Jack Armstrong Announces

By Hugh Sidey

Illinois Congressman Philip M. Crane was in his office with the flags and the Lincoln busts a couple of months ago, and he was in the middle of a sentence when he decided he would run for President of the United States. He was, in fact, parrying the entreaties of a small group of friends and aides who wanted him to declare his candidacy. "I don't think that is the thing to do," he started to say, but before the last words were out, something clicked and he realized it was the thing to do. This fellow with John Kennedy's forelock and Barry Goldwater's jaw changed his life and, who knows, maybe those of many other people, with just one word. "OK," he said.

So about the middle of this week, Republican Phil Crane, 47, history PhD., father of seven daughters and a son, Camel smoker, son of Chicago Columnist Dr. George W. Crane ("The Worry Clinic"), will announce that he is running. Jimmy Carter will not quake in his boots. Ronald Reagan will be mildly irritated, Gerald Ford will be amused, and Crane himself will wonder for at least four seconds what in the world he has done.

What in the world has he done? Yielded his family's privacy for years, maybe for the rest of their lives. Abandoned his comfortable hearth for the dubious pleasure of sleeping and eating in America's instant hostelries. Subjected himself to the hazards of mainlining power; many cannot withdraw once hooked. And, of course, for somebody of his flinty view of the world, he runs the high risk of never doing anything but keynoting the annual meeting of the American Conservative Union, of which he is chairman. But maybe not. He is no kook or gagster.

His conservatism does not emerge like .50 cal. bursts of nonsense--sell TVA, abolish Social Security. True, he recites a solid right-wing litany of tax cuts, spending limitations, deregulation. But almost more important to the candidate is his fervor about the U.S. ("Most magnificent thing man has created"), hard work ("Dependence is not good for anybody"), individualism ("Most talented work force in the world"), hope ("The dream is not over"), fulfillment ("Every job is meaningful") and purpose ("The proper relationship of government to man").

As Crane sees it, this nation's great wealth flowed from the Jeffersonian concept of the unalienable rights of man. Politics today has swung too far toward materialism and needs to re-emphasize our original purpose of sustaining the most just and humane society on earth. To Crane, that means helping the less fortunate but also glorying in unfettered opportunity.

He is something of a Chicago Jack Armstrong. His compulsion to serve rises from a father who made him work for his spending money, pumped a little prairie poetry into his views and whetted his appetite to study history, which he did for eleven years. Crane had three brothers, all superachievers, two of whom are running for Congress this fall (the oldest, a Marine jet pilot, was killed in an exhibition flight). If this sounds familiar, rest assured television writers have already called the Cranes the "Kennedys of the Middle West."

Crane's view of the presidency is somewhat unusual. George Washington is the President he most admires because in an age of many more brilliant men, Washington dominated by force of character, then walked away from power with ease. Crane pays special tribute to Grover Cleveland because Cleveland "had a unique understanding of the impact of soft money on wage earners" and discerned the evils of the era's trade protectionism. If Presidents are judged by what they achieved as measured against their stated objectives, says Crane, then James K. Polk, who vowed to acquire California, settle the Oregon dispute and reduce tariffs, leads all the rest. Polk also possessed the ability to abandon power without regret. He quit when he said he would--after one term.

Crane declares that he wants to end his years on a patch of Indiana land he owns. But first he has to get power if he is to be able to walk away from it in style. One way or another, he will go back to the farm.

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