Nation: On the Short End

Hubert Humphrey's twelve-car motorcade was zipping across the Brooklyn Bridge one afternoon last week when suddenly the phone began to ring in the communications car ahead of him. The caller was—well, who else would telephone somebody in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge? Hubert ordered the procession to a halt when he got off the bridge, rushed up to the phone for a four-minute chat. "We had a great day," he beamed, "a terrific day here in New York, Mr. President."

Carrying the Burden. Lyndon Johnson really needn't have worried about how his running mate was faring in the big city. Stumping three of New York's five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens), Hubert sat beside Democratic Senatorial Candidate Bobby Kennedy in an open red convertible, drew the biggest crowds he has yet seen. Bobby, with his appeal to the Robert-sox and hair-curler sets, had a lot to do with that, but Hubert drew his share of applause.

Best of all were the lunch-hour throngs in midtown Manhattan. Swinging onto Fifth Avenue, Humphrey and Kennedy were stalled for 15 minutes by a tumultuous turnout rivaling the one that greeted John Kennedy in 1960. It took 80 minutes to inch 25 blocks to the Seagram Building, where Hubert lunched with $ 1,000-a-year Democratic contributors at the elegant Four Seasons restaurant. Hubert just couldn't resist slowing things down even more by halting the motorcade several times to harangue the crowds through a portable loudspeaker. "This is perfect Democratic weather," he jubilated. "The sun is high! The sky is clear!"

Grasping the Opportunity. Through the week Humphrey carried the burden of infighting and partisanship to which he had been assigned. In Chicago, he accepted an enormous, imitation monkey wrench from the Plumbers Union, promised that he would use it "to put the screws on the Republicans." During a three-city swing through Indiana, he derided Barry Goldwater's view of freedom as "the freedom to remain un educated or ignorant, the freedom to be sick, the freedom to stay unemployed, the freedom to be hungry. Some philosophy! Some freedom!" Reacting to G.O.P. charges that his longtime association with the Americans for Democratic Action marks him as a dangerous liberal, he described the A.D.A. as a patriotic outfit whose enemies are "Communists, Birchites, and a few misinformed Republicans."

Again and again, Hubert argued that "opportunity is the theme of this Administration." As a matter of fact, he himself was a splendid example of opportunity well grasped. Early in the week, he released a financial report that showed him to be worth $171,396. That left him a poor fourth behind the other candidates, but it still was a comfortable sum for the son of a Depression-plagued druggist. Apart from houses worth $36,000 in Chevy Chase, Md., and $28,000 in Waverly, Minn., and assorted Government and corporate securities worth $86,302, Hubert listed $6,215 in a checking account, $1,026 in two savings accounts, $3,900 invested in his father's Huron, S. Dak., pharmacy and "approximately $100" in hand.

It wasn't much, compared with the other candidates, but as Hubert said, "There'll be enough to take care of Mother."