Nation: Gentleman & Scholar

• Share

In the closing days of the Wisconsin primary campaign, Lyndon Johnson's local agents found so few people willing to work for him without pay that they had to hire helpers from employment agencies. By contrast, 3,000 volunteers in Milwaukee alone were out ringing doorbells for Senator Eugene McCarthy.

McCarthy's appeal to youth is nonpareil. He is cool without being cold, a scholar with four books to his credit who once played semipro baseball, a father of four who spent a year as a Benedictine novice. He can talk to students—as well as to businessmen and farmers—with equal ease about politics and poetry. At the risk of sounding fey, he usually prefers the far-out. A New York Times reporter last week described this conversation between McCarthy and Poet Robert Lowell, an ardent supporter who has been traveling with the entourage:

Lowell: Can they draft monks?

McCarthy: No.

Lowell: Well, that's a loophole.

McCarthy: Do you suppose we could get some bishop to give all our student supporters minor orders?

During pre-primary week, McCarthy made a strong appeal to potential Republican crossover voters—so strong that Richard Nixon plaintively urged: "As a Republican, vote Republican." Many were clearly thinking of doing otherwise. At a Madison rally for McCarthy, the wife of Wisconsin's Republican Governor Warren Knowles was an enthusiastic listener.

In Fond du Lac, McCarthy strolled into the local Nixon-for-President office, found a lone woman worker there. "She was glad to see me," he grinned. "I was the only one who had been in all day." Certainly, his appeal to G.O.P. voters is far wider than Bobby's. Said Barry Goldwater of McCarthy last week: "He's a gentleman and a scholar who has done things in a calm and reasonable way." Indeed, some saw in his style and views elements of a latter-day Wendell Willkie—a view confirmed by a thought-provoking article on the presidency that he wrote last week (see box).