“It appears that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats recognized quite how much Nelson Rockefeller meant to them until he withdrew as a candidate for the presidential nomination,” editorialized the Christian Science Monitor last week.
The Governor of New York, unruffled and businesslike, was back in his office at Albany working over a sheaf of proposals for overhauling and modernizing the state government, and getting ready to meet his legislature this week. But in the wake of his sudden “I-shall-not-be-a-candidate” announcement (TIME, Jan. 4), evidence was mounting that his campaign reconnaissance had identified him as a special kind of Republican who would continue to have a durable influence in the campaign.
Wrote the leftish New Republic, which spends considerable energies attacking Vice President Nixon: “Mr. Rockefeller can [now] give more attention to clarifying the issues … If, in the process, he lifts the level of political debate, it will be to everyone’s advantage. It may even generate some new ideas for the Democratic platform and help that party to avoid the temptation of spending all its energies in a negative attack on the Vice President.” One rising young congressional Democrat, understandably claiming anonymity, lamented that Rockefeller was “the only man in either party who has been free of the responsibility for errors of the past. He alone could have driven the pack of contestants onto the high ground of debating the great issues of survival and national need.” Unorthodox as it is, Rockefeller’s new role of independent Republican spokesman holds the promise of considerably strengthening the Republican Party. Said Rocky in his withdrawal statement: “I am a Republican—seriously concerned about the future vigor and purpose of my party … In this spirit I expect to support the nominees, as well as the pro gram, of the party in 1960.” One para mount party problem in the 1960 cam paign will be to convince independents that Nixon is a modern Republican and not the pawn of the Old Guard right wing, as the Democrats gleefully charge (although Californian Nixon was, in fact, a modern Republican before Eisenhower was a candidate or before Rockefeller had a political gleam in his eye).
As a vigorous, successful Republican Governor of the nation’s most populous state, Nelson Rockefeller can help the G.O.P. considerably by keeping alive the image of pay-as-you-go Republican liber alism, by speaking out intelligently on issues. If he does so, he will have served the 1960 campaign exceedingly well — and may in the long run serve his political future better than if he had run in the primaries this time around.
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