WHILE the 1968 political season has been warming up since well back in 1967, last week will be remembered as the time when it really got hot. And as we went to press at week's end, the staff members in The Nation section knew that they had been through what was just one of many rather hectic weeks between now and November.

At almost any time, The Nation is the busiest of our sections. In election years, the pressure on its staff to analyze and interpret what's going on in U.S. politics means longer and more intense hours of work and shortened or postponed vacations. The hours began to get longer last week. Following Senator Eugene McCarthy's showing in the New Hampshire primary and Bobby Kennedy's big announcement, it was not until Saturday that the editors decided that Senator McCarthy, the relatively little-known figure who had started the week's upheaval--not to say a new political ball game--was the right man for this week's cover story in The Nation.

The man in charge of that section this political year is Senior Editor Michael Demarest, who was a correspondent in the U.S. and abroad, a writer and senior editor in other sections, before he took over The Nation in the summer of 1965. His head researcher is Amelia North, who has been shepherding the section's girls through political campaigns since General Dwight Eisenhower ran for President in 1952. In all, a score of writers, reporters and researchers will be working in the section this election year.

Reporting to them will be virtually every TIME correspondent in the U.S. and abroad. For this issue's political stories, each of our eleven U.S. bureaus reported on regional reaction to the McCarthy-Kennedy development. Washington Bureau Correspondent Lansing Lamont was with McCarthy all week, while Boston Bureau Chief Christopher Cory reported on the New Hampshire primary. Chicago Bureau Chief Loye Miller went to Minnesota to gather background material on McCarthy, and Correspondents Richard Saltonstall and John Stacks covered the story in Washington. Over on the Kennedy side of the coin were the Washington Bureau's Hugh Sidey, Neil MacNeil and Bonnie Angelo (who also filed on Mrs. McCarthy).

With our network of tuned-in correspondents across the country and a staff of politics watchers in New York, we aim to get a continuing close reading on the political temper of the country. This year, in addition, we are commissioning Roper Research Associates to do some polling for us. All in all, we're looking forward to a fascinating and significant political year.

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