Letter from Washington

The headline of the week (from the New York Times) appeared the day Mr. Ford fired Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, but was not related—directly, at least—to that firing. The headline was: “Eternal Darkness May Be the Fate of the Universe.” The headline of the week definitely was not the one about an incident on the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River: “Kennedy Involved in Car Crash.” And the less said the better about this headline: “Wallace Says Europe Is Nothing He Hasn’t Seen on TV.” If you think the headline was unfair, it was based on this assessment by Wallace of his European tour: “I’ve seen Europe on television, and thousands of Europeans, so really it was nothing new to me.” Warming to his theme, Wallace said: “You can learn as much about going abroad by watching and reading news, and reading books and stories and publications, as you can by seeing some concrete walls, a few automobiles in traffic jams, and some scenery.” There were two other headlines of commendable cogency. One concerned the resignation of David Packard as finance chairman of Mr. Ford’s campaign committee: “Packard Dispute Rooted in Money.” This headline probably was produced by the same man who, two pages later, told us: “Hirohito Regrets A-Bomb.”

There is some evidence that the scramble for supremacy among the many presidential candidates on the Democratic Left is narrowing to a two-man race between Representative Mo Udall of Arizona and former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Udall is not making progress in the South, where Carter is campaigning hard to become the alternative to Wallace among Southern moderates. But Udall is becoming the choice of many of the able technicians who masterminded McGovern’s stunningly successful 1972 primary campaigns. Actually, though, none of this matters. Cato can now reveal that Hubert Humphrey will get the nomination. That was the confident prediction of 280 witches in the annual Halloween witches poll conducted by the New York Center for the Strange, a non-profit research organization.

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The headline of the week (from the New York Times) appeared the day Mr. Ford fired Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, but was not related—directly, at least—to that firing. The headline was: “Eternal Darkness May Be the Fate of the Universe.” The headline of the week definitely was not the one about an incident on the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River: “Kennedy Involved in Car Crash.” And the less said the better about this headline: “Wallace Says Europe Is Nothing He Hasn’t Seen on TV.” If you think the headline was unfair, it was based on this assessment by Wallace of his European tour: “I’ve seen Europe on television, and thousands of Europeans, so really it was nothing new to me.” Warming to his theme, Wallace said: “You can learn as much about going abroad by watching and reading news, and reading books and stories and publications, as you can by seeing some concrete walls, a few automobiles in traffic jams, and some scenery.” There were two other headlines of commendable cogency. One concerned the resignation of David Packard as finance chairman of Mr. Ford’s campaign committee: “Packard Dispute Rooted in Money.” This headline probably was produced by the same man who, two pages later, told us: “Hirohito Regrets A-Bomb.”

There is some evidence that the scramble for supremacy among the many presidential candidates on the Democratic Left is narrowing to a two-man race between Representative Mo Udall of Arizona and former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Udall is not making progress in the South, where Carter is campaigning hard to become the alternative to Wallace among Southern moderates. But Udall is becoming the choice of many of the able technicians who masterminded McGovern’s stunningly successful 1972 primary campaigns. Actually, though, none of this matters. Cato can now reveal that Hubert Humphrey will get the nomination. That was the confident prediction of 280 witches in the annual Halloween witches poll conducted by the New York Center for the Strange, a non-profit research organization.