On the Trail

"Maybe there ought to be a political campaigner's uniform," mused the Christian Science Monitor last week, "with helmet, face guard and sundry bulges to make the contender look handsomely fearsome. Americans like their games rugged, hit and rah style." Even so, the sight of the U.S. President, out stumping the country on behalf of lesser Democrats, stirred the Monitor to uneasiness: "National policy takes a little explaining these days. It's not just a matter of hurling slogans. Are we playing the right game?"

No such spirit of Christian charity, however, restrained the rest of the U.S. press. From Wheeling to Buffalo to St. Paul, as crowds of Democrats gave Kennedy the smiles and cheers he loves so much, the coaches of the editorial page tore his campaign performance to shreds.

Double Dilemma. Some observers even challenged Kennedy's right to stump. "When he plays the political game straight," wrote the Minneapolis Tribune's Richard Wilson, "he tends to tarnish his prestige." In West Virginia, the Wheeling Intelligencer wished that "the motives which bring the President to this corner of the nation were less blatantly political." The Pittsburgh Press suggested that the nation's boss should have stayed home to mind the shop: "John F. Kennedy is the man who is responsible for making the decisions for our side which can mean peace or war. We'd feel a lot safer if J.F.K. would stick to his job and let his political friends do their own campaigning."

From every side the President was jeered for his national appeal to the voters to give him what amounted to a rubber-stamp Congress. Samples:

> Columnist David Lawrence: "On the one hand, he says he wants a majority in Congress that will support his legislative measures. But on the other hand, he is asking at the same time for the defeat of those Republicans who did vote to support important measures in his program."

> New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock: "A double dilemma. It is how to praise the record of this Congress, as he tactically must; in the same breath censure that record by asking for the election of a more sympathetic legislature."

> Baltimore Sun: "The rationale is simply this: that if more Democrats are elected, there may be enough Kennedy-type Democrats among them to give him a pliant Congress."

> Cincinnati Enquirer: "Having asked for and received in 1960 a Democratic Congress, he has found that is not enough."

Something Lacking. The Indianapolis News dug up a speech that Congressman Kennedy made 13 years ago and threw it back at him: "The very blunders you denounced in 1949 are continuing under your own regime. In Laos, your Administration has executed a maneuver identical to that you denounced in China; your State Department cut off aid to an anti-Communist government to force it into a coalition government with the Communists." The New York Daily News pointedly reprinted a question that Presidential Candidate Kennedy, in 1960, aimed at Eisenhower: "If you can't stand up to Castro, how can you be expected to stand up to Khrushchev?"

After auditing a presidential speech in Pittsburgh, in which Kennedy bragged of nourishing Pennsylvania's pale economy with new defense contracts, the Los Angeles Times cried shame. "Does this mean," asked the Times, noting Kennedy's appeal for the election of the state's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richardson Dilworth, "that before deciding upon a defense contractor the Pentagon should first check to determine whether there is a (D) or an (R) after the Governor's name?" For the New Republic Magazine, T.R.B. (nom de plume of Christian Science Monitor Reporter Richard Strout) listened incredulously while the campaigner, speaking in Cincinnati, deplored the nation's sluggish economy. "Goodness me!" wrote T.R.B. "Who has been President the last two years, anyway? Maybe the new Kennedy slogan should be, 'Let's get the country moving again, again!' ''

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