Washington-U.S.A.

...The one point which Rockefeller must exploit is the fear among some Republicans that Nixon, like the late Senator Robert A. Taft, could not win...

...Nor, of course, does Nixon think that the Khrushchev visit to the U.S...

...There have been many snide comments in the capital during recent weeks about Nixon's metamorphosis...

...Senator Stuart Symington (Mo...

...Democrats, and some Republicans too, may consider the result of this growth rather dubious, but the Nixon who went to Moscow is a considerably more mature man than the freshman congressman who came here 13 years ago...

...But as Nixon and the other presidential aspirants are so acutely aware, one of the most important results of the new diplomacy may be wholly political...

...As for the other Democrats who hope that lightning will strike them at Los Angeles next summer, they have been exceedingly cautious in their comments about the new diplomacy...

...and Lyndon Johnson (Tex...

...But Nixon is now in a position where he will find it difficult to disclaim any connection with the Khrushchev-Eisenhower exchange visits should they result in no appreciable change in the cold war climate or even lead to a worsening in Soviet-American relations...

...Nor is there any disagreement among political realists that the Governor will have to fight as he has never fought before if he hopes to defeat Nixon...

...Government may now find his way to a presidential nomination and even to the White House itself eased by his apparent advocacy 10 years later of a live-and-let-live policy toward world Communism...

...Who can call Nixon an appeaser...

...When Mr...

...continues to talk about the need for the expenditure of more money for defense...

...Much of the Democratic success at both the state and congressional levels can be traced to the selection of young and vigorous candidates who may be untried in important political offices but who have none of the inevitable barnacles of the seasoned candidates...

...The Democratic response to the Khrushchev-Eisenhower visits has been neither critical nor approving...

...He may even have to challenge Nixon in his home state of California...

...The eight hours that Humphrey spent talking in the Kremlin with Khrushchev last winter surely put the Senator on the side of personal diplomacy...

...is still seeking to be amiable to all voters without being too specific about anything...

...Senators and Representatives from areas with Poles, Hungarians, and other voters with strong ties to the East European captive nations, have been the most vocal in criticizing the Khrushchev tour...

...Nixon also has the support of many more Republican political leaders than has Rockefeller...

...still manages to maintain his peculiar public position of aloofness from presidential politics while seemingly fooling none of the Washington seers about his intense White House ambitions...

...Some of the less cynical politicians in Washington have noted, however, that Nixon was the ideal man to try to break the cold war ice...

...The Vice President has been relatively quiet since his return from Russia, but in his recent speeches he has sought to quiet the altogether legitimate fears that Khrushchev's visit may lull the U.S...

...But probably even more important in Rockefeller's case is his political freshness...

...The recommendations in the Governor's recently released civil defense survey for the construction of fallout shelters indicate he does not believe that the dangers inherent in the cold war are about to evaporate...

...Some of the opposition to the Khrushchev visit from members of Congress certainly has been motivated by politics...

...And as of now, Nixon obviously has a long lead over Rockefeller in the exploitation of this issue...

...Let there be competition between ideas, not only in the free world, but in the Communist world as well...

...Khrushchev challenges us to peaceful competition," Nixon told the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Los Angeles, "let us go him one better and urge expansion of that competition to include the spiritual as well as the material aspects of our society...

...Who can possibly accuse the Vice President of being soft on Communism...

...The Khrushchev-Eisenhower visits were obviously not motivated by the demands of American domestic politics...

...His trip to the Soviet Union and his intimate association with the Khrushchev-Eisenhower visits have also served to give him a much-needed public image of one who has had experience with the Communist leadership and knows how to deal with Khrushchev...

...Who can doubt that Nixon above all other political leaders in positions of power understands the dangers of Communist duplicity...

...But the closer the convention is the more concerned all politicians become that their party nominate a winner...

...No one in Washington has been unkind enough to remind Nixon of some of the exceedingly harsh things he had to say about coexistence as recently as the 1956 presidential campaign...

...Senator John Kennedy (Mass...

...Yet paradoxically, the Democrats have not been able to turn up a bright middle-aged man who stands out as a person with obvious presidential potentialities the way Rockefeller does...

...perhaps has the most to gain or lose from the Khrushchev tour...

...Of the many Democrats who would like to be their party's nominee in 1960, Senator Hubert Humphrey (Minn...

...He was a Senator from one of the most important states only four years after he entered politics, and Vice President just two years later...

...Of all the Republican governors, Rockefeller is perhaps the only one with the requisite experience in foreign affairs to qualify him as an attractive candidate who can easily make what was once the easy leap from state house to White House...

...But the Democrats have not forgotten the overwhelmingly successful Republican effort three years ago to discredit Adlai Stevenson's suggestion that a moratorium be called on nuclear testing...

...A favorable reaction among American voters to the Soviet Premier's tour of the United States undoubtedly will enhance Vice President Richard Nixon's already excellent chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination next year...

...New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the Vice President's principal rival for the Republican nomination, has carefully dissociated himself from what might be called the traveling salesman's approach to the fundamental differences which separate East from West...

...and President Eisenhower's tour of the Soviet Union will necessarily lead to East-West agreements on the major issues dividing the two sides...

...By visiting Russia this summer, Nixon served as an advance man for the Administration's new diplomacy...

...And he has never missed an opportunity to bathe in the still-golden Eisenhower aura...

...Above all, the Vice President's luck has been phenomenal...

...There is no longer any doubt that Rockefeller will try to get the Republican nomination...

...Whatever other reasons these congressmen may have had for their opposition, the statements do make good reading back home in Chicago, Detroit and the other cities where Eastern European immigrants and their descendants live and vote...

...More and more Americans seem to like a new face among their candidates and office-holders...

...Even Nixon's sworn enemies will concede that he has grown in the Vice Presidency...

...It is better to have one of your men in the White House, even though you do not agree with him all the time, than to risk the chance of leaving the Government in the hands of the opposition...

...The man who made his initial political reputation as a crusader against Communist infiltration of the U.S...

...into complacency in the face of continued cold war dangers...

...Nixon's record of militant anti-Communism surely has made it easier for him to serve as a herald of a transitional foreign policy...

...Rockefeller must win some primaries if he hopes to turn this fear to his advantage...

...As of now the effort to find ways to get along with the Russians surely seems to be the issue that will dominate the 1060 campaign...