The Administration: The Imponderables

Nothing, it had seemed, could conceivably stand in the way of Democrat Lyndon Johnson's inexorable march back to the White House.

But last week, during a few tumultuous days, a spectacular series of international and national events tumbled forth in bewildering array and threw a whole set of imponderables into a presidential campaign that had previously seemed all too ponderable.

Good Old Rules? To start it off, the Soviet Union orbited the earth's first three-passenger spaceship, indicating that the Russians maintain at least a two-year lead over the U.S. The overthrow of Nikita Khrushchev raised anew the question of what...