The Press: Sampling the Winds

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U.S. newspapers, magazines, radio and TV weren't expected to observe the month-long moratorium on politicking, since they analyze and sift the political winds the year round. If the U.S. press seemed to be treading lightly on the subject of politics after President Kennedy's death, that was only because most politicians weren't giving them much to report—except Lyndon Johnson, who is already a past master at combining the nation's interests and his party's fortunes.

Thus, when the moratorium ended last week, it was hardly surprising that the press leaped enthusiastically back into the business of keeping the current political score. With undisguised impatience, the New York Daily News exhorted Republicans "to make up for lost time" and also suggested a first move: "An all-out attack on Chief Justice Earl Warren's commission to investigate the Kennedy murder, plus a drive to persuade Congress to give Warren & Co. the heave." So that none of its readers would miss the point, the News detailed the rationale behind its strategy: "In view of the Earl Warren Supreme Court's long-standing tenderness toward Communists, any report this commission may give birth to will be open to suspicion of pro-Communist and anti-conservative bias."

Out of Action. With President Johnson a seeming cinch to lead the Democratic Party's campaign in 1964, most newspapers went elephant hunting—and found plenty of game. Columnist Roscoe Drummond reignited the torch that he has been carrying all fall. "The unresolved question" about Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam, wrote Drummond, "is not whether Mr. Lodge is going to resign his ambassadorship and become an open, active and campaigning candidate for the nomination—but when." In some quarters, added Drummond hopefully, Lodge was considered "a more formidable contender" than Nixon, Goldwater or Scranton.

Senator Goldwater was widely, and perhaps prematurely, held to have been nudged well out of the action. "The Draft Barry Goldwater Drive moved forward again," reported Richard T. Stout of the Chicago Daily News, "but with a knock in the motor." But there were dissenters from this view, among them U.S. News & World Report, which declared that the U.S. Senator from Arizona "remains out in front as the truce ends."

On the other hand, Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, heretofore a reluctant possibility, now seemed to some editorial analysts to have moved a lot nearer the money. Said the New York Herald Tribune: "He appears to have just the combination of qualities, both personal and political, that the Republican Party needs to oppose Lyndon Johnson."

All-inclusive. Governor Scranton was just one of a bevy of Republican presidential contenders whom pundits measured like handicappers at a racetrack. Sample form sheet, from Scripps-Howard Correspondent Jack Steele: "Goldwater still the front runner. . . Rocke feller's chances seem to have been helped little, if any, by the sag in Goldwater's fortunes. . . Nixon has gained most on the surface, but has stirred little enthusiasm among party pros." As for Scranton and Ambassador Lodge, Steele saw "no sign that either has stirred masses of voters."