DEMOCRATS: The Men Who

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HAPPy days are HERE again! THUH skies aBOVE are CLEAR again! Let us SING a SONG of CHEER again! HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!

Convention Hall roars to the Democratic war song. Red-eyed delegates sing, shout, weep, laugh, wring hands, whale backs and jostle one another in the aisles. Spotlights swing dizzily around the vast room; the convention floor is a riotous sea of waving signs. BANG! BANG! BANG! Permanent Chairman Sam Rayburn thumps endlessly for order: "The sergeant at arms will clear the aisles." Finally, a hush falls. Rayburn smiles for the first time in precisely four years. "Members of the convention!" cries he. "It is my great pleasure to give you the NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!"

The Man Who—the man who will march forward to the battery of microphones, blink smilingly into the aurora of flashbulbs, raise his hands in delightful helplessness to quiet the throng—that man had probably not dared to let his thoughts wander so extravagantly last week. But chances were good that he had already felt a tremor of premonition.

The Man Who surveyed the U.S. political landscape through a Democratic lens and liked what he saw. In the White House was a lame-duck Republican President, unbeatable in the past but barred by the Constitution from running again in 1960. Going up to Capitol Hill in January is a Congress dominated by Democrats as it has not been since 1937. There seemed a good chance that the strong Democratic winds of 1958 might blow at gale force in 1960, carrying The Man Who all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Fight & Frolic. With such heady hopes, the 1960 Democratic nomination is something far more than a token to fob off on anyone who will take it. Rather, it seems, in the glowing days of 1958 Democratic victory, the richest prize in U.S. politics—a prize worth fighting for. And Democrats being Democrats, loving a fight as much as a frolic, the battle for the 1960 nomination shaped up as one of the grandest, free-swinging rough-and-tumbles in years.

Of the leading contenders, some might wear themselves out doing dressing-room nip-ups before 1960, others might trip over the ropes while entering the ring, others might be kayoed with one presidential primary punch. There will always be more to take their places, but as of this week, six Democrats had emerged from the 1958 elections looking fittest. The six: Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, Massachusetts' Senator John Kennedy, Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson, California's Governor-elect Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown, and New Jersey's Governor Robert Meyner.