The Kennedy Gamble

...To insure the Minne-sotan's fading quickly from the scene, the New York Senator decided to withhold any public support or private financial help from the McCarthy drive...

...Yet, there is no question about the choice of protesting Democrats in a contest between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy...

...It is precisely because Kennedy feels he can win the Presidency that he is risking his political future in a brutal struggle to wrest the nomination...

...In this sense, Kennedy has accurately gauged the mood of the country...

...He, like many others in Washington, is convinced that what is at stake in 1968 is not only the political lives of Johnson, McCarthy and Kennedy, but also the future of the party each desperately wants to lead...

...He continued: "The feeling is that Kennedy will try to score big enough in the California primary to encourage a convention stampede...

...In addition, Kennedy has been warned, by friend and foe alike, that his political escalation can only serve to wreck the Democratic party for years to come...

...A McCarthy speech-writer offers a more widely held view: "This is Kennedy at his ruthless worst...

...of a possible McCarthy triumph in New Jersey where he is likely to pick up delegate strength in a contested primary...

...For while Johnson can collect a substantial number of chits owed for patronage, public works, defense contracts, etc., the Kennedy brothers, by dint of incessant political fund-raising appearances over the past two years, have many favors to collect of their own...

...Democratic mayors and governors have been enlisted by the two camps to line up Congressional pledges, and if there is a consensus view among the badgered legislators it is that the President is too powerful to resist...

...And it must rankle the former U. S. Attorney General to discover that Gene McCarthy has become what he...

...The White House line floated on Capitol Hill is that the President will benefit by the Kennedy-McCarthy combat...

...And this future, no less than that of the three contestants, is very much in doubt as the battle lines are being drawn for the troubled period ahead...

...This would probably mean an eight-year wait until conditions once again were ripe for a promising Democratic run...

...The feeling among Democrats is that only a President who is woefully inept in handling national politics would allow such mistakes as Massachusetts and New Hampshire and still keep a tight leash on O'Brien...

...The Kennedy Gamble By Roger Kingsbury Washington Robert Kennedy's miscalculations began with his assumption that Senator Eugene McCarthy's well known dislike of political campaigning would end in a meager showing in New Hampshire...

...The Kennedy people think that if Johnson gets hit with another disaster in Vietnam and with a lot of riots at home before the convention, his delegate hold will wash away...

...In reality, Watson is the man to see...

...Arthur Schlesinger Jr...

...But in Congress, where nearly every Democratic member in both houses has been privately worried about Johnson's political problems rapidly becoming their own, the reaction to Kennedy's decision can be summed up in a word—panic...

...It is no secret that the majority of McCarthy's youthful supporters Roger Kingsbury, a free-lance journalist, lives in Washington, D.C...

...Kennedy's position is further complicated by the real possibility that Lyndon Johnson could be defeated by his Republican opponent...

...Watson's lack of political knowledge and limited shrewdness have frustrated just about any Democrat of consequence over the past few years...

...And poor Gene doesn't have enough funds to take a straw poll in Oregon...

...And there is incredulity over his reported statement to Democratic party chairmen recently that he places domestic politics and primaries on the bottom of his priority list...

...He is aware, too, that by challenging President Johnson for the nomination his potential supporters are vulnerable to the Texan's legendary strength as a superb political in-fighter with a refined talent for knocking dissident heads together...

...They are banking everything on the fact that although Democrats place great value on party loyalty, they place even more value on winning elections...

...Johnson is thoroughly disliked even among many who plan to vote for him against the likes of Richard Nixon...

...McCarthy's victory, his ability to attract a highly effective volunteer army of campaign workers, his honest and informal manner, his excellent opportunity to emerge in the near future as a formidable national figure to be reckoned with?all this underscored the need for Robert Kennedy to take the offensive in search of his lost strength...

...Despite the hostility his tardy entry into the field engenders among McCarthy supporters, Kennedy is right in thinking that those Democrats and independents who despise Johnson will stay with him in a race against Nixon...

...There is enormous respect for what the Kennedy juggernaut can accomplish, once it is unleashed...

...The question you hear most often," said an aide to House Speaker McCormack, "is 'Can Johnson win on the first ballot?' Nearly everyone is furious with Kennedy for what he is doing to the party...

...But the party has now been shaken to its roots...

...of McCarthy's growing strength in Wisconsin and Minnesota...

...McCarthy's lieutenants tell anyone who will listen that Marvin Watson, Johnson's chief of staff, was their secret weapon in New Hampshire...

...Typical is the case of an Eastern liberal who was hit from both sides last week within a 15-minute period: First Democratic party chairman John Bailey and James Rowe called to ask for Johnson support...

...And a brutal struggle it will be...

...But everyone also wants to be reassured that if they go with the President, they'll be on the winning side...

...But Kennedy also knows that while he wants to be President in 1968, getting his party's nomination is another matter...

...He's proved, beyond question, that he's nothing more than an irresponsible opportunist...

...I agree that the President can best serve his own political interests by solving Vietnam and the gold drain, and doing everything possible to keep summer violence to a minimum," said one Democratic strategist...

...If Kennedy succeeds in shoving McCarthy aside and somehow manages to grab the nomination, he stands a reasonably good chance of defeating his late brother's rival...

...According to Kennedy's figuring, at most McCarthy would set the stage for later big-league opposition to the Johnson Administration by articulating the grounds for rebellion—Vietnam, inept leadership, public unrest, and the like...

...I'll believe Johnson has a chance to win, when I see Watson sent home to Texas," a leading Democrat has declared...

...Once the votes were counted, however, it became apparent that McCarthy's unexpected showing in New Hampshire was a greater blow to Kennedy's fortunes than to President Johnson's...

...There is resentment as well over the President's apparent reluctance to make political appearances outside of military bases or Beaumont, Texas...

...Cloakroom whisperings tell of Kennedy moves to tempt Democratic governors to declare as favorite sons on the first ballot...

...The credentials committee, the platform committee, the speaker's rostrum, the convention program, not to mention the delegations themselves, will be entrusted to Johnson loyalists who are political powers in their own rights...

...It would be grudging support to be sure, but Kennedy would be the clear winner...

...Many Democratic members are caught in the cruel pincers of the Johnson-Kennedy rivalry...

...On paper, the President's campaign team consists of Watson, James Rowe, a lifelong Johnson intimate, and Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien...

...Not since 1884, when James G. Blaine took the gop nomination from President Chester A. Arthur, has an incumbent been denied his right to seek re-election...

...of Kennedy's chances of stealing away McCarthy's promising grassroots movement...

...then Theodore Sorensen and Ted Kennedy called with a similar request in behalf of their man...

...across the country were solidly in Kennedy's camp one year ago...

...Senator Kennedy, who has had experience in locking up a Democratic convention, knows this...

...Morale across the country is nonexistent...

...The Irish Mafia and an unlimited bankroll is a tough combination to beat in any primary," a McCarthyite Congressman admitted...

...There are other rumors that what Kennedy actually wants to do is force Lyndon Johnson into awarding him the Vice Presidential nomination and a clear shot at 1972...

...Indeed, it is a measure of Kennedy's desperation that he has chosen to contest the Democratic nomination at a time when his personal and political popularity are at the lowest point since his brother's assassination...

...And those of us determined to be loyal need the President's open encouragement and support...

...has attempted to explain Kennedy's motivation by telling a journalist friend that the Senator "doesn't want to let down the youth of the country who believe in him...

...You can check with Hubert Humphrey for confirmation on that one...

...Meanwhile, shaken Democrats are near revolt at the sorry state of political craftsmanship exhibited by the White House in its handling of Massachusetts and New Hampshire...

...The important thing to remember about Chicago this summer is that the President has a tight hold on the entire convention machinery, virtually insuring the nomination for himself...

...Though President Johnson's political fortunes may plunge still lower than they are at present, it seems highly improbable that the Democratic convention will do anything other than dutifully nominate its incumbent leader...

...Kennedy, has always sought to be: the leader of a highly charged youth brigade determined to slay the dragons of entrenched power...