"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...