Nation: THE MAN WHO WOULD RECAPTURE YOUTH

THE look is merry, but the merriment is diluted. Often a pained bewilderment clouds his cherubic look, and his mouth tightens as if to seal in the explosiveness and confusion behind it. Despite the dancing eyes, the tireless smile, the bouncy spirit, the effusive greetings (“Well, bless your heart,” “Thank you, thank you, thank you”), the man the Democratic Party has nominated for President of the U.S. is not to be dismissed simply as a glib, out-of-touch relic of a political era long past.

Hubert Horatio Humphrey bristles at the frequent suggestion that he is a man superseded by the times. He cannot comprehend why, in view of his record, he is looked upon as dated and dull, a prisoner of an obsolete system that has proved unresponsive to the problems of today.

He has not lacked courage, as he is all too ready to recall. As mayor of Minneapolis at the age of 34 (he is 57 now), he cleaned up the police force, reduced crime and upgraded schools. He risked everything for principle when he forced a strong civil rights plank on a reluctant Democratic Convention in 1948, prompting a walkout by Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats. He showed foresight when he crusaded for Medicare 15 years before it became law and proposed a Peace Corps nine months before it was established. His peace credentials, validated in the struggle for enactment of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, were always gilt-edged—until Lyndon Johnson and Viet Nam happened along.

Nonetheless, Humphrey is attacked as deficient in the very qualities that have distinguished his career. That explains, to a degree, the bewilderment that shows up in the pursed lips and clenched jaw. What he fails to grasp is that he is no longer Mayor Humphrey, or young Senator Humphrey, and has not been for many years. He constantly reminds people of the way he was, but he is that way no longer, and his frequent excursions into nostalgia only underscore the point.

Conciliator. As TIME Correspondent Hayes Gorey notes, Hubert Humphrey is deeply grateful to Lyndon Johnson for having elevated him to the second highest office in the land and given him a crack at the first. Yet his gratitude may be misplaced. It was Johnson who years ago in the Senate played a major role in persuading Humphrey “to stop kicking the wall,” as Hubert puts it; to abandon solitary crusades for hopeless causes. Once he grasped the lesson, Humphrey advanced to Senate majority whip and then Vice President under Johnson’s tutelage. He also took on a good deal of L.B.J.’s coloration. Though never as devious or secretive as Johnson, Humphrey became remarkably like him in his desire to please everybody, his ambivalence, his addiction to hyperbole, his fidelity to the power blocs of the old politics (big labor, Southern Democrats, the surviving bosses and the elderly). He also became vulnerable to the kind of accusation emblazoned on a placard in Chicago last week: “There are two sides to every question; Humphrey endorses both.”

Like Johnson, Humphrey has become distrustful of the press—although his condition is nowhere near so grave as the President’s—and he has begun to open a credibility gap of his own. Like Johnson, he has been unable to select or attract really first-rate aides. With some exceptions, notably his newly appointed campaign manager, Larry O’Brien, his staff is nondescript; this year alone, four of his close associates have been accused of wrongdoing. Most important, Humphrey learned from Johnson that in the U.S. Senate, a cutting edge leads most often to ostracism and ineffectiveness. Humphrey could tolerate neither; Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy always flirted with both. “I’m not a fighter; I’m a conciliator,” Humphrey has said.

Having chosen the role of soother and persuader, he is puzzled nonetheless when people do not identify him with the creative, combative politician of yesteryear. After four years as Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President, his public persona is that of a subordinate and apologist. It has become increasingly difficult to think of him in such terms as leader, fighter, innovator—which are precisely the terms in which he thinks of himself. He argues these days, urgently and almost desperately, that he is too his own man; that he can too be a strong, forward-looking President. Perhaps. But in order to accomplish that, he must recapture the spirit of his youth. After years of deferring to the lords of the Senate, after his service as Johnson’s Boswell, he will find the search particularly difficult.

Humphrey is prone to weep on almost any occasion; his sensitivity to bright lights occasionally causes the tears to flow, but his emotionalism is more often the cause. He is often too anxious to please, too easily swayed, too inclined to think that everyone is basically a decent fellow. He talks too much. On the other hand, he has limitless energy, infectious enthusiasm, a quick and absorptive mind, and unquestionable idealism and commitment to the shaping of a better America. He is, further, a formidable man on the stump. Without doubt he has greater warmth and conveys greater sincerity than does Richard Nixon.

Signs of Schism. The nomination had eluded him so long—he was first considered a presidential possibility in 1952 —that he had finally despaired of winning it. Thanks to the convulsive events of 1968, it came within his reach. Yet on the day that he finally grasped it, he sat glumly in his suite in Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel while young demonstrators and angry police fought in the streets below. He tasted not victory but the acrid fumes of tear gas that wafted through an open window. What was to have been the happiest of days turned out to be an occasion for some doubt and depression. What was to have been remembered as the Democratic Convention that nominated Hubert Humphrey may go down in history instead as an event of rancor and rioting.

Show of Support. Dismayed as Humphrey was by his party’s confused, cacophonous mood, he began to brighten perceptibly as the balloting got under way and moved him ever closer to the nomination. The total mounted toward the needed 1,312. “Oregon is zilch,” said Humphrey; his fellow Minnesotan, Senator Eugene McCarthy, had won its 35 votes in the May primary. Humphrey leaned forward expectantly, then broke into a wide grin as Pennsylvania put him over the top with 103¾ votes. “Pennsylvania started it and Pennsylvania put us over!” said the jubilant Humphrey, recalling that the state’s show of support last spring gave him an all but unbeatable lead.

Humphrey blew kisses toward the TV screen as the cameras zeroed in on his wife Muriel at the hall; then he dashed up and kissed the screen. Johnson, called from the L.B.J. ranch, told Humphrey: “You’ve got us here and all you need now are a few million more. We’ve got to get the party together and work to see this through November.” “Bless your heart,” said Humphrey. “Thank you.”

In the Hilton’s Waldorf Room, Humphrey did a little jig to Let a Winner Lead the Way, then told the newsmen and the girls in white boaters and the campaign aides assembled there that the nomination was only “the beginning of the climb to new heights.” He assured them that the party would soon be reunited. George McGovern, the late-starting candidate who emerged as a quietly capable and attractive man, will support Humphrey, if perhaps not enthusiastically. “I am no fan of Richard Nixon,” he said. But there was serious doubt that McCarthy would ever endorse the ticket. On the other hand, Wayne Morse, one of the loudest of the Viet Nam critics, promised to do so, as did California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh and Vermont Governor Philip Hoff, both of whom had been hostile toward him. California Congressman Phillip Burton, who had fought hard for the dove plank on Viet Nam in the platform and backed McCarthy for the nomination, said of Humphrey: “I’m going to support him and encourage everybody I can to support him. I think he’ll make a damn fine President. It’s just this damn war that’s in my craw.”

In his acceptance speech the following night, Humphrey made a moving plea for party unity. He borrowed a phrase that Robert Kennedy had used repeatedly before his campaign was cut short by an assassin’s bullet last June: “I need your help.” Added the Vice President: “There is always the temptation to leave the scene of battle in anger and despair, but those who know the true meaning of democracy accept the decision of today, never relinquishing their right to change it tomorrow.”

Never Again. It was a 50-minute speech, interrupted 75 times by applause and three times by short-lived boos. It was deftly constructed. With suggestions from others, the major work was done by Humphrey’s own speechwriting team headed by Ted VanDyk, and by the Vice President himself.

Given the bellicose mood of the convention, Humphrey faced a difficult task in striking the right tone. He was blatantly corny at times, and he used the device, also employed by Richard Nixon, of giving a point in one sentence and taking it back in the next; social justice balanced by the need for law enforcement, peace, but not forgetting the need for firmness. But on the whole, he was remarkably successful, and so patently, radiantly sincere that even a quotation from St. Francis of Assisi and a call to the nation for prayer were touching rather than treacly. Scoring both “mob violence” and “police brutality,” he declared in a reference to the previous night’s riot: “May America tonight resolve that never, never again shall we see what we have seen.”

One of Humphrey’s thorniest problems was how to invoke Johnson’s name without setting off a deafening—and damaging—chorus of catcalls. He did so by first mentioning the name of every Democratic presidential candidate, beginning with Franklin Roosevelt and only then paying tremulous tribute to Johnson’s achievements. (“And tonight, to you, Mr. President, I say thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.”) Having done his duty, and drawn boos as well as heavy applause, Humphrey then moved to cut the umbilical. It was now “the end of an era—the beginning of a new day,” he said. To ensure that nobody missed the point, he used the “new day” phrase half a dozen more times, and it would be no surprise if that became the slogan of his campaign. In a Humphrey Administration—if there is one—he told reporters, “I may turn to ‘new dawn.’ The dawn comes slowly, but it illuminates.”

Strategy of Panic. Humphrey’s speech was a grace note in a week that had few of them. The amphitheatre itself was heavily guarded and isolated, like a prison camp or a nuclear installation. If the 10,000 young protesters were bent on raising a ruckus outside the hall, McCarthy’s forces were determined to raise one within. “There is no floor strategy,” said McCarthy’s aide, Jerry Eller, only half in jest, on the eve of the convention. “Just achieve panic, and then win.”

The scene was in sharp contrast with 1964, when a rare air of harmony prevailed and L.B.J.’s ubiquitous aides moved in quickly to muffle any signs of schism. Johnson’s men were running things again, in tandem with Daley, but they were far less conspicuous this time—as if they sensed that though they controlled the convention’s machinery, they did not control its spirit.

Postmaster General Marvin Watson, the unsmiling majordomo of the White House staff, oversaw credentials, schedules and arrangements, but moved through the amphitheatre’s corridors all but unheeded. Convention Manager John Criswell was rarely in evidence.

Sensing the mood, Johnson stayed away altogether. He was not worried about security; he could have helicoptered from O’Hare Airport directly to the convention site without seeing anybody but guards, delegates and newsmen. But he was concerned that his appearance would set off a thunderous wave of boos. There were rumors that he would turn up on the final day, but that might have been construed as an attempt to steal the show from Humphrey. Moreover, he himself realized that the delegates, on the night of the filmed tribute to Robert Kennedy, might be less than receptive. As it was, the memorial movie stopped the convention cold. With Broadway Star Theodore Bikel leading the way, and Actress Shirley MacLaine weeping freely, delegates sang chorus after chorus of the Battle Hymn of the Republic while the chairman futilely gaveled for silence.

Had Johnson gone to Chicago, his 60th birthday would have been celebrated in Soldier Field (capacity: 77,000). Instead, he had coffee and cake at Daughter Luci’s red brick ranch-style house in suburban Austin, Texas. Lady Bird and Grandson Lyn were there, as well as two busloads of newsmen. “I am not talking to the convention,” he told the reporters, lest he be accused of stage-managing the affair. “I don’t have anyone reporting to me other than Walter Cronkite.”

Beards and Beads. In Chicago, the delegates seemed to come from almost the same mold as the neat, well-groomed Republicans who had assembled in Miami Beach three weeks earlier. There were more of them (2,989 v. 1,333 Republicans), and they were crammed into a hall with two-thirds the capacity of Miami Beach’s ample Convention Hall. There were more beards, beads and celebrities, including Astronaut John Glenn, Connecticut Delegates Paul Newman and Arthur Miller, California Delegates Shirley MacLaine, her brother Warren Beatty, Decathlon Star Rafer Johnson and Pierre Salinger. There were more Negroes (337 delegates and alternates v. 78 in Miami Beach), and they played a far more meaningful role. Channing E. Phillips, militant pastor of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial Congregational Temple, was offered as a nominee for the presidency and won 67½ votes. Georgia State representative Julian Bond, also a Negro, was offered as a vice-presidential nominee, but withdrew because he is 6½ years under the constitutional age minimum of 35. Power brokers in their own right, like Cleveland’s Mayor Carl Stokes, Richard Hatcher, Mayor of Gary, Ind., and Michigan Congressman John Conyers were also on hand.

Whatever the differences, the Democrats, like the Republicans, represented the nation in all its diversity. Even more than the Republicans, however, they faithfully reflected the nation’s fissures and feuds. And while the G.O.P. was bent on papering over the cracks in order to restore the party unity that had been all but destroyed in 1964, the Democrats arrived spoiling for a fight. They lost little time in getting down to what amounted to a revolutionary overhauling of the regulations that have governed past conventions. The unit rule, which helped strangle intraparty dissent in nine states by allowing the majority of a delegation to control 100% of the votes, was abolished; Humphrey had been willing to delay the move until 1972 to mollify his Southern backers, but the convention was in no mood to wait. The rule increasing minority representation in delegations at future conventions was strengthened, ensuring that Negroes would be even more heavily represented than they were last week.

The first real battle erupted on the first night. California’s Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the State Assembly and delegation leader, moved to delay consideration of the Credentials Committee report. Humphrey’s men figured that Unruh was simply trying to delay the convention long enough to get a draft movement going for Teddy Kennedy. They decided to force a roll-call vote as the first big test of strength between the pro-and anti-Administration forces. In a nine-room control center on the amphitheatre’s second level, Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, a key Humphrey aide, declared: “We want to put the crunch on. This is a big one.” Humphrey men on the floor were told: “The vote is ‘No’ on the Unruh motion, and let’s push it.” It turned out to be an easy Humphrey victory—1,648½ to 875 —and it approximately reflected the divisions within the hall.

The key credentials disputes involved Mississippi and Georgia. Making good on a promise made in 1964, the Democrats unseated a delegation chosen by the regular Democratic machinery of Mississippi and replaced it with a racially mixed group of insurgents. The Credentials Committee sought to settle the Georgia dispute by awarding half of the delegation’s 41 elected delegate votes to the regulars, who included a number of loyal, moderate party members, and half to a rebel group led by Julian Bond. Bond’s group wanted all the seats, forced a roll-call vote that turned out to be the closest contest of the convention. When the move was beaten 1,413 to 1,041½, the California and New York delegations, which proved a magnetic force for dissent through the convention, chanted “Julian Bond! Julian Bond!” Hurriedly, the convention was adjourned.

Narrow Scope. The most bitter, bruising fight was waged over the Viet Nam plank. The scope of the debate was far narrower than it was a year ago. Then, there was still a raging quarrel about whether the U.S. should escalate the war still further or begin curtailing its involvement. Now practically everybody agreed that the war should be ended, and the dispute centered on the mechanics of settlement. For a time, Humphrey edged toward favoring an outright bombing halt against North Viet Nam, with no conditions attached. Johnson too had been thinking of declaring such a halt, chiefly because he had been assured by Moscow that it was seriously interested in persuading Hanoi to reach a settlement of the war. Premier Kosygin had even sent Johnson a letter expressing Moscow’s willingness to cooperate.

In the light of these developments, Humphrey decided that he would delay staking out a detailed Viet Nam position for the Platform Committee. Events, he figured, would take care of that for him, and any new move toward peace would help him tremendously. He began using more dovish terms in public, promoting a bombing halt and hinting at progress in Paris. Johnson abruptly reversed field with his hard-line talk before the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Detroit two weeks ago, catching Humphrey unawares. The reason: Moscow had turned cool, perhaps because of the Czechoslovak crisis, while Hanoi’s negotiators in Paris had abruptly reverted to a rigid stance and Communist troops in South Viet Nam were resuming their attacks on the cities. Johnson told associates that Hanoi and Moscow were “reading the polls” in the U.S. and “playing Democratic Party politics” in hopes of influencing the choice of a candidate.

After a new briefing, Humphrey reverted to the Administration line. Some Midwestern supporters, who had cheered the dovish stance in a private Chicago talk just a few days earlier, felt betrayed. The hawks were just as outraged that he had even considered a bombing pause.

Initially, the Platform Committee approved a plan urging the U.S. to “stop all remaining bombing of North Viet Nam in the expectation of restraint and reasonable response from Hanoi.” Johnson did not like the business about “expectation.” Though he huffily denied any role in dictating the platform language, he summoned Committee Chairman Hale Boggs back to Washington, ostensibly for a briefing on Czechoslovakia, but also for a Viet Nam briefing. He sent White House Staffer Charles Murphy to Chicago to oversee the Viet Nam deliberations. Soon the text was changed to read that the bombing would stop “when this action would not endanger the lives of our troops in the field.” No one was quite sure what that meant.

McCarthy was determined to use the Viet Nam plank as his springboard to the nomination. By sponsoring a floor fight over the minority proposal, which called for “an unconditional end to all bombing,” he hoped to split the party and attract enough support to put him over. At first, the convention’s managers sought to schedule debate on the issue in the early-morning hours when practically nobody would be watching TV. But the dissidents raised a tremendous ruckus. “Let’s go home, let’s go home!” they roared. Convention Chairman Carl Albert seemed at a loss. Finally, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley drew a finger across his throat and Albert got the message. He cut the fuss off by adjourning the meeting.

Stop the War. When the debate got under way next afternoon, it led to an unusually free and searching exchange of views. Many war critics wanted above all a kind of ritual sacrifice—an admission by the Johnson Administration that its involvement in Viet Nam had been a grave error. Doves generally characterized the majority plank as a charter for more of the same.

Supporters of the plank argued that it left several options open to a future President, rather than unwisely committing him in advance to a specific course of action. Moreover, warned Missouri’s Governor Warren Hearnes, an unconditional bombing halt could endanger U.S. servicemen. Boggs cited a statement by U.S. Viet Nam Commander Creighton Abrams to the effect that a bombing halt would mean a fivefold increase in enemy strength in the area of the Demilitarized Zone within two weeks. Many military experts consider Abrams’ estimate an exaggeration.

The doves received the loudest ovations for their statements. But the pro-Administration forces, dominated by Southerners who were determined to prevent a repudiation of Johnson’s policies though not particularly interested in how the plank might damage Humphrey, received the most votes. When Albert read the final tally, it stood at 1,567¾ for the majority plank, 1,041¼ for the minority. Even before he finished reading the results, a chant of lament began in the New York delegation: “We shall overcome, we shall overcome . . .” From the galleries: “Stop the war! Stop the war!”

As happened often during the week in such situations, an official on the podium flashed a signal to the 50-piece Lou Breese orchestra to strike up some noisy numbers to drown out the chants. In this case, with stunning inappropriateness after a debate on bombing, it was the Air Force’s song, Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder. The band ripped into Happy Days Are Here Again in the midst of a somber passage on Viet Nam during Humphrey’s acceptance speech.

A Real Ball Game. Fully 40% of the Democratic delegates stood in opposition to the Administration’s policy—and by implication, Humphrey’s. Even so, the Viet Nam uproar proved no real threat to the Vice President’s hopes of gaining the nomination. The greatest threat came, instead, in an evanescent move to draft Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.

California’s Unruh, anxious to win over the state’s fractious liberals so that he can seek the governorship in 1970 (he has even been seen recently on vacation sporting a Nehru jacket and love beads), talked up a switch to Teddy. McGovern and Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff persuaded Daley to delay his anticipated endorsement of Humphrey for a few days to see if the draft-Teddy move could get rolling. Daley needed little persuading; Humphrey is his fourth choice, after Lyndon Johnson, then Bobby Kennedy, and finally Teddy Kennedy.

From a suite in the opulent Standard Club, a businessman’s retreat near the Loop, Teddy’s brother-in-law Stephen Smith headed the operation. A day before the presidential balloting, he drove to Gene McCarthy’s headquarters at the Conrad Hilton. McCarthy assured Smith that if a genuine draft developed, he would step aside and throw his support to Kennedy—but only after his own name had first been placed in nomination, since he felt he owed at least that much to those who had supported him for so long. McCarthy asked Smith if he thought such a move would do any good. “It would then be a real ball game,” said Smith. But in Hyannisport, Teddy was still convinced that he should not be in the game—yet. He is 36, and his youth would deter him. So does the fact that his brother Robert’s assassination occurred so recently. Either 1972 or 1976, he concluded, would be a better time. Just before Daley held his final caucus with the Illinois delegation, Ted Kennedy issued a statement through his Washington office, urging supporters “to cease all activity on my behalf.”

The last apparent obstacle to Hubert Humphrey’s nomination was out of the way. After the turbulent Viet Nam debate, the delegates took a two-hour break, then began drifting back to the amphitheatre to vote on the presidential nomination. But at that moment, Chicago’s lake front was turning into a battleground. All week, the antiwar demonstrators and Chicago’s police had engaged in minor, but sometimes bloody skirmishes. On the night of the presidential balloting, the skirmishes turned into a major battle (see following story).

At the amphitheatre, taped scenes of flailing police batons were played over scores of television screens. The delegates were appalled. Standing at the podium to nominate McGovern, Ribicoff looked down at the Illinois delegation 15 feet in front of him, and denounced “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.” Daley’s lieutenants leaped up, shaking their fists. “How hard it is to accept the truth,” said Ribicoff calmly, looking straight at Daley. “How hard it is.” Now Daley was on his feet too, the heavy-jowled, heavy-lidded “Great Dumpling,” as Chicago Columnist Mike Royko calls him, waving his arms, cupping one hand to his mouth and shouting, among other things, “Get out, go home!”

Speaker after speaker referred to the scene at the Hilton, and each set off a rumbling chorus of boos aimed at Daley. Several delegates demanded that the convention be transferred to another city. Donald Peterson, a Wisconsin dairy executive and chairman of his state’s rambunctious delegation, shouted into his state’s microphone: “Thousands of young people are being beaten on the streets of Chicago! I move this convention be adjourned for two weeks and moved to another city.” Daley was so rattled that at one point, when Illinois was asked if it had any names to place in nomination, he grabbed the mike and started casting the state’s votes. Finally, beet-red with anger, he stood up and walked out of the hall. The night after “Bloody Wednesday,” as it came to be called, a cordon of plainclothesmen ringed the Illinois delegation, and the galleries were packed with the mayor’s henchmen waving freshly printed banners: WE LOVE DALEY.

Locked Door. Humphrey’s nomination was almost an anticlimax. It went very much as his aides had anticipated: a first-ballot victory with 1,761¾ votes to 601 for McCarthy, 146½ for McGovern, 67½ for Channing Phillips.

Humphrey had little problem choosing a running mate. He had consulted 100 party leaders, businessmen and labor officials, including A.F.L.-C.I.O. Boss George Meany, who simply urged him to choose the best man. By the morning after his nomination, his mind was made up. A week before Chicago, he had met for two hours in his Harbour Square apartment in Southwest Washington with Gene McCarthy. McCarthy agreed that his own chances for the nomination were slight, whereupon Humphrey asked if the second spot would appeal to him. “No,” said McCarthy. “Don’t offer it.” During the same week, Humphrey visited Teddy Kennedy at the Senator’s McLean, Va., home. “Teddy told me he wasn’t a candidate,” said Humphrey. He asked Kennedy: “Is the door ajar, is the key in it, or is it locked?” Replied Teddy: “The door is locked. I’m not a contender.”

Ethnic Appeal. Weeding out of other possibilities left Maine’s Edmund Muskie, little-known but with other assets to commend him. A ruggedly handsome, young-looking man of 54, he imparts a Lincolnesque air of cool statesmanship in counterpoint to Humphrey’s volatile manner. A former Democratic Governor and currently Senator of an overwhelmingly Republican state, Muskie is a Polish Catholic. The era of religiously balanced tickets and of purely ethnic appeal may be dying, but it is not quite dead. Besides, there are considerably more Poles in the U.S. (6,000,000) than Greeks (600,000), giving the Democrats a clear edge in that department over Nixon’s vice-presidential choice, Spiro Agnew. Particularly important is the fact that the heaviest concentrations of Poles are in nine key industrial states that account for 196 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.* Muskie may well be able to offset George Wallace’s strong appeal to this bloc. In his acceptance speech, Muskie acquitted himself well, underscoring the need for the U.S. “to build a peace, to heal our country.”

Study Panels. To run the campaign, Humphrey named ex-Postmaster General Larry O’Brien to the dual post of campaign manager and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Under the diffident John Bailey and in the face of total indifference on the part of the President, who never cared much about the mechanics of national politics, the committee has all but withered away in the past five years. O’Brien, who will handle both jobs without pay—but is anxious to depart immediately after the campaign to replenish his finances—promised to have the committee “updated and strengthened in every way.”

Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman will play a key role. For two months, he has been conferring with party leaders, commissioning polls of voter attitudes toward Humphrey and drawing up an overall battle plan. For months, 32 individual study groups have been working up position papers for the Vice President. Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Walter Heller oversees seven economic study units; Columbia Kremlinologist Zbigniew Brzezinski coordinates nine foreign policy groups; other panels are headed by veteran Government advisers like Francis Keppel, former Commissioner of Education, and Jerome Wiesner, who was Special Assistant to the President on Science and Technology from 1961 to 1964. In addition, Humphrey has his own “Minnesota Mafia” of businessmen and lawyers.

Slim to None. Humphrey launched his campaign this week as the underdog. Nixon led him by an overwhelming 16% in the last Gallup poll and by 6% in a later Lou Harris sampling. He trailed Nixon by four points in his home state’s Minnesota Poll, by nine in the Chicago Sun-Times’ Illinois survey. Though the G.O.P. may ultimately suffer the most from George Wallace’s third party, Humphrey knows that the Alabamian’s racist pitch also threatens to cut deeply into the Northern blue-collar wards that were once dependably Democratic. As for the South, Humphrey has little choice but to write much of it off to Nixon and Wallace. One North Carolina delegate declared that the Democrats’ chances in his state ranged from “slim to none.”

On the eve of his nomination, Humphrey read a 30-page campaign primer made up of recommendations offered by a number of advisers. A major suggestion was that his first task must be to establish, swiftly and firmly, an image of decisiveness, independence and inventiveness. On the two issues that are likely to dominate the campaign, however, Humphrey may find little room for maneuver. If he strays too far toward the doves on Viet Nam, he risks antagonizing both the Administration and the hawks. He will probably talk about “justice and law” rather than the more repressive-sounding Republican usage, “law and order,” but he will have to do so without opening himself to attack from Nixon and Wallace.

It will be a tough path to tread. Columnist Joseph Kraft, for one, is convinced that he will succeed. “Humphrey is the man for this particular season partly because he is in rapport with the established chiefs of the low-income whites,” wrote Kraft. “He speaks their rhetoric and shares their faith in the basic goodness of American life. He does not force them into a corner of defensive hostility. And because he is a prairie radical not altogether relevant to the sharpest problems of the immediate present, he will not be firing up the young for a bloody march down the path to disaster.”

Ready to Lead. Humphrey’s aides describe him as “the man whose time has come.” An argument can be made that his time has passed; that the adventurous spirit of Minneapolis and his early days in the Senate can no longer be recaptured. Humphrey thinks they can. At the end of his acceptance speech, he cried, “I am ready to lead our country!” He has nine weeks to persuade the electorate that he also has the qualifications.

* New York, with 1,200,000, Illinois 750,000, Pennsylvania 740,000, Michigan 500,000, New Jersey 400,000, Ohio 250,000, Massachusetts 250,000, Wisconsin 200,000, Connecticut 200,000.