On the Right

New York, Nov. 26—My brother the bard of Scrabble, Virginia the Right Honorable James Jackson Kilpatrick, who presides over a distillery that manufactures more truths, insights, cogencies, and songs than anyone in the business—has a fox in his bosom; and for old times’ sake, 1 want to help him out. It is that Ronald Reagan is unqualified to be President because he hasn’t had any experience in Washington, D.C. I teased him about that one and said the real reason he had turned against Reagan was that Reagan once referred to him on Meet the Press as “Jim,” whereas he is known as Kilpo. or Jack, or-to the cognoscenti as Numero Uno. 1 mentioned this in order to seek to amuse John Sears, the manager of Mr. Reagan’s campaign, and Sears brightened and said, “Kilpatrick has problems? Reagan regularly refers to Perry Duryea as ‘Dan’”—thus nicely confusing a very active political figure in the State of New York with a veteran Hollywood tough-guy.

Anyway, the subject comes up every now and then, often from people who despair of finding in Mr. Reagan any signs of physical decomposition. “What does he know about Washington? All his experience has been in California.”