The time has come to speak out on behalf of America—not a nation that has lost its way, but a restless people striving to find a better way.
ON that characteristically upbeat note, Hubert Horatio Humphrey volunteered last week to serve his nation as chief pathfinder. Eight years ago, he was the first to announce for the Democratic presidential nomination and the first to be eliminated, long before the convention. Now he is the third, and probably last, entry in a far more bitter contest. This time, no one doubts that he has the strength to battle it out to the end next August.
The onetime druggist's prescription for his troubled party and nation is conciliation and unity. "We seek an America of one spirit," Humphrey said. "The time has come to express a new American patriotism." Out in the open, running for himself again, he radiated all the old Humphrey solar energy. He will need it.
His Own Man. Apart from Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, Humphrey has history against him; no Vice President has succeeded to the White House by the elective process since Martin Van Buren turned the trick in 1836. Humphrey is undismayed. Despite his relationship with Lyndon Johnson and his manful attempt to avoid the lassitude of his office, Humphrey inevitably found the vice-presidency frustrating and confining. "One of the most awkward offices ever created by the hand of man," he said once. "It is an unnatural role for an active politician."
Even before his formal announcement, it was back to nature for Humphrey last week, and his own nature is to dream big dreams, to spin off grand ideas, to talk persuasively in his own behalf. While repeatedly paying homage to Johnson and the "Johnson-Humphrey Administration's record," he is now investing most of his oratorical capital in what lies beyond. He sorely needs to establish a personal identity again. "I am my own man," he told a West Virginia television audience. "I am my own personality with all its limitations."
HAPPINESS is H.H.H. declared the posters at the Marshall University field house, and H.H.H. had reason for happiness in West Virginia. There, where his 1960 candidacy collapsed in an ignominious primary defeat, he was warmly welcomed last week, by politicians and students, and stands to collect most of the state's delegates without going through a primary.
Overspoken. In New York City, he sketched briefly a post-Viet Nam foreign policy that envisioned "open doors rather than iron curtains," the "building of peaceful bridges" toward Communist China, new efforts toward arms control, multilateral development programs for the hungry nations. To those who accuse the U.S. of "arrogance of power," he replied that America has nothing to apologize for; yet he used none of the hyperbolic terms that have marked some of his foreign policy pronouncements in recent years. Later he even acknowledged that perhaps "we overspoke ourselves" in promising to "go any place, any time" to negotiate with North Viet Nam. While he predicted that preliminary talks with the Communists would get started "in a very short time," the delicate diplomatic situation of the moment gave Humphrey a welcome opportunity to concentrate on domestic matters.