The Press: Nixon & the Press

To judge from the summary of editorial comment, sniffed the Pecksniffian New York Post, "the G.O.P. has clearly renominated Abraham Lincoln." The composite image of Republican Presidential Nominee Richard Milhous Nixon that emerged from the nation's press last week was hardly Lincolnesque. But with few exceptions, U.S. newspapers liked the way the Republicans ran their convention, ratified their choices, and cheered the first speeches in what looked to be a rousing good campaign. Said the Philadelphia Bulletin in an editorial: "They simply put the best foot forward."

Just as Jack Kennedy's nomination was greeted with general approval, so the Bulletin's sentiments on Nixon found echoes all over the U.S. Republican papers made no bones about their enthusiasm—or their hopes. The Los Angeles Times found him "the only man in the history of the Republic who has had 'on-the-job' training," and added: "He has tact and the ability to make the right decision before the crisis engulfs him. The talent will serve him well when he is President." The liberalRepublican Chicago Sun-Times agreed: "Vice President Nixon has demonstrated that he has the great quality of leadership a political party must have in its candidate for the presidency. He is the best-trained man in history." Glowed the Indianapolis News: "A forceful leader, a hard campaigner, and an articulate speaker." The Denver Post lauded Nixon's "political skill," the Christian Science Monitor his "depth of thinking," the St. Paul Dispatch his "ability to unify divergent groups," the Portland Oregonian his "experience, vigor, intelligence."

New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James Reston, who does not conceal his partiality for Democratic Nominee John F. Kennedy, weighed the two candidates and found them just about equal: "The job [Kennedy and Nixon] have to do cannot be done with personality or rhetoric, but only with cool analysis, efficient hard work, and political skill: and both have unusual capacity for precisely this kind of exercise. Both analyzed the problems of the nation in their acceptance speeches extremely well. Both concentrated on the future and left most of the usual nonsense about Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman, the party of the depression and the party of war, to their backward-looking brethren."