THE CAMPAIGN IS BORN

NEW YORK TIMES:

FOR the first time in half a century the Republican party has had an opportunity--and has accepted it--to renominate for a second term a President who has led his party forward toward new goals. The significant fact about President Eisenhower's nomination in 1952 was that it marked at least temporarily the ascendancy of the liberal wing of the Republican party. His influence has been thrown consistently on the side of a basic reform of the principles of Republican philosophy. He has sought, and with some success, to lead his party toward new accomplishments in the fields of public housing, health and education. He has sought, and with some success, to create through the instrumentality of the Republican party an atmosphere of national confidence and a spirit of goodwill transcending sectional and party lines.

All this constitutes a sharp break with the past and something of a revolution in Republican thinking and Republican action. The remaking of the party is not complete. Possibly it could not have been made complete in the short span of four years. But it is a real transformation nonetheless, and an achievement which in the long run of history seems certain to stand as the great contribution made by Dwight Eisenhower to his party and his country.

Columnist MARQUIS CHILDS:

THE line of attack which the Democrats mean to push hardest is that the Old Guard of the Republican Party took over in San Francisco to insure that Richard M. Nixon again would be Vice President and their skillful agent at the center of government in the four years to come.

It is much too early to say whether this will be effective in winning the independent middle-ground vote which went in large numbers for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket four years ago. But to call the Republican managers the "Old Guard," is a major error.

Those in the dominant group in the party today have very little in common with the caricature of the past. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, Attorney General Brownell, Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams, Postmaster General Summerfield. Thomas E. Dewey--these men have about as much resemblance to the Old Guard as an old-time minstrel show has to a slick Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

They have many of the same objectives, since basically they believe in giving business a free hand. But they know that they cannot turn back the clock. The President has unbounded admiration for these men, most of them from small towns, and modest background, who have made their way to the top. It would be a great mistake to underestimate the powers and the capacity of these new political managers.

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER:

OUT of the Chicago convention has come a reasonably clear design of what the Democratic strategy is, at least in its broad outlines. It is to attack Vice President Dick Nixon by innuendo or directly; to deride the Eisenhower Administration policies and accomplishments both foreign and national; to keep alive by suggestion, through the technique of professing it is the last thing they want to do, the issue of the President's health; to promise all voters pie in the sky, beyond even the abundance of this Nation to provide; and to try to make it appear that the weaseling civil rights plank is a stalwart stand (in the North) against discrimination and bias and (in the South) really nothing to get exercised about.

As we look at it, there is nothing in this strategy that can stop a Republican victory in November provided its members and leaders do not succumb to the fatal disease of self-assured indolence.

MURRAY KEMPTON in the NEW YORK POST:

RICHARD M. NIXON and wife Patricia arrived at the Cow Palace to pick up the marbles, alone together in the back of a car the color of banker's ink and at least twice the size of the store where he was born in California.

Great care has gone into the construction of the shadow which declares itself to be Richard Nixon. He had on a suit of shoddy which only the most expensive tailor could have cut to fit so badly, and his shirt was a wonderful facsimile of the one he wore when he was in the ground forces of the U.S. Navy.

He stepped out on the platform, turned once to wave to Herbert Hoover to establish the true pedigree, and looking like a blue-jawed YMCA secretary wearing a seminary issue suit, intoned a speech which was distinguishable from the 1948 platform of the Americans for Democratic Action only by the absence of assaults on the Communists.

It is the great quality of Richard Nixon that he can bury his own image, and then spit on its grave, and still be so marvelous a craftsman all the while.

Nixon is going a bit in the jowls; but then he always did give the effect of having a great wad of unmelting butter stuffed next to his lower jawbone. He looked otherwise like the White Rock Girl staring with wild surmise at the new freedom. At last he ceased his looting of the collected works of Jane Addams; and fell back to the shadows.

Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE:

THE Republican convention has presented the climax to a big story that now can be entitled: "The Smear That Didn't Succeed." Never in the history of American politics has anything so insidious been attempted--a palpable effort to ruin the personal and political reputation of Richard Nixon by a whispering campaign about his lack of integrity.

The renomination of Vice-President Nixon is not merely a triumph for the man, but for the common sense of the Republican party's leadership. Long before President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, the whispering campaign against Nixon was, under way. In fact, it was initiated about eighteen months ago by certain extremist groups which resented bitterly his exposure in 1949 of Alger Hiss. It seems odd to suggest that any one should be disqualified for high office just because he offended his political opponents, but that was the main basis for a rash of articles and broadcasts from Democratic party sympathizers who decided that the Vice-Presidency should be given "more attention."

Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate to the Republican leaders that Nixon would be a "handicap." In fact, he disproves it on the stump and captivates big audiences. And nobody has yet been able to find a single sentence which Nixon ever uttered saying that the Democrats were "a party of treason."

NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE'S ROSCOE DRUMMOND:

IT is a myth and misunderstanding that the President is a reluctant candidate pushed into an unwelcome task against his desires and judgment by his political aides who had to pressure him into running.

The truth is that Mr. Eisenhower is running for a second term because he wants to be President for a second term, is a willing, eager, even determined candidate and intends to wage a campaign calculated to win, not just to please or help his Republican colleagues, but because he wants to be President of the United States for another four years.

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