THE WEEK

■ “It was a joy to be at the Democratic Convention this year. The Convention was a triumph for the young and the young of heart. . . . When McGovern . . . presented as his running-mate not some crafty choice of Southern strategy like Wilbur Mills but a like-minded freshman senator from Missouri . . . who could help cheering? How could Nixon and Agnew, or Nixon and Connally, Mr. Oil Depletion Allowance, match the youth and vigor -the simple decency-that shone in the faces of these candidates? From McGovern or Eagleton, who wouldn’t be glad to buy a used car?” (I. F. Stone, New York Review of Books, August 10.)

■ Scrub third-party threats this year. George Wallace has said no to the American Independent Party which, whoever it now nominates, will pick up only a fraction of the vote it would have gotten with Wallace at the head of the ticket. On the Left, the People’s Party has decided to stick with Benjamin Spock and black militant Julius Hobson. The Communists and the Trotskyists each have their own presidential slates which will further fractionalize the leftist vote. The Nixon-McGovern race of 1972 will be clear-cut, as the Nixon-Humphrey-Wallace contest of ’68 was not.

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Presidential Election

William F. Buckley Jr.

Obscenity

■ “It was a joy to be at the Democratic Convention this year. The Convention was a triumph for the young and the young of heart. . . . When McGovern . . . presented as his running-mate not some crafty choice of Southern strategy like Wilbur Mills but a like-minded freshman senator from Missouri . . . who could help cheering? How could Nixon and Agnew, or Nixon and Connally, Mr. Oil Depletion Allowance, match the youth and vigor -the simple decency-that shone in the faces of these candidates? From McGovern or Eagleton, who wouldn’t be glad to buy a used car?” (I. F. Stone, New York Review of Books, August 10.)

■ Scrub third-party threats this year. George Wallace has said no to the American Independent Party which, whoever it now nominates, will pick up only a fraction of the vote it would have gotten with Wallace at the head of the ticket. On the Left, the People’s Party has decided to stick with Benjamin Spock and black militant Julius Hobson. The Communists and the Trotskyists each have their own presidential slates which will further fractionalize the leftist vote. The Nixon-McGovern race of 1972 will be clear-cut, as the Nixon-Humphrey-Wallace contest of ’68 was not.