The Week

• Adlai Stevenson crept back into town last week on little cat feet, and coyly called a news conference to discuss his non-candidacy for next tenant of the White House. The customary battalion of sympathysalivating newspapermen bounded up to laugh at his jokes and pry a stray intention out of him. The big game of the afternoon concerned The Door. Asked whether he aspired to the Presidency, twice-beaten Stevenson allowed as how he would never be a draftdodger. Asked whether this meant that “the door was open,” Adlai jovially purred: “Next you’ll be asking how far the door is open.” From there the game was on. By evening news telecast time, commentators were guessing what kind of door Adlai Stevenson contemplated going through: a swinging door? a revolving door? the back door? It seemed like such great fun that we’ll make our own suggestion: trap door. And with him he might take a few of those sad souls who spend their days trying to relive the throbbing, wide-eyed emotions of young Adlai-Lochinvar’s 1952 Crusade. It’s been a downhill slide for them since then, anyway.

• That John Kennedy’s Presidential possibilities should face their ultimate test on May 10 in West Virginia’s Democratic primary is one of those messy mistakes in the American political system that keep Liberals awake at night. The primary system itself, once Bob La Follette’s great hope to wrest political control from the bosses and give it to The People, has become a device for cutting down the frontrunner (usually the popular candidate) before the party convention. An analysis of Senator Kennedy’s Wisconsin triumph demonstrates that he drew his strength from two sources, often overlapping: 1) Catholic sympathy toward his candidacy; and 2) a heavy rank-and-file union and industrial worker turn-out. Kennedy took the big population-complexes; Humphrey pulled in the rural areas. The politicians are unable, on the basis of Wisconsin, to decide whether Kennedy’s Catholicism will be an asset or a liability in a national election. West Virginia will provide the acid test: 1) it is 95 per cent Protestant; 2) it has a reputation for bigotry, and a penchant for orneriness; 3) it is a chronically “depressed area”—suited to the Humphrey campaign of “promise them everything, and keep your fingers crossed”; 4) half of West Virginia is sympathetically Southern (it took advantage of the Civil War to split off from Virginia), and hence a power base for Senator Lyndon Johnson; 5) its labor situation is dominated by John L. Lewis’ Mineworkers—notoriously sympathetic to Jimmy Hoffa and Q.E.D. unsympathetic to Kennedy.

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Presidential Election

• Adlai Stevenson crept back into town last week on little cat feet, and coyly called a news conference to discuss his non-candidacy for next tenant of the White House. The customary battalion of sympathysalivating newspapermen bounded up to laugh at his jokes and pry a stray intention out of him. The big game of the afternoon concerned The Door. Asked whether he aspired to the Presidency, twice-beaten Stevenson allowed as how he would never be a draftdodger. Asked whether this meant that “the door was open,” Adlai jovially purred: “Next you’ll be asking how far the door is open.” From there the game was on. By evening news telecast time, commentators were guessing what kind of door Adlai Stevenson contemplated going through: a swinging door? a revolving door? the back door? It seemed like such great fun that we’ll make our own suggestion: trap door. And with him he might take a few of those sad souls who spend their days trying to relive the throbbing, wide-eyed emotions of young Adlai-Lochinvar’s 1952 Crusade. It’s been a downhill slide for them since then, anyway.

• That John Kennedy’s Presidential possibilities should face their ultimate test on May 10 in West Virginia’s Democratic primary is one of those messy mistakes in the American political system that keep Liberals awake at night. The primary system itself, once Bob La Follette’s great hope to wrest political control from the bosses and give it to The People, has become a device for cutting down the frontrunner (usually the popular candidate) before the party convention. An analysis of Senator Kennedy’s Wisconsin triumph demonstrates that he drew his strength from two sources, often overlapping: 1) Catholic sympathy toward his candidacy; and 2) a heavy rank-and-file union and industrial worker turn-out. Kennedy took the big population-complexes; Humphrey pulled in the rural areas. The politicians are unable, on the basis of Wisconsin, to decide whether Kennedy’s Catholicism will be an asset or a liability in a national election. West Virginia will provide the acid test: 1) it is 95 per cent Protestant; 2) it has a reputation for bigotry, and a penchant for orneriness; 3) it is a chronically “depressed area”—suited to the Humphrey campaign of “promise them everything, and keep your fingers crossed”; 4) half of West Virginia is sympathetically Southern (it took advantage of the Civil War to split off from Virginia), and hence a power base for Senator Lyndon Johnson; 5) its labor situation is dominated by John L. Lewis’ Mineworkers—notoriously sympathetic to Jimmy Hoffa and Q.E.D. unsympathetic to Kennedy.