The Nation: Storm over The Canal

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In that same spirit, the Senate's most critical Republicans, including North Carolina's Jesse Helms, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and Utah's Orrin Hatch, flew to the Canal Zone aboard an Air Force plane to listen to the complaints of Americans living there. No sooner did they leave, having ingested what one American businessman in Panama called "an overdose of fuel for their case," than Mississippi's Senator James Eastland arrived for more of the same. At week's end, some 2,000 American Zonians, mainly employees of the Panama Canal Company and members of their families, staged an anti-treaty rally in Balboa Stadium, but Strongman Omar Torrijos Herrera had robbed them of much of their thunder at a meeting of Panama's toothless legislature earlier in the day. Torrijos praised Carter and exhorted voters to turn out in the national plebiscite on the canal agreements.

Clearly, however, Torrijos' friendly mood would change instantly if the treaty were rejected—or substantially delayed—by Congress. Linowitz, stopping off in Denver after visiting Ford to attend an American Legion Convention, claimed to have won a convert or two among the anti-treaty legionnaires. This week he stalks still bigger game: former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who earlier had denounced Carter's campaign for support as a "medicine show." To the dismay of the critics, Reagan agreed to withhold criticism until he had been briefed by Linowitz and Bunker. It seemed unlikely, however, that Reagan would join such conservative Republicans as Senators S.I. Hayakawa and Barry Goldwater in an endorsement.

Nobody could be sure just how the votes would fall in the Senate. "Anybody who says he has an accurate head count now is crazy," said Carter Aide Hamilton Jordan, who is coordinating White House ratification efforts. "There are guys on record as being against the treaty who I think will eventually support it." As for Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd's suggestion that the vote be delayed until next year, Jordan said simply: "We certainly don't want an early vote if we're going to lose."