Veep, Anyone?

On most Republican dream tickets, Nelson Rockefeller is still the No. 1 choice for the No. 2 spot. Paired as Vice President with Richard Nixon, he would have a strong attraction for independents and dissident Democrats across the U.S., not to mention a powerful pull in New York and the other Eastern seaboard states. Last week a couple of high-level comments brought Rocky's name once more to the fore. In New York, Dick Nixon's good friend Tom Dewey warmly endorsed Rockefeller for Vice President, and at his Washington press conference, President Eisenhower added a cautious amen: "If Mr. Rockefeller were nominated, he would be one that would be acceptable to me." But Rocky coldly rejected any such suggestions. "I absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever, would be a candidate for the vice-presidency," he said before leaving on a Venezuela vacation. "Nor would I accept a draft for the same position." Rockefeller's rejection was not taken as irrevocable. After all, Dick Nixon recalled, Earl Warren had been just as emphatic in his refusal in early 1948, but ran as Dewey's Vice President. Nixon would make no overtures to Rocky for the present, but until convention time he was not rocking the dream boat, either.

If Rockefeller is still unwilling in July, there are plenty who are willing and eager in April. Among the possible Vice Presidents being mentioned last week were several who could offer a geographical balance to a ticket with California's Nixon. New York's Senator Kenneth Keating or Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to. the U.N., have all the necessary East Coast credentials. Or Nixon could profitably pair up with a Mid-westerner--either Indiana's Representative Charles Halleck or Interior Secretary Fred Seaton of Nebraska. If Texas' Lyndon Johnson is not on the Democratic ticket, and if Nixon decides to make a bir effort to hold the Southern states that President Eisenhower captured in 1956 --Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana--the geographical emphasis might shift southward. Kentucky's Senator Thruston B. Morton or, especially, Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson (a Texan and an erstwhile Democrat) could provide the necessary Southern accent.

Should the Democrats fail to name Jack Kennedy or some other Roman Catholic as one of their candidates, then religious considerations may influence Nixon's choice, and the chances of Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell, a Catholic, would be enhanced. Or, if Dick Nixon decides that a progressive-conservative balance is the magic combination, Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater, a conservative in excellent standing, would be a logical running mate.

In another category are the rising young Republicans of Nixon's own generation --men the Vice President admires and who fit his private junior-executive specifications for an able Vice President. Well up on his list of personal favorites are Michigan's Representative Gerald R.

Ford, 46, a good friend since Nixon's early days in Congress; Charles Percy, 40, Chicago industrialist (president of the Bell & Howell Co.) and chairman of the blue-ribbon Republican Committee on Program and Progress (TIME, May 11, 1959); and Attorney General William P.

Rogers, a New Yorker who is Nixon's closest friend and adviser in Washington.

Any of the three would be eminently all right with Nixon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.