Democrats: On the Threshold of Adventure

There is much more to a presidential candidate than his stand on issues and his ability to marshal organizational and financial support. Political potential also involves intangibles of spirit and philosophic roots. Less than a year before the 1972 presidential primaries, TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey offers his impressionistic assessment of the Democratic contenders. Even at this early date they are running hard.

NOT the least of the political curiosities in this year of the urban age, is that six of the seven men raised up to challenge Richard Nixon come out of small-town America. Only Teddy Kennedy, a child of privilege, does not know the sulfuric terror of a tiny Methodist Sunday school, the hard-penny economics of a paper route, or the ecstasy of being a state tuba champion.

For those who have seen the sunburned 4-H boys in the pens with their heifers and listened to the croak of a village valedictorian unawed by God or science, there is no mystery in their consuming urge for public service and their special sense of selfimportance. They are the ones who listened to and believed the Scripture lessons about helping each other and rejecting materialism. They learned the satisfaction of personal excellence and leading others. They are all now on the threshold of an adventure that not even they imagined back in Mitchell, Doland, Shirkieville, Everett, Rumford and Ida Grove.

They are good men, in the apple-pie tradition, maybe good to the point of boredom, but that is in the eye of the beholders. They are men of uncommon decency and devotion, but none has lighted a real fire. Whether any of them would make a good President is still a question for most Americans.

McGOVERN: A Singular Intensity

George McGovern is the philosopher, well read, thoughtful, open as a South Dakota sky, every idea floating up and out for all to see. Some are only half-formed. He may be too honest and too open. His singular intensity seems sometimes to sweep him beyond the fine limits of good judgment. He ends up beyond any serious constituency, too strident on the war, too quick to embrace any dissenter, suspected finally of being an opportunist, without the relief of generating excitement.

McGovern sits in his office surrounded by stuffed pheasants and distinguished service awards (one from the National Limestone Institute). "I don't have any trouble sleeping," he says. "I'm doing what I want to do." He is modishly dressed in wide collar and thick tie, yet talks with the slow rasp of a country preacher, which he almost became. The paradox again. His boyhood heroes are George Norris, Bob La Follette and Peter Norbeck, who worried most about the people, and McGovern is doing no less. "We have lost our individualism, our sense of our own uniqueness. The young are closer to the truth."

Yes, he says, the race for the presidency is evening up now. He sees a chance that few political professionals concede to him. "I feel it in my bones. I have no doubt at all that I could lead the country in a more hopeful and joyful direction."

BAYH: Hard to Read