IN SEARCH OF POLITICAL MIRACLES
A story circulating in the Midwest these days tells how a pollster approached two men and asked one of them whether he intended to vote for Humphrey or Nixon for President. Without a word, the man hauled off and slugged the pollster. "What's the matter with you?" his friend remonstrated. "You know you're going to vote for one of those guys." Replied the first man: "I know, but I don't like to be reminded of it."
In many ways, Hubert Horatio Humphrey and Richard Milhous Nixon embody the cherished old ideals. They are "achieving Americans," men from modest Main Street beginnings who, through ambition and ability, rose to the U.S. Senate and to a place at the right hand of a President. Even when the easy life became available to them, it could not lure them from the burdens --and ambitions--of public service.
Unfortunately for the owners of these classic credentials, something is missing. Humphrey and Nixon are almost overwhelmingly strong favorites to be nominated, but the prospect fails to excite millions of voters in their own parties and beyond. The thought of having to choose between them leads some citizens to say that they will not vote. Others say that they will support George Wallace's third party on the right, or encourage a fourth party on the left, or vote only with reluctance for the major parties. Quips Chicago Columnist Virginia Kay: "Nineteen sixty-eight may go on record as the year they gave an election and nobody came."
Loosening Loyalties. The phenomenon of the unhappy voter can be exaggerated. The genuinely disenchanted and disaffected are probably a minority, and a fragmented one at that. Vast numbers of Americans, by contrast, see more merit in pleas for law and order than in cries for change. They would be happier with a candidate who symbolizes stability and the known than one who stands for radical change and the unknown. But it is a minority, and particularly a progressive, vocal minority, that often sets the tone of the times. The articulate Americans who are seeking new paths and new personalities have done just that. More significant, they have defied all the laws of political gravity by keeping aloft the candidacies of Nelson Rockefeller and Eugene McCarthy.
Party loyalties have been loosening steadily. Many restless Republicans lean toward McCarthy, while many more Republicans would not consider a Humphrey victory a disaster. Numbers of disenchanted Democrats, on the other hand, like Rockefeller. The trend is underscored by a recent Gallup survey. Among voters of all ages, 46% consider themselves Democrats, 27% Republicans, 27% independents. But among those under 30, only 38% call themselves Democrats and 22% Republicans. The remaining 40% regard themselves as independents--voters who are more concerned with current is sues and individual excellence than with traditional party labels or party loyalty.
The unraveling of party ties has been accompanied by confusion, uncertainty and a vague yearning for something better--or at least different. Admits Iowa's Democratic Governor Harold Hughes: "I'm looking for a messiah, and as far as I'm concerned, none of the candidates measures up." Poet Archibald MacLeish discerns a feeling of "defeated helplessness," a belief that the country has lost control "of what our ancestors would have called our destiny." A contagion of crises, domestic and foreign, heightens that feeling.
In the emotional search for a savior, Humphrey and Nixon are frequently dismissed out of hand. It is not merely that they are "familiar." So was Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, and even more so in 1956. So, too, was Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, 1940 and 1944. Nixon and Humphrey suffer from the fact that the U.S. harbors a deep distrust of professional politicians. They also suffer because the elusive qualities of style and political glamour are supposed to be more important than ever in the U.S.--though just how important remains to be seen. As the challengers, Rockefeller and McCarthy are cast as the knights of the New Politics, tilting courageously against the encrusted traditions and entrenched attitudes of their own parties.
Erasing the Stigma. It does not matter that Humphrey was a rebel and a reformer in his political youth or that he crusaded harder and more effectively for more good causes than his critics care to remember. Eugene McCarthy is no less a professional politician, and has been in Congress exactly as long as Humphrey (since 1949). But McCarthy broke with the professional fraternity and challenged a President, thereby erasing the stigma. Nixon, who has become a prosperous lawyer while out of office, does not need politics to survive or even to thrive. He is a man of proven ability, but he is first and last a politician. But Rockefeller, though he has spent much of his career in elective or appointive office, still conveys a certain amateur zeal and gentlemanly enthusiasm that contrasts with Nixon's tense and too-earnest approach.
It is not so much what each of the four is saying. They are in rough agreement on a number of issues. In interviews with TIME correspondents, all four emphasized the need for the next President to create a sense of popular participation in national decisions. All agreed that the U.S. must continue to play a role in Asia after the Viet Nam war. Except for Nixon, who has declared a moratorium on comments about the war, all agreed that the U.S. should turn more of the fighting over to Saigon, even if the Paris peace talks were to fail. Nixon and Rockefeller endorsed the principle of federal tax-sharing with the states on a no-strings basis; Humphrey and McCarthy expressed interest in the idea. There are, of course, marked differences in emphasis, even in areas where the four seem to be in general agreement. On the future U.S. role in Asia, for instance, Nixon sees the U.S. "rendering economic assistance and hardware," Rockefeller stresses support for regional structures, Humphrey emphasizes that the U.S. cannot be "a domineering partner," and McCarthy underscores improvement of relations with China.
Nudging the Leaners. Whatever ideas the candidates are expressing, however, at this stage the electorate is more intent on measuring the men than their words. In Rockefeller and McCarthy, many see the best hope for beneficial change. Yet the mood is so diffuse that the New York Governor and the Minnesota Senator, like the Vice President and the former Vice President, have been incapable of weaving coalitions that combine wide spread popular admiration with sufficient party acceptance. Nor is there time for gentle persuasion. To keep Nixon from getting the 667 votes that he needs for nomination the week of Aug. 5 and to deny Humphrey his 1,312 three weeks later, the insurgents must foment a virtual revolution in the conventions. To do that, they must build up immense pressure on the delegates--particularly the "leaners." These are the delegates who may be leaning anywhere from 1 to 89 degrees toward a candidate, but have not yet tumbled into his tent. About the only way that McCarthy and Rocky can capture the nominations, in fact, is by getting their rivals' leaners to start tilting the other way toward them.
Rockefeller, in essence, is nudging the leaners with the same argument that he began tentatively in 1960 and pressed more vigorously in 1964: that an orthodox Republican counting mainly on a conservative vote would stand little chance of reversing the normal Democratic majority. Though at 60 he is the oldest of the candidates,- he is having some success in projecting an aura of freshness and creativity.
Retail Shopping. His principal pitch is his electability. Campaigning last week in Springfield, Ill., he pointed to a sign reading NIXON'S THE ONE and declared: "That's right, he's the one. He's the one who lost it for us in 1960." Still, the G.O.P. seems unconvinced. While the crowds that greeted Rocky last week were large and friendly, only three delegates out of 30 showed up to meet him in Milwaukee. In Indiana and Illinois, larger numbers of delegates turned out, but he made little visible headway with them.
Rocky compares his delegate hunt to "shopping at retail"--picking up one here, two there and sometimes none at all. "Impressive," the delegates often say after a meeting. "Candid. Did himself some good." Change any votes? "Well, no." The process is more a softening-up than a bulldozing. Still, it could pay off if Nixon were stopped on the first ballot and the delegates began recalling how effective Rocky was --or so his camp hopes.
After his damaging indecision about becoming a candidate and the slow start to his campaign, he took to almost full-time stumping in June and opened an advertising drive that, by convention time, will push his budget as high as $6,000,000. Lawyer George Hinman, a longtime political aide, advised a more subtle drive and a low-key attack on Nixon. But this approach was getting the Governor nowhere, so he opened up. Though he ducked the primaries himself, in St. Louis he accused Nixon of "running away from the American people" because of his failure to speak out since the primaries. As a result, Hinman, says another aide, "is in a state of shock."
The Old Rules. So far the polls on which Rockefeller is relying so heavily hardly seem to be creating much impact. They show him only a couple of points ahead of Nixon when matched against Humphrey. The Rockefeller camp makes clear, however, that when the Southern states are subtracted, Rockefeller scores a four-point advantage over Humphrey while Nixon trails Humphrey by six. This is the key figure by Rockefeller's lights. If Wallace manages, as expected, to take a few Southern states that would otherwise go to Nixon, then the big Northern states become more crucial than ever for a Republican victory. It could be a telling argument--but Nixon never tires of" noting that in several primaries, the polls underestimated both his and McCarthy's strength.
Rockefeller has sought with some success to collect Robert Kennedy's dispersed forces and thereby show his appeal across party lines. Last week, for example, he won endorsements from Martin Luther King Sr. and a number of other Negro leaders, including militants. He inveighs against the "Old Politics" and promises "new leadership" to appeal generally to voters groping for a guide. Just how effective that appeal can be was shown when a comely Illinois delegate told him during his visit to Chicago early in the week: "Governor, I'm a member of three minorities--I'm a woman, a Negro and a Republican. And each of us needs you to be President." But he has used old gambits, saying kind things about Ronald Reagan and Florida's Governor Claude Kirk, both conservatives, and holding open the possibility of a vice presidential nomination for one of them. Of course, Nixon has cast enough vice presidential lures to fill a small arena.
Meet Snik Dixon. Rockefeller figures that without the leaners, Nixon has 550 delegates (needed to nominate: 667). His strategy is to avert a first-ballot Nixon victory. This forces Rocky into an unspoken alliance with Reagan, who still dreams of leapfrogging a Nixon-Rockefeller deadlock to the nomination. Rockefeller's emphasis on the Wallace threat could redound, however, to Reagan's benefit among Southern Republicans. Southern delegates for Rocky are as rare as square marbles, but a fair number might go for Reagan on the theory that his conservatism might be an effective alternative to Wallace. When Rockefeller's aides boast about shaking some 40 delegates loose from Nixon in recent days, they concede that most of these went either to Reagan or to the uncommitted column. This could be of help in stopping Nixon, but could become dangerous to Rockefeller if the convention really opened up.
Rockefeller is aware of all his handicaps: animosity over his past unor-thodoxies, disagreement over his liberal tendencies, anger over his current attacks on Nixon. He shrugs them off, maintaining brightly that he has a good chance of getting the nomination on the fourth or fifth ballot. His confidence gets him over spots that would trip a man without it. Nixon, for instance, can be thrown off stride. In Newark recently, a tongue-tied toastmaster introduced "the next President of the United States, Snik Dix--er--Dick Nixon." Result: the candidate's delivery fell off. In a similar situation, Rockefeller might have guffawed.
Rocky is a happy, energetic campaigner. In the past two weeks alone, he has lost 10 lbs. He winks and grins and small-talks his way through crowds, often forgetting people's names but not letting it bother him: "Hiya . . . Best of luck and all the way ... Hi, girls, that's the way ... Gee, great... I wanta tell ya, yes, sir." Last week Rockefeller and Wife Happy danced to The Sidewalks of New York on a sidewalk in Cincinnati, while a friendly crowd gathered around.
Though the odds against him are long, Rocky's total effort cannot be ignored. His plan for military disengagement in Viet Nam is the most detailed put forward by any of the candidates. He is injecting excitement into the campaign and showing that a Republican presidential candidate can appeal in the ghettos. He has given his party its only viable alternative to Nixon since George Romney dropped out last February. Still, Nixon may be right when he cracks that the Governor's drive has developed "too much, too late."
Field Agents. If Rockefeller somehow succeeds in getting the nomination, his Miami Beach miracle could work to McCarthy's benefit because the Democrats might well have second thoughts with Rockefeller as an adversary. Like Rockefeller, McCarthy needs a deus ex machina. Like Rockefeller, he is trying to help Providence in a number of ways. His organization has proclaimed a "Month for McCarthy," a high-powered drive involving the dispersal of 55 field agents around the country to build up pressure on delegates. Telephone and letter-writing campaigns are being aimed at convention-bound Democrats. Lawsuits are being planned in some states to break loose votes now bound by the unit rule. For the convention, there is talk of challenging delegations from perhaps 14 states on grounds that McCarthy people were improperly deprived of seats. There is also the possibility of a platform fight over Viet Nam.
McCarthy's campaign is growing more professional. He has acquired new aides, notably former Democratic National Chairman Stephen Mitchell, who has a solid working knowledge of convention politics. A rented Boeing 727 jet has replaced older planes that sometimes developed mechanical trouble. His speeches are studded with more specific proposals than previously. He talks in terms of giving the President emergency powers to deal with malnutrition among the poor, and has come out for an international arms-control plan that calls on the U.S. to take the first step unilaterally. He would have the U.S. halt deployment of new offensive and defensive nuclear missiles.
Furloughed. But basically McCarthy's approach to the electorate remains the same. He got into the campaign last Nov. 30 almost as his own second choice, implying that he would have stood aside for Kennedy. He still manages to sound strangely devoid of the lust for power. "I don't think you ought to want it in terms of personal desire or aspiration," he said on a recent television show, "but I'm quite willing to be President." He hints that one term might satisfy him: "If you can't do it in four, you can't do it in eight." He is something of a Whig as far as the powers of the Presidency are concerned. He frequently deplores executive encroachments on congressional powers. The Presidency, he says, is not an "incarnation of all of the hopes and the aspirations of the country. I think that is to put too much of a burden on the office."
Nonetheless, the idealists who have formed the core of his support look upon him as an incarnation of their aspirations. This is especially true among the young. Last week, when his staff sought to cut costs by "furloughing" 75 workers, most of them youngsters, the majority of them insisted on staying on without even the usual meal allowances. McCarthy draws much of his support from those hungry for a new kind of leadership, from some Republicans, and from independents of both conservative and liberal bent. For many in and around the New Left, an anti-war candidate sympathetic to the disinherited and leary of an overly powerful executive is close to ideal.
Full Stomach or Empty. Still, McCarthy has failed to capture all the anti-Humphrey Democrats, even after Kennedy's death. The failure of many Kennedy men to support him is due partly to lingering animosity from the primaries and partly to his essentially passive view of the Presidency. One prominent Kennedyite in search of a new flag had a talk with McCarthy and reported later: "From what he says, he'd turn the conduct of the office over to a committee and go off and read books. That scares the hell out of me."
If McCarthy would not quite do that, he is entirely capable of turning his campaign over to subordinates. Two weeks ago, he took three days off to visit his alma mater, St. John's University at Collegeville, Minn. He was taking time out, he said, to "levitate." In a moment on the ground, he read the epistle at a small mass, choosing Philippians 4: 10-14, which includes the lines "I have been through my initiation and now I am ready for anything anywhere; full stomach or empty stomach, poverty or plenty."
Soul Content. Last week he was even ready for his first major swing through the South. He managed to draw some friendly crowds while evoking no visible hostility. Yet his stop in a black neighborhood in Atlanta, like an earlier visit to Pittsburgh's Negro Hill district, displayed again his failure to stir black enthusiasm. Asked why black Democrats should support him instead of Humphrey, McCarthy replied: "I haven't really made much of an argument that they should, except that if we pursue the war, there's not enough money to take care of poverty programs in this country." A Negro offered an explanation of why McCarthy is not more popular in ghettos: "He ain't got soul."
Many would disagree with that judgment, arguing that McCarthy has the highest soul content of all and proves it by his refusal to politick in any way but his own. He does well in the suburbs and among the affluent and well-educated generally, but tends to lose support in the lower social rungs which provide a major segment of his party's strength. Still, he has consistently outperformed his rivals in the polls. Last week Mervin Field's California Poll found that among the state's voters he rates higher than Humphrey and all of the Republican candidates. The race is closest against Rocky--43% to 41%.
McCarthy has argued that he channels discontent, particularly among the young, into the regular political system. That much is certain. But his mission is incomplete if he cannot find a way to turn participation into power. He and his followers complain that some of the rules are not fair, and they are correct. The procedures of delegate selection are complex, quirky and in some cases downright undemocratic. Yet McCarthy's supporters at the local level sought to exploit those procedures where they had the strength.
The difference is that Humphrey's organizational muscle is more widespread, his rapport with the regulars greater. McCarthy last week was asked how it felt to be running against a fellow Minnesotan and an old ally. "Like two dogs who always eat dog food out of the same dish," he said. "Throw them a piece of steak and they fight over it." The outpouring on McCarthy's behalf of housewives, college students and assorted other neophytes has been astounding. Even so, it is hardly realistic --or just--to expect the besieged regulars to surrender, merely on demand, the machinery that they have been tending for years.
Hubert H. Hawk. Certainly Humphrey has no intention of giving up the steak. While delegates have been falling into line, Humphrey has run into intense needling during his campaign forays. HUBERT HAS A MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, said some picket signs. HUBERT HORATIO HAWK, said others. Friends and commentators kept hinting that Humphrey was about to break loose from Johnson on Viet Nam or was preparing to fight Johnson over the Democratic platform. Last week, exasperated by repeated references to his failure as Vice President to challenge L.B.J. on a whole galaxy of issues, he declared: "We don't need an Aaron Burr in this Republic." He said bluntly: "Of course I want to look to the future--on everything. That's not a big secret. But that doesn't mean I want to repudiate the past. I want to start with what we've got, in every area, and build on it."
Ten Years Ahead. Forced on the defensive, he has been unable so far to win really broad support--even though his delegate strength is close to the magic 1,312 mark. One of his newspaper ads declares: "Humphrey has been ten years ahead of his time for the last 20 years." Yet his more extreme critics could not care less about his work for Medicare or civil rights or the nuclear test ban treaty. If he is nominated in Chicago-next month, they are likely to stage noisy protests or form a fourth party.
Humphrey cannot realistically hope to placate the hard-core opposition on his left. He can merely chip at it by edging further away from the Johnson Administration. He promises a new, "very significant" statement on Viet Nam soon, and hopes that once he is alone in battle with Richard Nixon, all will come right. He believes that many old friends and young strangers whose passion he now fails to ignite will concede his virtue once they are forced to consider the alternative.
Rustle of Billions. Despite similarities in backgrounds and present problems, there are obvious differences between Nixon and Humphrey. To be sure, they were both small town boy wonders, Hubert the son of a pharmacist in South Dakota, Nixon of a California grocer. Both were star debaters in school and to this day are better at lecture-hall oratory liberally sprinkled with corn than at the effective use of television. And they occasionally sound alike, as in their recent stress on law and order. Each is a centrist in his own party.
Yet the differences are plain. Humphrey is basically a liberal in the New Deal-Fair Deal-Great Society sense of the term. Solution-by-government does not alarm him, and neither does the rustle of federal billions leaving the Treasury. Hence his renewed talk of a "Marshall Plan for the cities." Nixon stands a few degrees to the right and is more prone to emphasize private investment. In style, Nixon is usually precise and slightly reserved, while Humphrey tends toward the effusive. Humphrey's first national reputation was as a somewhat naive radical; Nixon gained first fame as a Communist hunter and a tough--some say brutal--political operator. Neither has completely shed his early image. For Humphrey, this means a certain residual regard as a big-hearted if slightly inefficient do-gooder., Nixon comes across as shrewder, far less emotional, more expert at the techniques of politics, less attached to earlier beliefs.
Into the Vacuum. The measure of Nixon's political perspicacity is the distance that he has traveled from almost total oblivion after his 1962 defeat for California's governorship. In the wake of the party's 1964 debacle, a vacuum developed in the G.O.P., and Nixon moved surely and skillfully to fill it.
Cannily, he let George Romney's candidacy collapse rather than shove a fellow Republican too hard. Nixon entered the primaries against the advice of some of his financial backers. "I really had no choice," he said later. "I had the so-called loser image. I had to win something."
He continued winning, although against token opposition. He did not slash any fellow Republicans. This, together with the continuing gratitude for past services that he holds like so many mortgages, overpowered many delegates. And there was also the fact that Nixon, like Humphrey, has the support of party members. While poll after poll has indicated the relative weakness of both men in the country at large, the surveys have also demonstrated that among party regulars Nixon and Humphrey are supreme.
A Whole Crowd. The lack of real pressure until Rockefeller began booming last month made it easy for Nixon to avoid mistakes of the past. He gets plenty of rest. His appearances are so scrupulously planned and executed that his staff calls them "drills." He has complemented his basic speech, which is mostly a catalogue of Administration sins, with some thoughtful papers that have provoked serious discussion. He gets along better with the press than ever before, al though he is still not exactly chummy with reporters. A "new" Nixon? The next few months will be a better test. Meanwhile, Julius Monk's mummers sing in This Year's Model:
And he is liberal and conservative,
He's humble and he's proud,
He's more than just a candidate
He's a whole crowd!
Nixon is still capable of little bloopers. He was too quick, for instance, to criticize Abe Fortas' appointment as Chief Justice. Nixon, who won fewer than 1% of the Jewish votes in a recent Michigan survey (v. 20% for Rocky), thereby threatened to sap his appeal to that group even further. His attempts at small talk fall flat. On a Portland television program, he told listeners his secret for staying trim. "I eat proteins," he said. "I eat a lot of cheese. Cottage cheese. I eat cottage cheese until it runs out my ears. And one thing I do that makes it not too bad is I put ketchup on it. I learned it from my grandmother."
Nixon may lose the gourmet vote with that one, but it will take something bigger to deny him, or Humphrey for that matter, the nomination. Humphrey has the implied blessing of Lyndon Johnson, which hurts in the ideological competition but helps in controlling the convention apparatus. To nobody's surprise, Nixon last week received Dwight Eisenhower's formal endorsement, which does not mean much in terms of convention procedures but serves to remind regulars where the party's center lies.
Words of Challenge. If many voters are unhappy with things as they are, few can say what they ought to be, and there is nothing remotely approaching a consensus on the man who may be capable of charting the right course. Instead, there is a general feeling that the Ins are in trouble for making such a mess of things, and that none of the Outs seem all that much of an improvement.
Once the conventions are over, that situation will change rapidly. Millions now growl: "I don't like any of them." By Labor Day, they will have a clear choice between two major-party candidates rather than among the current profusion of possible Presidents. Rockefeller talks of a "clean break, a clean slate and a clean start." Those are words of challenge. But each of the candidates, in his own way, is after the same thing. For the chief challenge to each is not so much to defeat his nearest rival as the task of finding a solution to what ails the nation. And it is up to the middle-aged political veterans who are vying for the presidency to persuade an unprecedentedly skeptical electorate that they are equal to the mission.
*Nixon is 55, Humphrey 57, McCarthy 52, Reagan 57, Wallace 48. *Or some other city. A communications workers' strike, still unsettled at week's end, may force the Democrats to move--perhaps to Miami Beach.
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