POLITICS: The High Road

Clouds of grey smoke rose from hot-fat cookers on the floodlit high-school football field in Rochester, Ind. (pop. 5,000) as "Charley Halleck Day" sizzled to a close with an old-fashioned fish fry. Heading the well-wishers of Republican House Leader Halleck on his silver anniversary in Congress was touring Vice President Richard M. Nixon. At the flag-draped rostrum, facing 15,000 Hoosiers brimful of yellow perch and Republican politics, Nixon, after saluting Halleck, the crowd and the perch, said: "Now, I want to relate the international situation to this meeting we're having in Indiana." That relationship never became completely clear, but Nixon's approach and tone were in keeping with his strategy as a presidential candidate.

Politics Bypassed. On the threshold of the presidential election year, Nixon has some well formulated plans. For as long as he can, he would like to appear before the voters, not as an active, partisan candidate, but rather as Vice President of all the U.S. He would even prefer not to announce his candidacy during the early-bird New Hampshire primary next March, but he may be forced to if New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller files against him. Until then, Nixon will continue to project himself as a national leader who has dealt and can continue to deal with Nikita Khrushchev.

The Nixon strategy was plainly in evidence last week. Time and again he made such remarks as "In my various conversations with Mr. Khrushchev . . ." and "As Khrushchev said to me . . ." In Illinois for the dedication of the University of Chicago's new $4,100,000 law center, Nixon urged, as he had before, that the rule of law be brought more decisively into international affairs; bypassing the opportunity to talk politics with Illinois Republicans, Nixon spent nearly all his spare time in his hotel room, working on a carefully nonpartisan speech, which he delivered at midweek at the CENTO conference in Washington (see FOREIGN NEWS).

In Dallas for the opening of the Texas state fair, Nixon again related the occasion to international affairs: "Driving out here, I thought of another fair that I saw only a few weeks ago in Russia . . ."

Once Stung. Only once during the week did Candidate Nixon get into the give and take of partisan politics. Then, stung by Democratic Presidential Candidate Stuart Symington's criticism of Administration missile and space policies, Nixon replied: "While he was Secretary of the Air Force [during the Truman Administration], I would like to know how many missiles he ordered. It was very, very few." But by week's end Nixon was back on his carefully noncontroversial path. In Oregon's Columbia River country to dedicate his second dam in a fortnight. Nixon told some 3,500: "There is no difference between a great majority of leaders of both political parties in firmly standing behind the President ... in supporting the fight of the people of Berlin and the world to achieve the kind of government they want."