With toothy smiles all around, the national chairmen of the Democratic and Republican parties met last week in Washington's Mayflower hotel, shook hands almost as though they meant it, signed a pledge against playing dirty campaign pool this year—and immediately began whacking each other with the pool cues.
Brought together by the well-meaning Fair Campaign Practices Committee Inc. and its well-meaning chairman, Cincinnati's Mayor Charles P. Taft (brother of the late U.S. Senator Robert Taft), Democrat Paul Butler and Republican Len Hall signed, with telegenic flourishes, a fair-play code: "I shall condemn any dishonest or unethical practice." etc., etc. Then, while...