THE WEEK

Coming on as the hard anti-Communist, Nelson Rockefeller told a New Hampshire audience the other day that he knew all about Alger Hiss when. Mr. Rockefeller said that he was the only Assistant Secretary of State attending the United Nations’ 1945 conference in San Francisco—for which Hiss was administrative Secretary General—who would meet with FBI men, and he did meet with them, in his hotel room every morning at 7: 30. “They came in one morning and said, ‘We’ve got the goods on Alger Hiss.’ This was ’45, mind you, long before anything else [sic] broke. And there also was Harry Dexter White, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.” Why, then, had Rockefeller not relayed what he knew to his superiors in the State Department? Oh, that. Well, that was because of the way they felt about the FBI—you know, the feefing that “maybe this was a Fascist organization in our own midst.” Oh.

George Gallup, director of the American Institute of Public Opinion, has come up with a parcel of statistics we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poll. The question was, If the election were held today, which candidate would you like to see win, Lyndon Johnson or ? Gallup says “the nation’s voters” would like Johnson over Lodge, 66 to 23 per cent; Johnson over Rockefeller, 74 to 17 per cent; Johnson over Nixon, 69 to 24 per cent; Johnson over Goldwater, 75 to 20 per cent. Since no Democratic President has received even a simple majority of the total vote in any of the last four elections, the Gallup figures “may require further refinement,” as they say in the biz. Maybe Gallup failed to get a true sample, or “the nation’s voters” had succumbed to mass whimsy. Maybe the nation’s voters misunderstood, and thought they were being asked to choose between and Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Featured Tags

Coming on as the hard anti-Communist, Nelson Rockefeller told a New Hampshire audience the other day that he knew all about Alger Hiss when. Mr. Rockefeller said that he was the only Assistant Secretary of State attending the United Nations’ 1945 conference in San Francisco—for which Hiss was administrative Secretary General—who would meet with FBI men, and he did meet with them, in his hotel room every morning at 7: 30. “They came in one morning and said, ‘We’ve got the goods on Alger Hiss.’ This was ’45, mind you, long before anything else [sic] broke. And there also was Harry Dexter White, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.” Why, then, had Rockefeller not relayed what he knew to his superiors in the State Department? Oh, that. Well, that was because of the way they felt about the FBI—you know, the feefing that “maybe this was a Fascist organization in our own midst.” Oh.

George Gallup, director of the American Institute of Public Opinion, has come up with a parcel of statistics we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poll. The question was, If the election were held today, which candidate would you like to see win, Lyndon Johnson or ? Gallup says “the nation’s voters” would like Johnson over Lodge, 66 to 23 per cent; Johnson over Rockefeller, 74 to 17 per cent; Johnson over Nixon, 69 to 24 per cent; Johnson over Goldwater, 75 to 20 per cent. Since no Democratic President has received even a simple majority of the total vote in any of the last four elections, the Gallup figures “may require further refinement,” as they say in the biz. Maybe Gallup failed to get a true sample, or “the nation’s voters” had succumbed to mass whimsy. Maybe the nation’s voters misunderstood, and thought they were being asked to choose between and Dr. Samuel Johnson.