Growing Issue

On a four-day airborne invasion of Texas, the Dakotas and Missouri, winding up last week in St. Louis, Vice President Richard Nixon flashed a preview of the intensive, fast-paced campaign he plans to undertake in mid-September. It was a strenuous sample: 18 speeches in six cities, mercilessly crowded schedules, jostling crowds, exploding flashbulbs, endless lines of hands to be shaken. In Minot, N, Dak., trapped on an auditorium stage, he even bowed gracefully to that inescapable insigne of presidential candidates, an Indian war bonnet. Seasoned Campaigner Nixon liked what he heard and saw. The crowds were bigger and more enthusiastic than he expected, bolstering his hopes for carrying Texas in November (against any Democrat except Texas' own Lyndon Johnson) and the Midwest farm states despite farmer discontent. In Fargo, N. Dak., upward of 3,000 cheering, placard-waving Dakotans greeted him at the airport—and, incidentally, jammed up the departure of Democrat Jack Kennedy, in town to lend a hand in the special senatorial election (he was greeted by 200). Nixon found another crowd, complete with brass band and Fourth of July sparklers, awaiting him in front of his hotel. He grabbed a sparkler, used it to conduct a few bars. Wrote New York Daily News Reporter Frank Holeman, after covering the four-state swing: "If you are making any bets on the national elections this fall, here's a friendly little tip: don't be a sucker. Don't give long odds against Nixon."

The Magic Figure. In St. Louis, in a speech to a Junior Chamber of Commerce convention, Nixon took an outspoken stand on a major campaign issue, the "growth" debate. A report by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund set the growth issue fluttering in the political winds in 1958 by urging that the U.S. adopt as a national goal an economic growth rate of 5% a year—as against the average 3% a year over the past half-century, and the roughly 4% a year that economists estimate for the 1960s. Nelson Rockefeller still stands foursquare on a need for a forced growth rate of at least 5%. Democrats have picked up the Rockefeller figure, charged that the Eisenhower Administration's anti-inflation policies have caused economic "stagnation," and made "growth" their No. 1 domestic issue.

Arguing about economic growth rates, said Nixon, "is rapidly becoming the most fashionable political parlor game of our time—a game we might call 'growthman-ship.' " But the real question is "not one of ends but of means. Everybody is for growth. The issue is how can we best achieve it."