The Making of a President

There was none of that man-to-man, shake-hands-and-come-out-fighting spirit that marks male contests for power. But then, the two contenders for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women were, naturally, women, and in politics the dame game is not the same as the masculine variety. Nor is it very ladylike.

"They made me look like I just dragged myself out of an irrigation ditch," pouted Mrs. Gladys O'Donnell at the federation's biennial convention in Washington, charging that her opponent's forces had doctored her photograph to make her look old and tired beyond her 63 years. "Old war horses," purred a supporter of her opponent, Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly, 42, "must fade away as old soldiers do, and give in to the younger ones."

As first vice president of the organization, Mrs. Schlafly, attractive wife of an Illinois corporation lawyer and mother of six, felt she should have been granted the presidency automatically, accused moderates on the nominating committee of having refused her the official endorsement because of her "wholehearted" support of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The title of her tract in support of Goldwater, A Choice Not an Echo, became a motto for Goldwaterites, and now, said one of her followers, "the liberal rats" were out to get her. (Mrs. Schlafly claims that another of her tomes, The Gravediggers, was the major factor in the downfall of Nikita Khrushchev.)

Mrs. O'Donnell, a Long Beach, Calif., businesswoman and pioneer aviatrix, charged that Mrs. Schlafly's right-wing views would create dissension in the ranks of G.O.P. distaff stalwarts in '68. Gladys also challenged some of her rival's original notions: one of Phyllis's more notable contentions is that the Johnson Administration has laid plans to legalize polygamy for the elderly. Anyway, observed Mrs. O'Donnell's ladies with quiet satisfaction, any responsible mother with all those children ought to be home with her family. After two days of such deep philosophical meowing, the delegates agreed, electing Mrs. O'Donnell, 1,910 to 1,494, as their new president.

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