For the Democrats, Nowhere to Go but Up

FOR George McGovern, the polls were still carrying intimations of disaster. Americans, said Louis Harris, favor Nixon over McGovern by 63% to 29%, a devastating 34% lead. There was even a poll that showed McGovern trailing Nixon, 54% to 30%, in his home state of South Dakota. A TIME Citizens' Panel survey and a study of the youth vote were hardly more encouraging. Yet last week, after the dolorous post-convention period of Eagleton and Democratic Party miseries, the McGovern campaign finally seemed to be finding its rhythms and its audience, to be striking a little fire.

The Democratic crowds were swelling: in Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Albany. The enthusiasts, of course, tended to be mainly young or black, the already committed but not the vast traditional Democratic constituency that McGovern must attract if he is to have a chance of winning. Still, they were there by the thousands, and the McGovern race began taking on some semblance of confidence. Said McGovern: "I kind of have the feeling that we're turning the corner in the last few days and that we're on the way up."

Magic. It was perhaps no accident that such a chemical change came when McGovern enlisted the presence of Edward Kennedy. Joined for a time by his wife Joan, Kennedy stumped with McGovern through seven states. He helped to bring out the crowds in validation of a lingering family magic, warmed them up with some of the old self-deprecating one-liners ("It just shows what it is to have a famous brother-in-law"), and then introduced the candidate with a gusto that sometimes left McGovern in an uncomfortable backwash of anticlimax. In Pittsburgh, McGovern was practically bowled over by a woman who rushed up to Ted and cried, "Oh, Senator, we can hardly wait until 1976!" Then the woman apologized to McGovern and added: "But that's how we feel here in Pittsburgh."

If he was bemused, McGovern was also grateful for whatever enthusiasm the Kennedy radiance brought. McGovern Aide Frank Mankiewicz said coolly: "Nobody's ego is involved. If people want to vote for George McGovern because Ted Kennedy is for him, we won't object." Nor was it only Kennedy's star quality that made the difference. McGovern was cheered just as warmly and usually longer. Moreover, he began to get the feel of audience-tested lines. The most popular, repeated in litany: "Never again will we commit the precious young blood of this land to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship 10,000 miles away."

He worked the Republican refrain of "four more years" by listing Americans and Asians dying in Viet Nam, G.I.s hooked on heroin, hungry children at home and young mothers unable to pay their grocery bills, wiretappers, "warmongers" and purveyors of racial fears, and ended: "Can we afford four more years of that?"

Until McGovern arrived in Philadelphia, his speeches were largely negative. After an aide advised him to find a higher, more positive approach, McGovern began setting forth his own fairly grandiose "agenda for change": a guaranteed job for everyone capable of employment, a 30% reduction in welfare rolls by 1975 and the closing of tax loopholes. In Portland, Me., he outlined an economic program that among other things would replace mandatory wage and price controls with voluntary guidelines and concentrate on the firms, markets and wage contracts "that contribute most to inflation." In cases of flagrant abuse, McGovern would give the President the extraordinary power to reverse violations of the guidelines.

There was some evidence that McGovern's long post-convention diplomacy for party unity was taking hold. In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley turned out an obedient if occasionally surly band of ward heelers for the McGovern welcome and repeatedly whooped up the candidate as "Mr. President" and "the next President." In payment, McGovern warmly endorsed all of Daley's regular slate, even at the risk of offending Chicago's anti-Daley Democrats. Said McGovern: "We have to stand together." Purely as a matter of practical politics, Daley and McGovern had evidently reached a mutual understanding; whether it would be sufficient to give McGovern Illinois in November remained doubtful.

It seemed, in all, the week when George McGovern began some earnest assault upon the presidency. It was, of course, late, and the Democratic portents remained so bad as to induce a mood of almost giddy black humor among the McGovernites who had fought through the primaries hoping for so much more.

The President himself was still holding fire, savoring the anticipatory glow of November. At Camp David one evening last week, he assembled his campaign advisers--former Treasury Secretary John Connally, John Mitchell, Campaign Director Clark MacGregor and Presidential Aide H.R. Haldeman--to assess the race and lay down strategy. Back in Washington, he met with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, a Democratic apostate who came away with a pledge of $52.3 million in federal aid. Said Rizzo blandly: "Friendship was involved."

Luxuriating in his apparently growing lead, flush with campaign funds, it would seem logical just now for Nixon to turn his energies toward assuring the future of his Republican tribe, trying to carry along with him as many other G.O.P. candidates as possible. But to the dismay of many Republicans, the President seems to be imitating Dwight Eisenhower, who was never able to transfer his own clout to the party.

Thus far, Nixon has scarcely lifted a finger against any Democrat except McGovern. It is a strange omission, especially since some Republican theorists think that 1972 could be the year of emerging G.O.P. dominance. Says one bitter Republican: "The White House and the Committee for the Re-Election of the President would prefer a Nixon victory by 80%, if they could get it, to electing Republicans down the line by even 50.1%. They don't need all that dough. Nixon's going to win anyway. But a hell of a lot of Republicans who could also win won't."

The White House is now gearing up for more overt campaigning. Pat Nixon has begun a five-day tour that will end at Connally's Texas ranch, where the President will join them for a dinner with Democrats for Nixon. At the same time, Spiro Agnew is starting a nine-day swing through seven states. The campaign of 1972, already a many-chaptered and Homerically complex phenomenon, was at last beginning to achieve some definition.

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