DEMOCRATS: Everybody's No. 2

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(See Cover) Behind wailing police sirens, a cream-colored Cadillac sped into Abbeville, La. from the dusty airport, rolled on past the white-columned courthouse, and pulled up in front of the Candlelight Restaurant. Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington unfolded his long (6 ft. 2 in., 183 lbs.), well-tailored frame from a rear seat and, ringed by Louisiana politicos, strode inside to start shaking hands. As photographers flashed away, Abbeville's Mayor Roy Theriot bounced forward to get his picture taken with Symington and Louisiana's own Senator Allen Ellender. "I'm going to pose with two Senators," cried Theriot. "One may be the next President." With a quick laugh, Symington turned to Ellender. "Congratulations, Allen," he said. Everybody within earshot laughed too, for Missouri's Symington was a long way from home and running for President for all he was worth, on his own special road to the White House.

One of the Good Guys. After a fried-chicken lunch and a short press conference, Presidential Hopeful Symington boarded the Cadillac again, rode to the courthouse square to do his speechmaking bit as guest of honor at Abbeville's yearly Dairy Festival. Atop a speaker's platform adorned with red, white and blue bunting and "Symington for President" signs, he smilingly endured the Missouri Waltz played on an electric organ, then permitted photographers to snap away as Dairy Festival Queen Laurie Lee Broussard, 17, planted a decorous kiss on his cheek.

Mindful that his audience was made up largely of farmers, Speaker Symington fired on one of his favorite targets, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. "I don't know who he represents," said Symington, "but I know who he does not represent—the farmers." But it was not what Symington said that impressed the citizens of Abbeville. What impressed them was Stuart Symington himself. Standing straight and tall on the platform, a frown of earnestness stamped on his strong-jawed, ruggedly handsome face, the lingering trace of boyishness nicely balanced by the thick silver streaks in his hair, he looked every inch a potential President. Anybody conditioned by the movies could plainly see that here was one of the Good Guys, brimful of courage and determination to put the Bad Guys to rout.

Party's Choice? Of the five men who, according to the pols and the polls, have at least an outside chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, Stuart Symington is the least widely known, the least colorful and the least eloquent. But he has a lot going for him. He has had more high-level administrative experience in the Federal Government than Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy, Illinois' Adlai Stevenson, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey and Texas' Lyndon Johnson put together. As a Midwesterner of Southern ancestry, who was born in Amherst, Mass, and raised in Baltimore, Md., he has an enviably broad and safe geographical base. And if he is one of the more pedestrian orators in U.S. Senate history, he partly makes up for it with platform earnestness.