Exploitation on Two Sides

Few TV sponsors have ever got so much mileage out of a single program as the Democratic National Committee is getting out of Jack Kennedy's appearance last month before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston. Kennedy's speech, and the question-and-answer period that followed, were designed to lay the religion issue to rest for the remainder of the campaign. Instead they were being used to keep the Kennedy side of the question alive. Last week, to the surprise of some local Democrats, a half-hour film of the Houston meeting appeared in prime time on eight California TV stations, distributed by Democratic headquarters in Washington. It was shown three times in the State of Washington. It appeared in Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota. Michigan, New York, Vermont. It has run again and again across the South.

The film itself is an unexceptionable documentary: it is Jack Kennedy's dramatic and eloquent plea for "an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" (TIME, Sept. 26). But Republicans are convinced that the Kennedy forces are making too much of it. Republicans were only too willing to drop the whole issue when Dick Nixon called for a "cutoff date" on the candidates' discussion of religion.*Their intentions were practical as well as high-minded: Nixon knows that he has a better chance of picking up Catholic votes in the key Northern states if the Catholics are not stirred into defensive solidarity on religion.

The Kennedy forces, who keep a pollster's watch on the Catholic vote, know it too. Some Republicans are convinced that showing the Houston film in such heavily Catholic areas as New York, Seattle and San Francisco is a deliberate effort to keep the issue bubbling. To which the Kennedy forces answer that, even though the G.O.P. is not exploiting the issue, all kinds of crackpot mail against a Catholic President are flooding mailboxes, particularly in the South and the border states.

*An edict which a Nixon press aide violated last week by issuing a release which quoted an Israeli newspaper's call for U.S. Jews to vote for Nixon because he would do so much for Israel. Last week three former leaders of Jewish organizations objected to "this shocking appeal for votes from Americans of Jewish faith."

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