Nation: THE MAN WHO WOULD RECAPTURE YOUTH

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THE look is merry, but the merriment is diluted. Often a pained bewilderment clouds his cherubic look, and his mouth tightens as if to seal in the explosiveness and confusion behind it. Despite the dancing eyes, the tireless smile, the bouncy spirit, the effusive greetings ("Well, bless your heart," "Thank you, thank you, thank you"), the man the Democratic Party has nominated for President of the U.S. is not to be dismissed simply as a glib, out-of-touch relic of a political era long past.

Hubert Horatio Humphrey bristles at the frequent suggestion that he is a man superseded by the times. He cannot comprehend why, in view of his record, he is looked upon as dated and dull, a prisoner of an obsolete system that has proved unresponsive to the problems of today.

He has not lacked courage, as he is all too ready to recall. As mayor of Minneapolis at the age of 34 (he is 57 now), he cleaned up the police force, reduced crime and upgraded schools. He risked everything for principle when he forced a strong civil rights plank on a reluctant Democratic Convention in 1948, prompting a walkout by Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats. He showed foresight when he crusaded for Medicare 15 years before it became law and proposed a Peace Corps nine months before it was established. His peace credentials, validated in the struggle for enactment of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, were always gilt-edged—until Lyndon Johnson and Viet Nam happened along.

Nonetheless, Humphrey is attacked as deficient in the very qualities that have distinguished his career. That explains, to a degree, the bewilderment that shows up in the pursed lips and clenched jaw. What he fails to grasp is that he is no longer Mayor Humphrey, or young Senator Humphrey, and has not been for many years. He constantly reminds people of the way he was, but he is that way no longer, and his frequent excursions into nostalgia only underscore the point.

Conciliator. As TIME Correspondent Hayes Gorey notes, Hubert Humphrey is deeply grateful to Lyndon Johnson for having elevated him to the second highest office in the land and given him a crack at the first. Yet his gratitude may be misplaced. It was Johnson who years ago in the Senate played a major role in persuading Humphrey "to stop kicking the wall," as Hubert puts it; to abandon solitary crusades for hopeless causes. Once he grasped the lesson, Humphrey advanced to Senate majority whip and then Vice President under Johnson's tutelage. He also took on a good deal of L.B.J.'s coloration. Though never as devious or secretive as Johnson, Humphrey became remarkably like him in his desire to please everybody, his ambivalence, his addiction to hyperbole, his fidelity to the power blocs of the old politics (big labor, Southern Democrats, the surviving bosses and the elderly). He also became vulnerable to the kind of accusation emblazoned on a placard in Chicago last week: "There are two sides to every question; Humphrey endorses both."

Like Johnson, Humphrey has become distrustful of the press—although his condition is nowhere near so grave as the President's—and he has begun to open a credibility gap of his own. Like Johnson, he has been unable to select or attract really first-rate aides. With some exceptions, notably his newly appointed campaign manager, Larry O'Brien, his staff is