Nation: KEYNOTE TO OPPORTUNITY

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A growing phalanx of Republicans bears the New Breed label. Some are more conservative than others, but all are reaching for answers to the questions that many Republicans of an older generation were all too willing to ignore. In the Senate, there are Oregon's Mark Hatfield, Illinois' Chuck Percy, Massachusetts' Ed Brooke; in the House, Illinois' Donald Rumsfeld and Texas' George Bush. The statehouses provide the largest contingent, for it is the Governors who most directly confront the nagging problems of urban America. There are New York's Rockefeller, Massachusetts' John Volpe, Pennsylvania's Ray Shafer, Rhode Island's John Chafee, Maryland's Spiro Agnew, Colorado's John Love.

Ideological Equations. Practically every one of those names was mentioned in what became the second biggest guessing game at the convention. The big question, of course, was: Could Nixon be stopped? The next biggest: If not, who would be his running mate?

The New Breed Republicans figured heavily in the speculation as the convention opened. Virtually all of them could offer Nixon, a man of the center, the sort of progressive appeal that would compensate for his weakness in the heavily urbanized industrial states. Such ideological equations are fast replacing geographical balance as the criteria for the second spot. Reagan, Texas Senator John Tower and Florida Governor Claude Kirk figured less prominently in the speculation; if Nixon decided that he needed a man from the right to offset George Wallace's third-party appeal, he was expected to turn to them. But the betting favored someone from the liberal camp.

Someone, say, like John Lindsay. Nixon's aides hinted broadly, in fact, that the stalwart New York mayor was the candidate's first choice. "He's brainy and courageous," said one Nixon lieutenant. "He's got one of the toughest jobs in the world, and he's dived right in and made the most of it." When asked a few weeks ago how he felt about the "dream tickets" that included his name, Lindsay quipped: "I do have bad dreams occasionally." But many Republicans were convinced that the mayor would jump at the second spot. "He has a good image now," noted a Rockefeller lieutenant, "but he knows he's sitting on a powder keg. Sooner or later, something is going to happen to make him look bad."*