For the Record

■ Recapitulating: Some facts, figures, and doings in 1976. The Federal Election Fund became the only government unit to end the year in the black. It has $23 million in the kitty (from the $1 political checkoffs on the Internal Revenue forms), having doled out $21.8 million to the Carter and Ford campaigns. . . . Sen.-elect John Heinz (R., Pa.) can chalk one up in the record books. He spent the most money ever to get himself elected to the Senate: $2.9 million, of which nearly $2.4 million was his own. . . . Jimmy Carter made it a trend: Richard Nixon was the first American to be elected President against a taller opponent (McGovern), Jimmy Carter was the second. . . . Robert Dole, responding to criticism that his slashing tactics had cost Mr. Ford the election, said that was what the vice presidential candidate was meant to do: “I was in the briar patch while President Ford was in the Rose Garden.”

■ While on the subject of Nov. 2— that famous New York Daily News banner headline (“ford to city:/drop dead”) which is credited by some with swinging New York to Carter and losing Ford the election. Well, reports Godfrey Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor, it almost didn’t happen. The headline had been written and discarded, was then picked up from the floor by an editor who uncrumpled it, and said: “That’s it,” and it was. . . . Other sensational headlines, the Maoist Guardian’s introduction of Jimmy Carter to its readers after Nov. 2 as “imperialism’s NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE,” and the Daily News’ macabre comment on the times: “supreme court: gil-MORE CAN DIE.”

■ Recapitulating: Some facts, figures, and doings in 1976. The Federal Election Fund became the only government unit to end the year in the black. It has $23 million in the kitty (from the $1 political checkoffs on the Internal Revenue forms), having doled out $21.8 million to the Carter and Ford campaigns. . . . Sen.-elect John Heinz (R., Pa.) can chalk one up in the record books. He spent the most money ever to get himself elected to the Senate: $2.9 million, of which nearly $2.4 million was his own. . . . Jimmy Carter made it a trend: Richard Nixon was the first American to be elected President against a taller opponent (McGovern), Jimmy Carter was the second. . . . Robert Dole, responding to criticism that his slashing tactics had cost Mr. Ford the election, said that was what the vice presidential candidate was meant to do: “I was in the briar patch while President Ford was in the Rose Garden.”

■ While on the subject of Nov. 2— that famous New York Daily News banner headline (“ford to city:/drop dead”) which is credited by some with swinging New York to Carter and losing Ford the election. Well, reports Godfrey Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor, it almost didn’t happen. The headline had been written and discarded, was then picked up from the floor by an editor who uncrumpled it, and said: “That’s it,” and it was. . . . Other sensational headlines, the Maoist Guardian’s introduction of Jimmy Carter to its readers after Nov. 2 as “imperialism’s NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE,” and the Daily News’ macabre comment on the times: “supreme court: gil-MORE CAN DIE.”