The Week

Spring is truly here. Birds are singing, students are rioting, and U Thant is asking the U.S. for more cash. Last year’s silly season saw the proposal of those 2 per cent bonds that the Afro-Asian con men were able to unload on the barefoot boys in Washington. That has now been spent in riotous living, rioting and killing. The U.S. says it absolutely will not pay more than its assessed 32.02 per cent of the expenses, but hints are already being dropped that this absolute no may not be absolute, you know. A compromise will probably be reached: we won’t have to pay everyone’s arrears—just Russia’s.

An opinion research service called “What America Thinks” reported in November 1962 that “the general public” rated Mr. Rockefeller as first choice for the Republican nomination, by a vote of 49 per cent. Second choice, said “What America Thinks,” was Romney (16 per cent). And third choice, way, way down the list, was Goldwater (9 per cent). All of that turns out to be What America (Perhaps) Thought. Because the current poll, taken by the same service, shows Goldwater to have risen from third place to occupy first place with 42 per cent, Rockefeller having sunk from 49 per cent to 35 per cent. All of which is, of course, nonsense, and we have pledged never again to believe any poll since Dr. Gallup tried to persuade us last winter of the fiction that Republicans in the South prefer Rockefeller two to one over Goldwater. But even if you throw the figures away, you are in fact left with the pollsters’ ratification of what one’s senses clearly confirm, that Goldwater is running very strong, and that temporarily, at any rate, Rockefeller is down.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

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Spring is truly here. Birds are singing, students are rioting, and U Thant is asking the U.S. for more cash. Last year’s silly season saw the proposal of those 2 per cent bonds that the Afro-Asian con men were able to unload on the barefoot boys in Washington. That has now been spent in riotous living, rioting and killing. The U.S. says it absolutely will not pay more than its assessed 32.02 per cent of the expenses, but hints are already being dropped that this absolute no may not be absolute, you know. A compromise will probably be reached: we won’t have to pay everyone’s arrears—just Russia’s.

An opinion research service called “What America Thinks” reported in November 1962 that “the general public” rated Mr. Rockefeller as first choice for the Republican nomination, by a vote of 49 per cent. Second choice, said “What America Thinks,” was Romney (16 per cent). And third choice, way, way down the list, was Goldwater (9 per cent). All of that turns out to be What America (Perhaps) Thought. Because the current poll, taken by the same service, shows Goldwater to have risen from third place to occupy first place with 42 per cent, Rockefeller having sunk from 49 per cent to 35 per cent. All of which is, of course, nonsense, and we have pledged never again to believe any poll since Dr. Gallup tried to persuade us last winter of the fiction that Republicans in the South prefer Rockefeller two to one over Goldwater. But even if you throw the figures away, you are in fact left with the pollsters’ ratification of what one’s senses clearly confirm, that Goldwater is running very strong, and that temporarily, at any rate, Rockefeller is down.