SOUTH CAROLINA: Uh

Last June, spry old (70) James F. Byrnes emerged from retirement to make a pronouncement: "We are going down the road to statism," he warned. He added a few remarks that indicated unmistakably that the Southern states'-rights insurrectionists had found their most respectable spokesman yet.

In the ensuing months, Jimmy Byrnes kept talking and supporters kept coming, thicker than bullbats around the chimneys of his Spartanburg home on a summer evening. They thought he ought to run for governor. In October, Jimmy Byrnes issued a firmly equivocal statement: "If I conclude that as governor I could make a contribution ... I will be a candidate. If I do not so conclude, I will not be a candidate." There was another question, he added: "Whether one, as governor, could secure the cooperation of other governors in arousing the people of the nation to hold the line,.against further encroachment upon the rights of the state."

Last week Jimmy Byrnes concluded that the answer was yes. His health was fine (a heart scare that led to his resignation as Secretary of State had proved a false alarm) and his election almost certain. His three opponents in the Democratic primary—the only election that counts—were scarcely serious competition for a man who had been Secretary of State, a Supreme Court Justice, and assistant President to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

No one claimed to be much surprised. Said one constituent: "I never saw a man lather up if he wasn't going to shave."