Poetry & Potshots

It was a week to gladden the hardest-hearted politician; from coast to coast the trombones blasted out, the bunting rippled, the political speakers roared. Thousands of chickens made the supreme sacrifice, turned up as patties and croquettes on thousands of tables at Lincoln Day dinners and Democratic rallies. In Washington, at a wingding sponsored by the D.C. League of Republican Women Voters, Dick and Pat Nixon listened without a wince to a chorus of college girls who shrilly serenaded them with a new song, to the tune of Clementine:

Out of Calif., to old D.C.

You did come and make your mark,

As the V.P. of the U.S.

You have won so many hearts . . .

The Democrats whooped it up in like fashion. New York Democrats, at a big dinner at the Waldorf, were treated to the spectacle of Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio solemnly reading a "Nixon nomination-acceptance speech," patterned after 'Twas the Night Before Christmas:

I'll wage a campaign that's hard and

tough, As only Dick Nixon can really get

rough.

I'll smear and slander, vilify, attack, For of guts and spirit I sure have no

lack . . .

Amid the poetry and razzmatazz, there were some discordant, familiar old notes. Massachusetts' John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Minnesota's Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the Democrats' two out-in-the-open candidates, began to jab the Republicans--and each other--a little harder. In Santa Ana, Calif., hard by Nixon's home town, Humphrey said the Vice President would be a "negative, nogo, go-slow, not-now, veto type of executive." At a rally of the amateur-politico California Democratic Council in Fresno, Kennedy warned that the party "would be committing a grave error if it ever tried to out-Nixon Nixon."* Nonetheless, at the same rally, the names of Nixon and of Texas' Lyndon Baines Johnson, Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate, were booed and hissed (California Governor Pat Brown later apologized, said the delegates were just "very enthusiastic"). And Adlai Stevenson, in Mexico, far from the political noisemaking, received the most applause.

Later, in Manhattan, attacking the Administration, Jack Kennedy looked over the land, overlooked prosperity, and seemed to see a U.S. shrunk even from the Khrushchev vision ("a limping horse"-see FOREIGN NEWS). "Seven million have an income of less than $2,000," he proclaimed to the New York politicos. "There are 15 million on a substandard diet; 17 million are not covered even by the $1 minimum wage. We have more than 3,000,000 unemployed workers with jobless benefits averaging less than $31 a week." In Fresno, Humphrey took up the same theme: "We cannot, in good conscience, enjoy our prosperity when 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 of our fellow human beings walk the streets looking for work."

In Wisconsin, with the crucial state primary just seven weeks away, the Humphreyites and Kennedymen were after each other tooth, nail and quill. Cries of "windbag" and "vote stealer" were hurled at Humphrey; Kennedy was labeled "soft on McCarthyism" and "tough and amoral." Brother Robert Kennedy, campaigning hard for Jack in Wisconsin, dropped some unsubtle hints that his (and Jack's) archenemy, tough Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, was backing Humphrey. Angrily, Humphrey retorted that "I have not sought Hoffa's support, and he has not offered it. The only time he came into my state recently was to say some unkind things about me."

Humphrey continued to play his poorboy candidacy for all it was worth, attributed Kennedy's political success to "a rich father. Let's face it." But, he added bravely, "I'm not complaining. These are the facts of life." In Manhattan, Jack cracked back: "I got a wire from my father that said, 'Dear Jack, Don't buy one vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'll pay for a landslide.' " Then he swiped at one of the candidates who had decided to sidestep the primaries: "Senator [Stuart] Symington said he hoped Wisconsin would be a good, clean fight--with no survivors."

As the campaign moved on, the signs were unmistakable that it would get rougher--all the way to November--while the voters heard from Millionaire Kennedy and Stout Proletarian Humphrey that they had seldom had it worse. Passing through Carson City, Nev. last week, Humphrey summed it up succinctly: "Democrats don't win when they go around playing ticktacktoe. They win when they slug."

* Last fortnight the word leaked out that George Belknap, the Democratic National Committee's director of voter analysis, had issued a secret party warning against "reckless schemes which could make Nixon a martyr and our campaign a smear ... A frontal attack on Nixon's character . . . would almost certainly lose votes."

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