The Quixote Candidate

For a while he had one pledged delegate, 666 short of the total he would need to win the Republican presidential nomination. Then he released the one he had. His national campaign staff numbers seven. After Robert Kennedy's murder, he was assigned a few Secret Service guards, which prompted a Congressman's quip: "It's the biggest crowd he's had this campaign." Not even his wife accompanies him on his campaign. Yet he persists. He is Harold Stassen, who quadrennially offers up his obsession on the public altar--where it is scorned.

Once Stassen was the boy wonder--a county attorney at 23, Governor of Minnesota at 31, Republican Convention keynoter (in 1940) at 33, as well as floor manager for Wendell Willkie. His own cause peaked in 1948 when he scored impressive victories in the Wisconsin and Nebraska presidential primaries, only to be overwhelmed in Oregon by New York's Tom Dewey. Since then, his course has been downhill. Now 61, he wears an unconvincing toupee and a sadly forced smile. His current slogan is STASSEN '68--WHY NOT? A better question is: Why?

Implacable as a Tank. "I've always believed in issues rather than partisanship," he says. But the issues he espoused--a blend of mild liberalisms--have long since been appropriated by candidates who sometimes win. "It's been a lifetime commitment to do everything I could to secure peace," he says, emphasizing his role as a U.S. delegate to the 1945 San Francisco conference that forged the United Nations, and as Ike's Mutual Security Administrator and chief disarmament adviser. Even as he recalls such distinguished assignments, he unconsciously reminds his audiences that his day is past.

Yet Stassen, according to friends, is as implacable "as a medium tank." Ponderous and humorless, he travels the country by airliner and rented cars to confront an electorate that does not care. To him, running for President seems to be somewhere between a hobby and a quirk. "He has this blind spot," said a friend, "this assumption that he knows more than anybody."

In deceptively reasonable tones, Stassen retorts: "I realize the small power I have within the G.O.P., but I have confidence I can win in November." He is used to derision, he says. "I steel myself. I've been in the center and out, and back. This is part of my life." It is an utterly quixotic part, at best, and scarcely rational, but he is determined to play it to its lonely end.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.