Democrats: On the Threshold of Adventure

There is much more to a presidential candidate than his stand on issues and his ability to marshal organizational and financial support. Political potential also involves intangibles of spirit and philosophic roots. Less than a year before the 1972 presidential primaries, TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey offers his impressionistic assessment of the Democratic contenders. Even at this early date they are running hard.

NOT the least of the political curiosities in this year of the urban age, is that six of the seven men raised up to challenge Richard Nixon come out of small-town America. Only Teddy Kennedy, a child of privilege, does not know the sulfuric terror of a tiny Methodist Sunday school, the hard-penny economics of a paper route, or the ecstasy of being a state tuba champion.

For those who have seen the sunburned 4-H boys in the pens with their heifers and listened to the croak of a village valedictorian unawed by God or science, there is no mystery in their consuming urge for public service and their special sense of selfimportance. They are the ones who listened to and believed the Scripture lessons about helping each other and rejecting materialism. They learned the satisfaction of personal excellence and leading others. They are all now on the threshold of an adventure that not even they imagined back in Mitchell, Doland, Shirkieville, Everett, Rumford and Ida Grove.

They are good men, in the apple-pie tradition, maybe good to the point of boredom, but that is in the eye of the beholders. They are men of uncommon decency and devotion, but none has lighted a real fire. Whether any of them would make a good President is still a question for most Americans.

McGOVERN: A Singular Intensity

George McGovern is the philosopher, well read, thoughtful, open as a South Dakota sky, every idea floating up and out for all to see. Some are only half-formed. He may be too honest and too open. His singular intensity seems sometimes to sweep him beyond the fine limits of good judgment. He ends up beyond any serious constituency, too strident on the war, too quick to embrace any dissenter, suspected finally of being an opportunist, without the relief of generating excitement.

McGovern sits in his office surrounded by stuffed pheasants and distinguished service awards (one from the National Limestone Institute). "I don't have any trouble sleeping," he says. "I'm doing what I want to do." He is modishly dressed in wide collar and thick tie, yet talks with the slow rasp of a country preacher, which he almost became. The paradox again. His boyhood heroes are George Norris, Bob La Follette and Peter Norbeck, who worried most about the people, and McGovern is doing no less. "We have lost our individualism, our sense of our own uniqueness. The young are closer to the truth."

Yes, he says, the race for the presidency is evening up now. He sees a chance that few political professionals concede to him. "I feel it in my bones. I have no doubt at all that I could lead the country in a more hopeful and joyful direction."

BAYH: Hard to Read

Across the hall is Birch Bayh (pronounced bye), Indiana's Vigo County 4-H-er. He is surrounded by pictures of covered bridges. Debate champion, Golden Gloves light heavyweight, lawyer, nemesis of Haynsworth and Carswell. "I'm not scared by the presidency. As a President, I could make a difference. It's whether you want a presiding officer or a leader." The phrases come out in that pre-packaged rhetoric of the heartland that too often has been mistaken for real achievement, a smokescreen for charlatans. They invite distrust today. They come from a face that is uncreased, hard to read. There is not yet in his talk a hint of a new American vision or even much fresh thought. But there is some elemental force, a determination not evident in the rhetoric.

Bayh knows almost every important Democrat in every important state. He has money and he moves like clockwork around the circuit, tireless, like some kind of political accountant totting up the gains, raising the larger question of whether his kind can compete in a time that calls for a new spiritualism. "I'm not here by accident," he says quietly, and there for a moment is one of those kids nestled in the clean hay of the sheep barn or holding the halter of his prize pony and calculating what he can do to get more points and capture the blue ribbon and knowing that God helps those who help themselves.

HUGHES: An Essence of Mystery

More than the others, Iowa's Harold Hughes exudes the faint essence of mystery, a political asset. Man of religion, former truck driver and reformed alcoholic, he moves into a room trailing wonder. "We've got to get out of the psychology of believing that the problems have no solutions. The solutions are in the hearts of the people on Main Street," he says. Huge, powerful, all-state guard and a tuba champion. There is a sensitivity also. "We need more love in our daily lives. There needs to be a willingness to forgive each other." But there is something almost too mysterious about Hughes. His thoughts seem too simple, too direct. It is as if he has arrived here more on the breadth of his shoulders than his mind. The world beyond American shores is still unknown to him. So are the complexities of Washington. Yet there is this kind of fearless thing inside him that intrigues his audiences. It is not yet clear if it is foolhardiness or a special courage.

Hughes' life has been hard, but good. He remembers with relish tumbling out of bed on frigid Iowa mornings and running naked down to dress behind the wood stove, the only heat, bending too far in his exuberance and burning his fanny. "People survived by helping others," he says, eyes wandering west. A neighbor came during the Depression to borrow a dollar. The Hughes family had three. They lent one of them. With his baritone voice he sang at home and in high school. "I still remember how it goes," he says, sitting in the afternoon light in the waiting room off the Senate floor. He straightens up, rumbles out the first few bars of his old solo, "When big profundo sang low C . . ."

MUSKIE: Leading or Led?

Ed Muskie is labeled, cast, watched. He is more wary than the others, the price of being ahead. Yet all of his experience has not erased his sense of awe about being where he is and who he is. And in a way, that is his strength. There is newness still about him, an abiding belief in the goodness of people that continues to rise to the surface, and even his temper emerges as a very special righteous indignation, a rare quality in the gray of Washington's current power holders. Ed Muskie, the Polish immigrant tailor's son, is a true believer. That scarecrow frame, craggy face and gravelly voice make everybody think of Abraham Lincoln, and that is of huge appeal in this aimless age. But occasionally, there is the disquieting sensation that somehow he is trying too hard to be "Honest Abe," trying too much to reason with every voice that is raised against him.

Muskie feels there is always a television lens in front of him, and it is the wellspring of all power and he must put on his stovepipe hat. They whisper around the Capitol corridors that if Muskie had the hardness in him right now, he could seize the thing before next year. His staff is big and growing, and Muskie is moving more and talking out, but sometimes he seems lost in details, as if his own cluttered and compassionate mind will not let him cut through to the fundamentals of running for and winning the nomination.

When Muskie lets his length slump at last, folds his hands, gives off that long-jawed smile, then there is some of that real Maine stuff that sweeps away doubts and makes everybody trust him. "People lack confidence and trust in each other and in their Government," he says. "They are looking for a man who knows who he is. Yes, yes, we can deal with our problems, but there has to be action." A question rises, floats there for a second. Is Muskie out there leading or is he being swept along by forces beyond him? But then he has untangled himself, and is moving off with long strides toward something and somebody who is waiting.

JACKSON: The Cold Warrior

"I'm having fun," says "Scoop" Jackson. "I'm speaking my mind." A huge picture of Seattle is spread across his wall, and there is Grand Coulee Dam at night, and his coffee table is a slice of a Western tree. He is an easy and sensible man. Tougher than his exterior. There is a sameness about Jackson that plagues him. For so long he has been the champion of the aircraft industry. "Mr. Boeing." Somehow he is that image of the perpetual proponent of military preparedness. There is something of mothballs about it: cold warrior in the year of the great search for human warmth. His impeccable liberal credentials on social affairs, economics, conservation are lost to view.

He got his name Scoop when he peddled the Everett Herald in the red-light district. He went back as prosecuting attorney and cleaned the place up. Nowadays he quotes Churchill, who worried about America's inner strength and ability to "stay the course." He has read Mao and studied the lives of all the top Russians, and so he thinks we ought to keep our weapons modern and have plenty of them. That idea keeps setting him apart from the others. To him it is simple. You seek peace, but stay strong. We need the SST, but we don't need to disrupt nature. "We can have quality of life and economic growth." The parlor liberals have forgotten that jobs are important, he insists. He studies a lot, squirreling away facts. "Some of these guys go up the hill and down the hill," he says. "They come out with mush." Not Scoop Jackson, paper carrier, sawmill hand, law-and-order commencement orator.

HUMPHREY: Lively Fuddy-Duddy

Hubert Humphrey, dean of the class. Scarred and bruised, but jumping and bubbling, the glands still exuding their special juices. It is odd how good he looks up close, but how old he seems from a distance. There in front of the desk he bathes you in warmth and enthusiasm. The mouth turns down naturally, and that, along with his pointed jaw, could make him seem mean, but he never lets it happen. Humphrey laughs uproariously and shows his visitors a little plaque that says TO HELL WITH DO-GOODERS. He savors a man of light heart and the joy of children. That is why Humphrey somehow bores his constituency to death and then suddenly wins them back and goes on and on. Does he still want to be President? For a moment, there is the hesitation of a beribboned campaign veteran, and then, what the hell, he is too long around to play games. "Yes, I do."

Then Humphrey is talking and pacing and lecturing and preaching and laughing. "I give these young people on my staff hell. I say, 'Here I am, an old fuddy-duddy, and I have more ideas than you do.' This Administration is not only apathetic. It is questionable if it is alive." Each new thought, each fresh phrase lights him up as he beholds himself. "It's not a Silent Majority; it's a deaf Administration. There is no spirit." Old Father Humphrey ("Daddy") is up on the wall, the man who read him Woodrow Wilson and Willam Jennings Bryan. Humphrey talks about how the public now is a different public from when he started. The people cannot be fooled. They know. About January he is going to ask himself if they really believe in his ideas or whether they consider him only a rerun of the past. If he gets the latter answer, then he says he is going to square his shoulders and say, "I don't want any part of me either."

KENNEDY: Driven by Something Bigger

You walk up apologetically to Teddy Kennedy, the different one, because there is a sadness that follows him. He gathers the tourists in his arms for the Instamatic pictures, and they dissolve in bliss. Wait, he says, have somebody else snap it so the mother can be in there too --and she goes out of her mind with joy. But is he too jolly? Yes. Driven by something that is bigger than him and bigger than anybody. There is the smell of position and power already in Kennedy's office. The couch is thick and lush, not the black Government issue. The pictures on the walls are large and professional--of family and friends, telling in their way the Senator's past and his purpose. The other candidates seem like renters in their quarters. Kennedy seems to own his.

The smile is there, but one wonders how deep. He is polite, but there is a thin, cool curtain between him and his audiences. Flashes of boredom occasionally pierce his sentences, which often lag behind his thoughts, and sometimes there are no verbs or objects. It keeps nagging that he is in something that he may not want, but as long as he is there he will get on top of it, maybe even manage it. The sense that he can listen to and understand another man's ways, a large measure of John Kennedy's charm, still eludes him. Nor is there yet the feeling that human misery moves him as deeply as it did Bobby. He imitates more than innovates. "Out there" in the country, he says, is something he calls "a mood thing." "The idea that the people wanted a period in which to rest no longer seems valid. They are ready for someone to lead them." He has seen despair in the long lines of poor people. He has felt that they have almost given up believing in the American dream, which he still represents. He is running for President, but he is not running, believing he is beyond Chappaquiddick, but not certain the people are. He is trying to grow up those last few inches, like his brothers, and it is not clear yet if he will make it, but it is clear that if he does, he will not be like the other two.

There may be more, or perhaps fewer, men in contention for the Democratic nomination by the time the voters of New Hampshire become the first to express their preference next March. Presidential politics is the most exacting and brutal test of a man, and in the end only one will survive.

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