Washington - U.S.A.:

...No one, however, appears to know what may be the ultimate political or diplomatic effect of the ill-fated spy flight and the collapse of the summit meeting...

...Rockefeller has carefully and sometimes painfully drawn a sharp distinction between his ideas and those of Eisenhower and Nixon...

...On the Republican side there has been a good deal of post-Paris speculation—wishful thinking is probably a better way to describe it—on the part of those who are less than charmed by Vice President Richard Nixon that perhaps Governor Nelson Rockefeller could win the Republican Presidential nomination...

...The American people have known through the second Eisenhower term that the President has been spending an inordinate amount of time on the golf course, at the easel or around the bridge table, but few voters have seemed to care...

...No one in Washington has had any disposition to make a purely partisan issue out of the new turn in foreign policy...

...the two other Democratic Presidential possibilities—neither of them seems to have benefited from any feeling that the times have suddenly become more dangerous and demand a man of greater stature than Kennedy...

...Nixon surely can dispel the part-time Presidency image simply by displaying his vigorous young self around the country during the campaign...

...What, then, must a President do in situations which suddenly involve the United States in an alien and hostile political or diplomatic atmosphere...

...The events at the July conventions are no more likely to clear the road ahead than the events of May...

...But so far Stevenson has not managed to get any solid convention votes...

...Despite intensive politicking by both Senators Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas) and Stuart Symington (D-Mo...

...The march of events in Cuba illustrates in still greater detail, if on a smaller canvas, what the breakup of the Paris talks showed...

...no knowledgeable politician, however, agrees with him...

...There are no formulas and there is no substitute for the experience of, say, a Stevenson, or the decisiveness of a Kennedy...

...Presidency...

...Together with this abrupt change of emphasis is the sudden emergence of foreign policy—specifically Soviet-American relations—as a key issue in a campaign once envisioned as revolving around such domestic matters as the high cost of living, the strangulation of the cities by the automobile and medical care for the aged...

...In the meantime, events continue to move swiftly...

...There does not, in fact, seem to be one...

...The events of May 1960 have to a great extent cleared the international air of many misconceptions about East-West relations, but they have also made campaigning much more difficult for all the candidates...

...The Vice President, of course, is assiduously trying to dissociate himself from the unpopular actions of the Administration while embracing those programs that he considers to have some political appeal...

...Nixon simply has too many of the Republican political leaders committed...

...But outside of striking a rough and tough poise toward Khrushchev and the Soviet Union, what indeed can the Democratic Presidential nominee do in the forthcoming campaign with the U-2 incident and the collapse of the summit negotiations...

...There is almost as much disagreement over the political consequences as over the foreign policy aspects of the matter...

...So, in a way, the collapse of the summit has served to muddy rather than to clarify the 1960 Presidential campaign...

...If he has all four of these qualities he is likely to be a good President...

...In addition to experience and decisiveness a President must be courageous and energetic...

...These arguments are made most strongly, of course, by those who have always felt Stevenson ought to be given another chance for the Presidency...

...It is argued, and with a good deal of logic, that the nation will want a man of Stevenson's experience and acumen rather than a youngster like Kennedy now that it has once again become evident that East-West conflicts are not likely to diminish...

...But who can really tell beforehand whether one candidate or another will meet the demanding qualifications of the U.S...

...The consensus in Washington seems to be that the United States has been harmed by the incident...

...By Julius Duscha Capital Politics After the Paris Failure THE FORMAL SENATE inquiry into the U-2 incident quickly—and perhaps mercifully—came to an inconclusive end, but the informal postmortems continue among puzzled politicians as well as among bewildered bureaucrats...

...But he will have to bear all of the burdens of the Administration in the campaign, just as Stevenson had to carry Truman's mistakes, as well as his triumphs, into the 1952 campaign...

...In the unlikely event that the Republicans should choose Rockefeller over Nixon, the decision would amount to a painful repudiation of President Eisenhower...

...Economic retaliation would only infuriate him even more, and this is hardly the occasion for making him an even angrier young man than he is at present...

...Politicians with an ear to the grass roots claim they discern an advantage for Adlai Stevenson in the current domestic climate and a disadvantage for Senator John Kennedy...

...A President must be prepared to deal with sudden and sometimes disastrous changes in the world, and these events frequently cannot be controlled —however much the United States would like to do so...

...But neither the Administration nor its opponents has been able to come up with a formula for dealing with Castro...

...Sophisticated Washington observers are saying rather smugly that the whole U-2 affair illustrates beautifully and tragically what the Administration's critics have been saying all along about the Presidential hand being seldom on the tiller...

...The guideposts of the past no longer suffice either for nations or for Presidential candidates...

...It is clear that the Communists look upon Castro as their best opportunity yet for establishing an armed beachhead in Latin America...

...Unfortunately, neither countries nor candidates have yet been able to devise a new set of guidelines for action in a fast-moving and quickly changing world...

...Kennedy, on the other hand, has continued to forge ahead, picking up a few votes in New Mexico and scooping up the Michigan delegation...

...Rockefeller himself indicated, in his anti-Nixon announcement two weeks ago, that he still thinks he has a chance...

...The U-2 incident and its aftermath at Paris show once again how events rather than candidates control campaign issues...

...In the wake of the Paris events, no Democrat has suggested that the nation's defense budget be increased, nor, for that matter, has anyone suggested that we stop talking to the Russians...

...The most ominous event since Paris has surely been the close relationships Fidel Castro is establishing with Communist China and the Soviet Union...

...As for the failure of the Paris summit conference, the politicians seem to feel that Americans hold Khrushchev entirely to blame for this, and Khrushchev's bellicose press conferences in both Paris and Moscow certainly confirmed the feeling that he did not want a summit conference, U-2 or no U-2...

...The candidates who a few short months ago were clamoring for an audience with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev are now shying away from the very thought of personal diplomacy or summitry...