the President, declaring that Johnson "must back the American commitment to freedom--and we must back him in this commitment." Percy, the least bellicose of the lot, is somewhat ambivalent: he proposes neither an unconditional bombing halt nor an outright pull-out but emphasizes the need to "accelerate the pursuit of peace."
Balance of Power. Domestically, the Great Society is certain to figure as a major issue, and it is by no means certain to win votes for Lyndon Johnson. "There is not such massive impact in the programs--at least not that much redounding to the benefit of the Democrats," says former Census Bureau Director Richard Scammon, an astute political observer. "If there were, the Democrats would have won in 1966 without losing a seat."
Underlying the disquiet over the Great Society's goals and achievements is concern that Washington is leaving too little responsibility to the states. Actually, Johnson has been attempting to disperse responsibility by fostering new partnerships involving federal, state and local governments as well as private enterprise. But he has discovered that responsibility is not always welcomed--a point that Chief Justice Earl Warren made last week when he addressed the opening session of New York State's constitutional convention. "One major factor in the concentration of power in the Federal Government," said Warren, "has been the absence of the exercise of power by the states."
The convention that Warren was ad dressing represented an attempt by one state to bring its administrative machinery up to date. Michigan revised its constitution back in 1963, Connecticut in 1965; 17 other states are now either revising antiquated charters or considering plans to do so in the near future.
Don't Poison the Well. In fighting the '68 campaign on such slippery issues as war, bureaucracy and personality, Johnson will almost certainly have Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. The President has been leaning on Hubert more and more in recent months. Since Jan. 1, Humphrey has logged 19,700 miles within the U.S., and he has minced no words with party functionaries. To those who complain about Johnson, he says: "Don't poison the well you're going to be drinking from next year." To liberals who have parted ways with the President over Viet Nam, he snaps: "You go off in a corner and scream, and then you complain that only the hawks, the wild men, have the President's ear. What kind of stupidity is that?" Once anathema in the South, Humphrey has lately found himself welcome in such places as North Carolina, where the Governor two years ago was roundly criticized for permitting him to sleep in the executive mansion, and Louisiana, where Governor John Mc-Keithen nurses hopes of becoming No. 2 man on a future Humphrey ticket.
Last week the Vice President was on the last lap of his most delicate journey yet--a two-week tour of major European capitals to reassure continental statesmen that, despite its preoccupation with Viet Nam, the U.S. has not forgotten its transatlantic allies. The allies had a number of thorny issues to discuss--from Washington's proposed nuclear non-proliferation treaty with
Moscow, which they fear will reduce them to second-class status, to their misgivings over Viet Nam. But the Vice President acquitted himself with wit, charm and persuasiveness.
Portrait by Romney. Dining at 10 Downing Street, he delightedly pointed out to Prime Minister Harold Wilson that a painting of William Pitt the Younger bore the signature of George Romney, the 18th century English portraitist. In a private session with 200 British peers and Members of Parliament, left-wing Laborites did their best to bait him, but Humphrey fielded their barbed questions with aplomb, won a standing ovation at the end. "That was a magnificent performance," said Conservative Party Leader Ted Heath. In Bonn, his talks with West Germany's Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger went off smoothly, even though they took place immediately after the news had leaked out that the U.S. is planning a 12,000-man reduction in its Seventh Army. Humphrey heard no complaints about it. During a two-hour luncheon chat with Charles de Gaulle in Paris, the Minnesotan brought France's phlegmatic President to the edge of tears with an ad-libbed toast lauding his place in history.
Having virtually certified Humphrey as his 1968 running mate, Johnson has also opened the way for Hubert's own shot at the presidency in 1972. On the other hand, should Johnson die or become incapacitated before the 1968 convention, Bobby Kennedy might be tempted to challenge Humphrey for the nomination. However, Harry Truman's popularity rating soared to an unbeatable 87% after the presidency was thrust on him, and Humphrey would probably fall heir to a similar fund of sympathy. In any case, according to Kennedy sources, Bobby has no intention of accepting second spot on either a Johnson or a Humphrey ticket.
Kennedy says he will loyally campaign for the ticket in 1968, and has promised to submit sworn affidavits, if need be, to keep his name off primary ballots in such states as New Hampshire, Nebraska and Oregon. His avid supporters may mount write-in campaigns for him anyway--although they have found little backing thus far in the ranks of regular Democrats. One outfit, the Citizens for Kennedy-Ful-bright, wrote 5,000 former delegates and alternates to Democratic conventions requesting support, got only 28 positive replies. Said an Oregonian: "The only time I would favor Senator Fulbright for any office would be in the event his opponent was Wayne Morse, in which case I would probably vote for Cassius Clay."
Long-Hair Appeal. Bobby, of necessity, is thus looking toward 1972--though he runs the risk of becoming passe by then. As Psephologist Scammon notes: "The life span of the presidential butterfly is not great." Meanwhile the New York Senator is aiming his appeal at a special constituency. Within five years, 26 million new voters will have come of age, and Kennedy is fond of quoting Goethe's dictum: "The destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men under 25."
In pitching his appeal to the longhaired set, Bobby has moved markedly to the left of Johnson, and despite his pledge of support, he is bound to collide with him on occasion. Already his differences on Viet Nam have exacerbated their relations.
Composite Candidate. Though the Democrats can be expected to brawl right up to election eve 1968, they at least have settled the most bitterly divisive issue of all--who their candidates will be. The Republicans are just getting started, and some rough mileage stretches ahead. The ideal candidate would have to be a G.O.P.-style L.B.J., only with the charisma and the capacity to unify all factions and win an election. He would have to be something like the composite superfigure in the 100 Pipers Scotch ads--one with the party loyalty of a Taft, the looks of a Teddy Roosevelt, the tongue of a Lincoln, the humanitarianism of a Hoover, and the probity of an Eisenhower.
Richard Milhous Nixon, 54, hardly fits that description, but he is the man who is best equipped to unite the party. He already has a strong hold on the South--and thanks to a bonus rule adopted at the 1964 G.O.P. Convention, giving extra delegates to states that went for Goldwater or elected a Republican Governor or Senator, the South will have more votes than any other section at the convention (356 v. 355 for the East, 352 for the Midwest, 262 for the West, eight for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands). Nixon could well enter the convention with 450 of the 667 votes needed for nomination. In addition, he has scores of lOUs from the 1966 campaign, when he traveled 30,000 miles (more than when he ran for President) in 35 states, often shaving three times a day to erase that famous five-o'clock shadow.
But--and there is always a but when Nixon's name is mentioned--he has not won an election on his own since 1950. Though he is the favorite of party regulars, they want a winner, and they wonder whether he is the man. "What's Nixon done that makes him any more electable than he was four years ago?" asks a party professional. "We've got to stop handing out medals for duty performed in campaigns."
Likability Gap. To prove that he can win, Nixon must thus enter every primary in sight. His aides are planning an all-out effort in his behalf in New Hampshire's March 12 first-in-the-na-tion primary, and are looking into the Wisconsin, Nebraska and Oregon contests. They acknowledge that Nixon suffers from a "likability gap," and that might prove his greatest drawback. Nixon, who has yet to live down the 1960 campaign slur "Would you buy a used car from this man?" may be the Republican least capable of exploiting Johnson's personality gap. He is probably the longest of all G.O.P. long shots. As one Republican leader puts it: "The only way Nixon could win the nomination would be if it were clear that any Republican could win--or that no Republican could win."
Cut, Squeeze, Trim. Should Nixon stumble, the ideal fallback candidate, to conservatives, would be Reagan, 56. William Buckley's National Review calls him "as strong a candidate as the Republican Party can field."
Reagan, of course, denies any such aspirations. "Look," he says with a winning smile and a nervous tug at his right ear, "I am not a candidate for President. I have a pretty big job right here." He does indeed. Elected by nearly 1,000,000 votes on a promise to "cut, squeeze and trim" spending, he has submitted the largest state budget in U.S. history--$5.06 billion. Having promised to keep taxes down, he has proposed the biggest one-shot tax increase ever --$946 million.
His efforts at economizing--by proposing cuts in spending for higher education and mental health--have caused well-publicized uproars, but 67.8% of Californians say that they approve of his plans. The rest of the nation, while withholding judgment, is certainly intrigued with him. Where former Governor Pat Brown used to attract a dozen reporters and two or three TV cameras to press conferences, Reagan draws 50 reporters and a dozen big cameras.
Despite his disclaimers, many Republicans are convinced that Reagan has caught the presidential bug. He will head California's big delegation at the convention as a favorite son. He probably will make several forays into neighboring Oregon before next May's primary, may also be on the ballot in Nebraska and Wisconsin. To withdraw, says his press secretary, "would call to mind a picture of the citizens of the country knocking on the door and telling you they want you to be President, and you slam the door in their face."
Many moderate Republicans are hoping that somebody will slam the door on Reagan. In an envenomed editorial on "Creeping Reaganism" in its monthly newsletter, the liberal Ripon Society said that his candidacy would turn 1968 into a year of "disaster and disunity" rivaling 1964. "It is a misreading of the '64 election," it said, "to think that a better-manicured man, lacking Goldwater's crusty honesty, can turn the same programs into victory for the Republican Party."
Tax-Guzzling Dinosaur. Since November, the man with the best chance of winning has seemed to be George Wilcken Romney, 59. Exploiting that considerable appeal, he has adopted as the motto for a newsletter published by his supporters: "Winning is the name of the game."
But can he win? He still outruns Johnson and Kennedy in preference polls, though his margin has been decreasing. He has the squarejawed, silver-fringed good looks for the job, an unbroken string of victories and an unblemished personal life. He can enrapture a sympathetic audience, as he did in the conservative mountain states recently, by charging that "the Great Society has grown into a tax-guzzling dinosaur"--an echo from the days when he and American Motors' little Rambler were doing battle with Detroit's "gas-guzzling dinosaurs." Despite the Mormon Church's relegation of Negroes to second-class status, Romney, a faithful churchgoer who tithes his salary and abstains from liquor, caffeine and cigarettes, has a spotless civil rights record.
Nonetheless, Romney's moderate supporters are growing skeptical of his ability to cope with the pressures of a national campaign. Before his Hartford speech, he announced that he would not answer newsmen's questions afterward "because I don't intend to let reporters divert attention from what I'm trying to say." It was a damaging admission of his reluctance to expose himself to the kind of grilling that a presidential candidate must endure daily--even hourly. He is also in trouble at home, where the state senate has rejected his proposals to levy personal and corporate income taxes in order to avoid a $147 million deficit.
Increasingly, Romney has become the butt of the kind of jokes that can kill a candidate. One, referring to his sometimes sanctimonious air, goes "It's all right for George to want to be President, but I object to his using the White House as a steppingstone." Another: "Deep down, he's shallow." When his supporters opened a special research office in Lansing, wags dubbed it "George Romney's Office of Presidential Exploration--GROPE."
Tweedledum & Tweedledee. Given Romney's drawbacks, some moderates are shifting uneasily in their seats and looking elsewhere. Many an eye has fallen on Charles Harting Percy, 47, the junior Senator from Illinois. Percy is not trying to build a shadow opposition. He clearly aspires to higher office, but he would rather run in 1972, when he just might wind up in a Tweedledum-Tweedledee confrontation with Bobby Kennedy, who resembles him in many ways.
Nevertheless, Percy has run ahead of his personal timetable in the past--most notably when he became president of Bell & Howell at 29, ten years before he expected to. In speeches from New England to the West Coast, he has impressed audiences with his articulateness and quickness of mind. He has a reservoir of sympathy as a result of the still-unsolved murder of his daughter Valerie last September. In the Senate, Percy got off to a whirlwind start, persuading 27 colleagues to co-sponsor a bill calling for a Government-supported private corporation to help slum residents buy their own dwellings.
Though a liberal, Percy has kept his channels to the conservatives unclogged. could expect some support should the front-running candidates stumble. "I like Chuck," says Barry Goldwater, whom Percy supported in 1964. "I've worked for him, he's worked for me. I'd support him." But Percy's chief problem is inexperience, which is only accentuated by his boyish looks.
"Not Me." That leaves among the Republican potentials the uncle of Percy's son-in-law--Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, whose nephew John D. Rockefeller IV two weeks ago married Percy's daughter, Sharon, the twin sister of Valerie. At 58, Rocky seems more at ease, more confident and more attractive than ever. When the presidential campaign is mentioned, he murmurs, "No, no. Not me." He says he will have his name withdrawn from any primary in which it is entered. He has made no move to round up delegates.
Like Romney and Reagan, he has had his problems with a balky legislature, but he has written a record that may be hard to match. His masterpiece is a $2.5 billion transportation bond issue that commits New York State to spend more on modernizing its subway, surface and air lines than Lyndon Johnson is spending on transportation across the entire U.S.
As a potential presidential nominee, he has grave drawbacks. Four years and two babies after his celebrated di vorce and remarriage, his name still evokes indignant sniffs from many women--particularly matrons in their 40s. His refusal to support Goldwater made him a villain to the Republican right. But if the conservatives want a winner, it is conceivable that they might help him toward the nomination. In any case, it will probably take considerable public arm-twisting by G.O.P. powers to coax the reluctant Rocky into the arena. It might well prove worth the effort. He is a proved campaigner, effective in the big cities and clearly a match for L.B.J., in both ex perience and expertise. On foreign policy, Rocky, a former Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, can claim a background in practical policymaking unequaled by the other G.O.P. aspirants.
One top-ranking Republican estimates that 22 of the 25 G.O.P. Gov ernors think he would make the best candidate the party could put up. Jack Kennedy admitted after his eyelash victory over Nixon in 1960 that Rocky might have beaten him. With Lyndon Johnson in low esteem among many Democrats and among the independents, who now comprise 27% of U.S. voters (v. 46% for the Democrats, 27% Republicans), Rockefeller could probably collect more of their votes than any other Republican.
Other names will doubtless crop up as the field begins forming: Ohio's Governor James Rhodes, who won a second term by a landslide 700,000 votes in November, though some of his colleagues consider him a lightweight; General William Westmoreland, though he would have to come home with a clear-cut victory in Viet Nam and that is at best a remote possibility. As for potential Vice Presidents, the country is crawling with them. There are Washington's Governor Daniel Evans, Rhode Island's Governor John Chafee, Massachusetts' Senator Edward Brooke and New York's Senator Jacob Javits, the only one who has publicly been courting the post. If he continues to perform as effectively as he has to date in the near-impossible job of running New York City, Mayor John V. Lindsay, 45, will surely rate consideration for a vice-presidential nomination--and eventually, perhaps, even for the top spot on the G.O.P. ticket.
Out of the Doorway. Clouding the whole presidential picture is Alabama's Wallace, a magnum of mischief in a half-pint package. If Wallace does in deed run as a third-party candidate, warns Goldwater, "he'll take votes away from Republicans," probably in the very Southern states that Barry carried in 1964: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Wallace has already opened campaign headquarters in Montgomery's Ten-High Building. "If these two national parties continue on their present trend of liberalism and me-tooism, we'll be a candidate," he promises. "There is more grass-roots support for us than you can imagine. You just talk to the workingman--to steelworkers, taxi drivers, barbers and people who really run this country."
Capitalizing on the low-income white voter's alarm at Negro unrest, Wallace won 30% of the vote in the 1964 Indiana presidential primary, 34% in Wisconsin, an amazing 43% in Maryland. Given a few major ghetto riots this summer, some rabble-rousing black-power speeches by Stokely Carmichael and a few more statements from Martin Luther King comparing the U.S. role in Viet Nam to Hitler's in Europe, Wallace might even improve on that performance. But he has failed to win the expected backing of Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox. Moreover, Wallace's favorite pitches--for states' rights and against integration--may lose some of their punch when voters begin to realize that Alabama gets 75% of its welfare budget from the evil Government in Washington, that 300 Negroes are attending the University of Alabama now that George is no longer standing in the doorway, and that even his old high school in Clio has ten Negro students.
Understandably, Las Vegas bookmakers offer no odds--even unofficial odds--on the 1968 presidential contest. They figure that the betting on this race should be left to amateurs and madmen.
It is not even safe to say, for example, that Johnson would be a shoo-in if he ended the Viet Nam war. Ironical ly, the G.O.P. could benefit, since there would then be no hesitation about "changing horses in midstream," and the key issues would become the President's personality and his management of the Great Society.
The Big Difference. One safe assumption is that the G.O.P. Convention will not be "deadlocked"; the day is long past when it can take 103 ballots to nominate a candidate, as it did at the 1924 Democratic Convention. Nor, since roughly a dozen Republicans plan to enter the convention as favorite sons and thus will not begin transferring their delegates to the leading candidates until after one or two votes have been taken, will it by any means be a preset minuet. But the nominee should emerge fairly quickly--and without the bruising ideological schism that marred the 1964 convention.
The big difference in 1968 will be that the moderates should be in a suf ficiently strong position to prevent such a battle and to select a candidate-whoever he may be--with a realistic chance of winning the election. Thus the most reassuring outlook for '68 is that whichever party and candidate may capture the presidency, the global and domestic commitments of the American people will be little changed.
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