Nation: Whose Friend?

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Pat Brown got some odd help from an odd friend last week. At a meeting of Republican women in Washington, Republican National Chairman William Miller said that Nixon had run a "horrible" campaign for the presidency in 1960 and is "doing the same thing now" in California.

The main trouble with Nixon, said Miller, is that his press relations are bad. During the presidential campaign, Miller claimed, "no one could get within four miles of Nixon." He cited the case of a magazine photographer whose editors asked for "informal shots of the Vice President—taking a snooze, eating a sandwich, sitting with loosened necktie. This photographer was never allowed near Nixon." But later, said Miller, the cameraman spent three days on Jack Kennedy's campaign plane and got all the informal pictures he wanted. Added Miller, unkindly: "If Nixon doesn't wake up and realize he must be human, he'll be an elder statesman at a very early age."