Nation: KEYNOTE TO OPPORTUNITY

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No Ripsnorting. To spare the brains and buttocks of the 17,000 or so delegates, alternates, functionaries, newsmen and spectators in Convention Hall, Evans limited the talk to 25 minutes. Nominating speeches were supposed to be restricted to 15 minutes and seconding speeches to four. Even the invocations were ordered held to 90 seconds. Explained a convention planner: "A clergyman is no different from a politician when he sees a camera and a microphone in front of him."

However, the rule was not meant to apply to John Wayne, who was called on for an "inspirational reading" rather than a run-of-the-mill invocation. Demonstrations for candidates were also cur tailed. When Lincoln was nominated in 1860, such a din rocked Chicago's Wigwam auditorium that, as one witness observed, "a thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs, a tribe of Comanches might have mingled in the scene unnoticed." Miami Beach will be different. This time candidates were limited—in theory at least—to 20-minute outbursts in their behalf with no more than one 50-piece marching band (or two 25-piece ensembles), and no outside demonstrators.

In the process of refining his thoughts and tailoring them to the time limitation, Evans invited a few dozen friends and advisers to his official residence in Olympia for a trial run-through of his still unfinished speech last week. One suggestion offered afterward: throw in a few more ripsnorting flourishes to bring the people in Convention Hall to their feet. Evans vetoed the idea. "We ought to aim at the people who are watching on television," he said, "rather than delegates who won't be listening anyhow."

Where the Action Is. Evans was overhauling the speech up to the last minute, but its theme was one that he had conceived from the first: the bewildering pace of change in the nation today, and the challenge that this poses to the G.O.P. "This party should not fear to tread new paths," he wrote in his second draft, "for change in all its forms has been the generating force of America's greatness." The G.O.P. "must be where the action is."

Evans discerned "an impulsive, reckless dissatisfaction with what we are—and a desperate outcry for what we could be once again." He noted that "our persistent centralization of government has accomplished little—except the progressive immobilization of state governments and the destruction of local solutions." One example is the welfare system, which, he said, has succeeded only in destroying pride and incentive. Observed Evans: "The first priority of the U.S. is the resolution of our internal conflict—the recognition that if we cannot unite our own nation, then we cannot preserve the hope of others." But that, he added carefully, did not mean a pell-mell pullout from Viet Nam. "To have entered the war by the path of error does not mean that we can now leave through the door of default."