Political Notes: Off & On

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Other candidates, noncandidates and candidates-apparent:

¶Richard Nixon, ready for his official announcement in February, unleashed his strongest attack yet on the Johnson Administration. On a Texas tour squired by Republican Senator John Tower, the Republican front-runner attacked Lyndon Johnson by name, parodying his State of the Union message. "Can this nation afford to have four more years of Lyndon Johnson's policies that have failed at home and abroad?" he asked Dallas Republicans who braved rainy skies to greet him. "Never in history has the United States been in more trouble in more places than today. Never has so much diplomatic and military strength been used so inadequately as by this Administration." ¶ Ronald Reagan has added $2,000,000 to the Republican Party's campaign chest in the past six months—a record for individual fund raising for the G.O.P. Last week California's Governor was off on his third cross-country speaking tour since September. From the Tulsa fairgrounds to Pittsburgh's Syria Mosque, crowds in four states gathered for a boffo blend of patter and polemic that made party cash registers ring-a-ding. However, the Reagan charisma has had less impact on the populace at large. According to the latest polls, his national popularity has dipped dramatically in the past three months: he now trails President Johnson 33% to 55% and Richard Nixon 22% to 65% in popularity.

¶ Nelson Rockefeller, whom recent polls show rising in the esteem of voters, got a potentially valuable boost from Martin Luther King. "I feel he is the only man mentioned on the Republican side who can win for the Republican Party," said King, without specifically endorsing the New York Governor. Though Rocky still insists that he will not be a candidate, Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller allowed that his elder brother may well change his mind and announce his candidacy for the presidential nomination if George Romney "drops out."

¶ Eugene McCarthy, re-examining his image after seven weeks of campaigning for the presidency as a peace candidate, concluded that he came across more as a poet than an electable politician. Accordingly, on a swing through California last week, the Minnesota Democrat broke away from his somewhat aseptic form to broaden his attack on the Johnson Administration. Unimpressed, Stanford University's pro-McCarthy newspaper welcomed his campus visit with the disenchanted demand: "Does Eugene McCarthy want to make righteous speeches or does he want to end the Viet Nam war?" Un less Senator McCarthy's "passion gap" could be overcome, conceded his staff, the Minnesota Senator's name as a presidential aspirant seemed destined to be writ in water.