Why Not the Best II

The presidential straw poll of the New Jersey State Democratic Party was the third of the year, after those of the state parties of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, and the first after Labor Day. John Glenn, alone of all the candidates, had downplayed these dry-runs, ostensibly because he had better things to do, in fact because he hadn’t been expected to do very well in them. But New Jersey looked good for him, and so it was he who came to Atlantic City, and his rivals who put in dignified non-appearances. The beach and the boardwalk, under a lowering September sky, were empty save for a few huddled, mewing gulls. Bally’s Park Place Casino glowed and throbbed, on the first floor with blackjack, on the sixth with politics.

On the dining-room hutch in the house where I grew up sits a plate commemorating Glenn’s orbit of the earth. His face is stenciled on it in gilt. How many Americans have such a knick-knack? Thousands? Millions? The face hasn’t changed much in 21 years. Glenn is bald as a peach. His pale eyes glint. He looks like Opie Taylor grown up, and he has the pugnacious cadences and gestures of Hubert Humphrey. His introducer hailed him as a “genuine American hero” who, when the automatic controls of Friendship 7 failed, manually “brought the ship home,” and “into the mainstream of American politics.”

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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The presidential straw poll of the New Jersey State Democratic Party was the third of the year, after those of the state parties of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, and the first after Labor Day. John Glenn, alone of all the candidates, had downplayed these dry-runs, ostensibly because he had better things to do, in fact because he hadn’t been expected to do very well in them. But New Jersey looked good for him, and so it was he who came to Atlantic City, and his rivals who put in dignified non-appearances. The beach and the boardwalk, under a lowering September sky, were empty save for a few huddled, mewing gulls. Bally’s Park Place Casino glowed and throbbed, on the first floor with blackjack, on the sixth with politics.

On the dining-room hutch in the house where I grew up sits a plate commemorating Glenn’s orbit of the earth. His face is stenciled on it in gilt. How many Americans have such a knick-knack? Thousands? Millions? The face hasn’t changed much in 21 years. Glenn is bald as a peach. His pale eyes glint. He looks like Opie Taylor grown up, and he has the pugnacious cadences and gestures of Hubert Humphrey. His introducer hailed him as a “genuine American hero” who, when the automatic controls of Friendship 7 failed, manually “brought the ship home,” and “into the mainstream of American politics.”