Nation: IN SEARCH OF POLITICAL MIRACLES

A story circulating in the Midwest these days tells how a pollster approached two men and asked one of them whether he intended to vote for Humphrey or Nixon for President. Without a word, the man hauled off and slugged the pollster. "What's the matter with you?" his friend remonstrated. "You know you're going to vote for one of those guys." Replied the first man: "I know, but I don't like to be reminded of it."

In many ways, Hubert Horatio Humphrey and Richard Milhous Nixon embody the cherished old ideals. They are "achieving Americans," men from modest Main Street beginnings who, through ambition and ability, rose to the U.S. Senate and to a place at the right hand of a President. Even when the easy life became available to them, it could not lure them from the burdens —and ambitions—of public service.

Unfortunately for the owners of these classic credentials, something is missing. Humphrey and Nixon are almost overwhelmingly strong favorites to be nominated, but the prospect fails to excite millions of voters in their own parties and beyond. The thought of having to choose between them leads some citizens to say that they will not vote. Others say that they will support George Wallace's third party on the right, or encourage a fourth party on the left, or vote only with reluctance for the major parties. Quips Chicago Columnist Virginia Kay: "Nineteen sixty-eight may go on record as the year they gave an election and nobody came."

Loosening Loyalties. The phenomenon of the unhappy voter can be exaggerated. The genuinely disenchanted and disaffected are probably a minority, and a fragmented one at that. Vast numbers of Americans, by contrast, see more merit in pleas for law and order than in cries for change. They would be happier with a candidate who symbolizes stability and the known than one who stands for radical change and the unknown. But it is a minority, and particularly a progressive, vocal minority, that often sets the tone of the times. The articulate Americans who are seeking new paths and new personalities have done just that. More significant, they have defied all the laws of political gravity by keeping aloft the candidacies of Nelson Rockefeller and Eugene McCarthy.

Party loyalties have been loosening steadily. Many restless Republicans lean toward McCarthy, while many more Republicans would not consider a Humphrey victory a disaster. Numbers of disenchanted Democrats, on the other hand, like Rockefeller. The trend is underscored by a recent Gallup survey. Among voters of all ages, 46% consider themselves Democrats, 27% Republicans, 27% independents. But among those under 30, only 38% call themselves Democrats and 22% Republicans. The remaining 40% regard themselves as independents—voters who are more concerned with current is sues and individual excellence than with traditional party labels or party loyalty.