Into the Silks

With the off-year elections ended and the jockeying for 1968 started in earnest, George Romney was wasting no time slipping into his silks. This, week some 600 Republicans from across the country will crowd Detroit's riverfront Veterans' Memorial Building to hear what is being billed as a major announcement by Michigan's Governor. It was hardly probable he would go to such lengths to declare that he does not intend to seek the G.O.P. presidential nomination.

"Apple Pie!" In what was probably his final tour as a noncandidate, Romney last week addressed 1,300 Republicans in St. Paul, then flew to neighboring Wisconsin for a day of speechmaking. He impressed a breakfast meeting in La Crosse, particularly when he blasted the Democrats for having saddled the nation with "the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now, L.B.J.'s Ordeal." The reception was chillier at the University of Wisconsin, where blue-jeaned students greeted him with catcalls. When Romney declared, "There's nothing more basic in America than belief in our Creator," one student jeered: "Apple pie!" Angered, Romney retorted: "That's right! And the trouble in America starts with the decline of personal principles and beliefs."

Returning to Michigan aboard his chartered plane--appropriately, a de Havilland Dove--the Governor went straight to the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak to pick up his wife Lenore, who had suffered a broken arm and dislocated shoulder two days earlier when she slipped in the shower at the Romneys' Bloomfield Hills home. For reasons that go beyond personal affection, Romney's aides are hoping she mends swiftly. Lenore is a considerable asset on the stump, provides a warmly feminine counterpoint to her husband's granite-jawed, combative style, and helps calm him when the going gets rough.

Other Trails. On the West Coast, California's Governor Ronald Reagan turned an invitation to the U.S.C.-Oregon State football game into an excuse for two days of non-campaigning in the Pacific Northwest. He showed up in Seattle for a G.O.P. fund-raising lunch, attended a party dinner in Portland that evening, rode horseback in the Veterans' Day Parade in Albany, Ore., the following day. Reagan, of course, still bills himself as a noncandidate, but his protestations of late have rung increasingly hollow.

Also on the stump was Alabama's former Governor George Wallace, who began a weeklong, six-city tour of Ohio in the hope of getting the 433,100 signatures he needs to have his name placed on the ballot there as an independent presidential candidate. The feat is probably beyond Wallace's band of eager amateurs, but he was drawing sizable audiences, as he had the week before on the West Coast. If nothing else, the natty gnat promises to be a disruptive influence in 1968.

Worthwhile Prize. For the Republican candidates, announced and otherwise, the 1968 nomination looks more and more like an exceedingly worthwhile prize. Except for a few private polls that were apparently commissioned by Democratic officials and carefully structured to show Johnson in the best possible light, public-opinion sampling was going heavily against the President. A Gallup survey showed that 50% of the electorate disapproves of the way Johnson is doing his job. Another Gallup sampling, commissioned by NBC News, showed that when it comes to the Viet Nam war and the racial crisis, more voters would like to have them handled by Senator Robert Kennedy than by Johnson or, for that matter, any of the Republican contenders.

A Louis Harris Poll showed six Republicans leading Johnson. In order, they are Nelson Rockefeller, Romney, Richard Nixon, Reagan, John Lindsay and Charles Percy. Still another Gallup poll, released this week, shows that for the first time in a decade, the G.O.P. is outrunning the Democrats--52% to 48%--as the party the voters consider best qualified to deal with the nation's most pressing problems.

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