DOWN TO THE WIRE

IN the final days of the campaign, Hubert Humphrey's entourage shared a wistful dream: if only Election Day were a week later. Richard Nixon's aides, on the other hand, were wishing that the voting had taken place a week or two earlier. The calendar remained immutable, of course, but the yearning to stretch it in one direction or another reflected a new tension that enlivened the presidential race in its homestretch.

For the first time since August, hints of anxiety were evident among Republican strategists. Earlier, they had confidently figured on a minimum of 360 electoral votes. Through the last week, however, their private count went down to around 300, raising the fear that reversals in two or three middling-to-large states could drop Nixon below the figure of 270 needed to win. Nixon him self, still confident of capturing the popular vote, nonetheless showed his apprehension over a possible electoral deadlock by repeatedly insisting that the presidency should go to the candidate who scored a plurality; he called upon Humphrey to support the popular winner. Humphrey, who was also busy counting, disagreed. He insisted that in the event that no one wins an electoral vote majority (see box, opposite), the House of Representatives should pick the best-qualified nominee. While both men have said that they would not bargain with George Wallace for his electors, the Alabamian could always essay the kingmaker's role by prodding electors in the states he may have carried to cast their ballots for one of the major candidates before the problem ever reaches the House.

Not Quite Guilty. More vividly than ever, the vision of an upset victory tantalized the Humphrey camp. The Democrats felt that each day they were continuing to pick up momentum. Though the days were running out too soon, they found the portents increasingly favorable. Even the London bookmaking odds against Humphrey shortened. The odds at Ladbrokes, which were 12 to 1 against Humphrey a month ago and 6 to 1 two weeks ago, last week were 7 to 4--reflecting Humphrey's increasing strength.

More important, the New York Daily News poll, one of the most comprehensive of its kind on the state level, showed Humphrey ahead in New York State for the first time. Two previous straw polls by the paper had indicated that Nixon had a good chance to get the Empire State's 43 electoral votes. The Gallup poll for mid-October indicated that voters' confidence in the Democratic Party had risen markedly since late August, just as Humphrey's personal standing had gone up.

Finally, Eugene McCarthy came out for Humphrey, thus raising hopes in the Humphrey camp that many of the Democratic dissidents led by the maverick Senator might return to the fold. McCarthy spoke in the tones of a judge finding a culprit guilty, but not quite guilty enough to be hanged. Humphrey still fell "far short" on key issues, he said, but deserved support on the ground that he was better than Nixon. As a measure of his own disgruntlement, McCarthy added that he would not be a Democratic candidate for re-election to the Senate in 1970 or for the Dem ocratic presidential nomination in 1972, thus suggesting that he might help form a new party.

For the old-line party loyalists, Lyndon Johnson came out at his fightingest. Before a Democratic National Committee group in New York City, Johnson, red-faced and leaning forward as though to bite the microphone, waved his fist and slammed at Nixon as "a man who distorts the history of his time." For a change, Johnson seemed to be enjoying the battle and to believe, like Humphrey, that the party might survive this week.

"Disorganized Rabble." The race, in its climactic phase at least, could hardly fail to engage the politician's imagination. The times seemed made for Nixon, yet despite his urbane demeanor and finely honed organization, there remained until the end the possibility that tension and fatigue might combine to bring out the rabbit-punching infighter that the "new Nixon" had kept so firmly in control. For very different reasons, Humphrey's battle for survival also was a fascinating study. Chronically late, incorrigibly loquacious, hopelessly disorganized, the Vice President had seemed to everyone but himself to be a walking case of rigor mortis until the final stretch, when suddenly, somehow, the impassioned humanitarian soul of Humphrey began to flare through the servitor's mask he had worn for four years under Johnson.

The candidates themselves seemed resigned to whatever came their way Nov. 5. Nixon was determined not only to win, but to win big so that he could govern with a clear mandate. There was probably not even a notion of what he would do should he lose; law would certainly seem dull. Just as bent on victory --and apparently convinced it is in his grasp--Humphrey would no doubt be better prepared psychologically for defeat at this juncture and would work for the next four years to unite the party.

Until the end, the rivals zigzagged across the country, concentrating on the largest states. They traveled so fast and talked so heatedly that they finally almost overshadowed the Wallace campaign, giving the race the aura of a tight, old-fashioned two-man contest. Yet the oddities that have marked the campaign's course continued to show up regularly. Humphrey, long tormented by his low marks among college students but helped by the leadership of organized labor, got a far better reception from kids at Malone College in Canton, Ohio, than among the steelworkers in western Pennsylvania. Though still the underdog, he occasionally allowed his schedule to lapse back into its old inefficiency, so that he sometimes saw more billboards and countryside than voters. Nixon, who had run a precise and frequently leisurely campaign to avoid mistakes born of weariness, was looking--and sounding--a bit tired. He was making occasional small fluffs, as when he declared his intention to move into "1400 Pennsylvania Avenue." The White House address is 1600; Nixon's Washington headquarters is at 1400, in the old Willard Hotel that will soon be razed. And the candidate showed a tendency to re-create his rough "old" Nixon style.

In the last act, the lines spoken loudest continued to be less than entertaining and far short of enlightening. Nixon started the week in Albany, N.Y., by decrying personal invective. Later, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, he called the Democrats "that scruffy bunch" and a "disorganized rabble not to be trusted with the new leadership." In Humphrey's Minnesota, he called the Vice President "a man who has been trained to say yes" and one "who has trotted meekly along behind his master." Though some of his darts were aimed at creditable targets, Nixon's overstated attacks, as during the previous week, encouraged the belief that he was losing his composure at last. When, on a network television program, he accused the New York Times of "gutter politics" for an editorial questioning Spiro Agnew's ethics, he not only seemed to protest too much but actually gave the Times's critique far wider currency than it would otherwise have had (the editorial appeared originally on a Saturday, when circulation is low, and editorial page readership is even lower). In Syracuse, on the other hand, Nixon remained very much in control of himself and the situation when he encountered the best-organized heckling he has yet seen on the road. Taking a cue from Ed Muskie, he let his opponents have their say but got the last word in himself.

Crescendo. Humphrey was getting in his own licks as well. "The fundamental issue," he declared, "is the issue of trust." Free translation: How can anyone trust Dick Nixon? In Ohio he called Nixon "one of the military-industrial-complex men who has little regard for peace." Later, he accused his adversary of being the "Number One doubletalker of all time." Both men implored their followers to "sock it to 'em," a phrase that sounded particularly ludicrous coming from middle-aged politicians of national stature.

Far more disturbing was the manner in which the campaign grew ever less informative and ever less statesmanlike down to the final hours. Humphrey concentrated almost entirely on Nixon's ambivalence on the major issues and on Agnew's gaffes. The Nixon organization aired a commercial that interspersed shots of a grinning Humphrey among scenes depicting poverty, war and riots. The commercial was withdrawn from network use after only one showing, but later it was shown by at least one local station.

Beyond the old-fashioned slugging, Nixon and Humphrey reserved their heaviest efforts for television. Both sides planned a crescendo of commercials and broadcast exposure for the candidates during the last two days before the vote. The expenditure of millions for radio and TV time up to the last possible moment was probably wise tactics. It was the kind of campaign in which many voters withheld a final decision until actually confronted with the ballot.

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