Nation: Chubbmcmship

Never in the 19-year history of Yale University's Chubb Fellowships—established to spark student interest in politics—had such intense preparation been made for a guest. Earlier "Chubbs" had included such controversial figures as Glubb Pasha (former commander of the Arab Legion), Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater and Henry R. Luce. This time students and faculty alike set New Haven palpitating with plans. Passes were issued to members of classes in which the honored visitor would lecture, so that outsiders would not usurp regulars' seats. Radical activists prepared an 18-point questionnaire calculated to embarrass him. Campus conservatives prepared their own rebuttals. Yet when Ronald Reagan showed up in New Haven last week, his hosts were surprised to find him an engaging fellow.

Reagan, of course, had planned it that way—or so claimed his detractors. After all, he dined with Yaleman William F. Buckley Jr. Unbaitable and well read in his homework, Reagan fielded questions with aplomb and wit. Asked whether he felt homosexuals had any place in government, he drawled: "Well, perhaps in the Department of Parks and Recreation." Queried more querulously about Selective Service Director Lewis Hershey's suggestion that draft dissenters be reclassified, Reagan admitted that "emotionally I could go along with him" but "intellectually I realize we can't make military service punitive." The anti-Johsonian candidacy of Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy provided Reagan with another effective one-liner: "This is the type of McCarthyism I heartily approve of—anything that's divisive among Democrats is constructive to Republicans."

As to his own presidential aspirations, Reagan predictably disavowed any personal desire ("Anyone would have to be out of his skull to want to be President"), but refused to make a "Sherman statement" and quoted Dwight Eisenhower as saying that "it was a foolish statement, and Sherman shouldn't have made it." Reagan's reluctance to opt out was justified by a yet-to-be-released poll taken by the liberal Republican Ripon Society, which finds him, along with Richard Nixon, standing "the nearest step away from the 1968 Republican nomination," with George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller far to the rear.