RIGHT after the congressional elections last November, Richard Nixon surveyed the political terrain and told his intimates that Senator Edward Kennedy would most likely be the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. But what of Maine's Edmund Muskie? "The George Romney of the Democratic Party," Nixon scoffed. In 1967, Romney blew an early lead among the Republican contenders by appearing dimwitted when he confessed to having been "brainwashed" about Viet Nam. Now Republicans publicly and Democratic rivals privately are in full cry after Muskie for what might seem to be a similarly fatal failing: indecisiveness.
In some of his political speeches these...