Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game by WALTER GOODMAN Post Time Unless we suffer some catastrophe in the coming months, for which all Democrats must pray, but not aloud, President Nixon will arrive at November 1972 in...
...economy, they will probably bring a virtual end to American battlefield casualties and may level off the rate of inflation...
...Senator Muskie is turning out to be a rather conventional higher-political type????the popular man of reassuring presence who may have the most deeply held convictions and the most elevated principles, yet prefers not to flaunt them excessively...
...Whatever McGovern's own feelings about Teddy, the Senator from South Dakota will surely lose an important segment of his modest following to the Senator from Massachusetts in the unlikely event that the latter should declare himself...
...Representatives John Ash-brook and Paul McCloskey Jr...
...Now he has become a liberal middle-aged Democrat, a species not in short supply...
...In the company of the compromised Humphrey, the unprepossessing Nixon and the programmed Agnew, Muskie came across as a man in control of himself, not about to go off the deep end in his craving for office...
...The juices are running...
...He is like those crusader nobles who let their fiefdoms fall to ruin as they sought glory among the heathen...
...His reputation as an early and effective opponent of the Vietnam adventure is no asset at a time when public concern over the war has declined sharply...
...Our Gene will get by...
...For the benefit of nonhunters, a stalking horse is an object behind which a hunter crouches to take pot shots at unwary game...
...We treat our politicians like automobiles, looking always toward next season despite annual lessons that cosmetics do not change the car...
...McGovern's prospects of advancing beyond the Senate are not great...
...Unjust perhaps, but what has justice to do with politics...
...Senators George McGovern and "Scoop" Jackson seem to be running against one another, rather like characters in a subplot who are brought on to hold our attention while the stars of the evening are readying themselves for their big scenes...
...Ambition is John Lindsay's cross...
...Alas...
...Once outside the 50-mile limit of the city he reportedly presides over, he becomes a savior of all cities...
...Setting aside Chappaquiddick, an event that ought to disqualify a young fellow from taking out one's daughter but not necessarily from being President, the question remains...
...and turns into a prince at balls in exotic places like Canton, Ohio...
...An estimable beginning...
...Unaccountably, other liberal Democrats have remained in the Presidential race even after the stupendous announcement of Lindsay's conversion to Democracy...
...Young Colt Diffidence is not the main sin of Hubert Humphrey, that perpetual campaigner who, to the pleasure and embarrassment of his admirers, remains his own irrepressible self...
...In this he has already had a measure of success and he may have more, but it is not a way to win the hearts of party regulars or a chance at higher office...
...The stage he once held alone has become crowded...
...You remember Big Ed, the front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination...
...Perhaps Jackson will settle for Secretary of Defense...
...he can scarcely find a spot for his inimitable performance...
...And the answer remains, he is the youngest brother of Saints Jack and Bobby...
...His only hope at the moment????indeed, the only hope of all but one of the candidates????is that Ed Muskie will be caught sleeping with a neighbor's wife...
...If he gets the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he and his dedicated band of swinging young urbanolo-gists will have a chance to bring to cities throughout the land the innovations they perfected in New York...
...Fair Game by WALTER GOODMAN Post Time Unless we suffer some catastrophe in the coming months, for which all Democrats must pray, but not aloud, President Nixon will arrive at November 1972 in pretty fair shape...
...More like standing????the front-standing candidate...
...So he seems to be running to succeed either Agnew or George Romney...
...Now his problem is to hold onto his advantage and do nothing untoward as he determines which way the winds are blowing and whither they may ultimately blow him...
...Lately, he has changed his hair style (do I detect an artificial tint there...
...and his tailor and the shape of his glasses...
...The ADA gives him a lifetime voting score of 83.4, compared to McGovern's 87...
...The essential man remains: "I'm as confident and eager as a young colt...
...Kennedy has been working hard in the Senate and out this year, and is even now shaking hands around the country as if he were a licensed hunter without a horse to hide behind...
...McGovern's unspoken, or softly spoken, threat is that he will lead a fourth party, an enterprise that would do nothing for his career, yet might be enough to sink the Democrats in November...
...My sources tell me that Muskie suspects he is there...
...But art is long...
...Still, with a little luck, unemployment will remain a problem, and voters do seem to prefer a Democrat to a Republican when times are bad...
...Whatever the defects of the Administration's game plans for Southeast Asia and the U.S...
...Politicians do not feel comfortable with prophets, especially after nearly everyone has come to agree with them...
...Ah, Ed Muskie, you'd never be caught dead talking like that...
...It is painful to think of the abuse that awaits the decent Hubert should he actually get within touching distance of the nomination...
...Democrats have softer hearts...
...Somehow, we owe it to them and to their committed cadres...
...Stalking Horse All columnists with access to public gossip understand that McGovern may be, consciously or unconsciously or semiconsciously, a stalking horse for Edward Kennedy...
...And, finally, there is the ineffable Eugene McCarthy, whose presence in a campaign is a pleasure for spectators whose hearts do not customarily go out to politicians...
...Yet McGovern and Jackson are important, for they more than any of the other candidates represent a division in Democratic ranks that must be patched up by convention time...
...Why Teddy...
...Is it just that somebody told Humphrey his 1968 image would not do in 1972 so he'd better wear wider neckties...
...I don't feel clogged up any more...
...Let us begin with Edmund Muskie...
...As Vietnam fades from voters' memories (and issues fade fast, remarkably fast), the division will grow less wide, the feelings less bitter, to Jackson's benefit...
...Now, as primary season opens, it is time again for a survey of the wild and tame life out there, before most of it is killed off by malnutrition and predatory assault...
...And, I suppose, despite the exertions of the season, the rest of us will, too...
...Without the targets of Vietnam and high prices to shoot at, the Democratic contender, whoever he is, will find himself in difficulties...
...Unless, of course, John Lindsay becomes President that year...
...Well, not exactly running...
...What Teddy may yet become, he himself does not know...
...Not satisfied with being a liberal congressman of note, he took on the much more difficult job of mayor at a time when neither the governor's chair nor a U.S...
...What is it about democracy that induces worthy public servants to make themselves foolish...
...His problem seems to be that he doesn't know which way to face...
...Ah, Lindsay, our Cinderella of politics, who now and then casts off the shabby garments of New York's Municipal Building, where he must tend to lowly chores of government...
...Such are the indignities of the time that Muskie, with his eyes on an empire, is able to make light of Lindsay, whereas the McGovern forces must bicker with him over a bit of ground on which to stand...
...Of course, he may take aim at crime-in-the-streets, but here the best that the majority party in Congress has been able to come up with is a proposal to pay victims for bodily injury????that is, offer an indirect subsidy to the criminal element, guaranteed to increase the number of muggings and incite collusion among alleged victims, policemen and doctors to bilk the government...
...In any case, the prospect of defeat has never been enough to discourage a Democrat from running????for which those of us who have nothing better to do than keep score every four years must give thanks...
...He owes his sudden prominence not to anything he has accomplished in the Senate (though his ADA liberal quotient stands at a respectable 93.7) but to the image he projected in the 1968 campaign...
...He is now engaged in an effort to move his party to the Left...
...Humphrey was a good model in his time????A Chevy, not an Edsel????And he has considerable mileage in him still...
...The politician with a good lead is understandably tempted to behave diffidently, and Muskie could prove to be diffident to a fault...
...If we can overlook his votes in favor of the military establishment and his state's airplane makers, his record is far from illiberal...
...For if he faces to the Right, will not somebody, maybe even Hubert Humphrey (the front-jumping-up-and-down candidate) outflank him...
...It follows that Kennedy is hiding behind McGovern to conceal himself from Muskie...
...With hard work and discretion and a Nixon victory this year, he may become President in 1976...
...Senate seat was available to a bright libera] young Republican...
...are attempting to perform a similar service over at the other main arena, where confidence and lethargy prevail...
...they could have Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles on their knees before the decade is out...
...His difficulty this time around is that the cause he personified four years ago must now be shared with others...
...And if he faces to the Left, will not Senator Henry Jackson sweep by on a bandwagon fueled by the AFL-CIO...
Vol. 55 • January 1972 • No. 2
