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Using Minnesota's bursting-with-health D.F.L. as their power base. Humphrey planners hope to throw out presidential lines into nearly all Midwestern and West ern states. A crucial part of their plans: an attempt to persuade Michigan's Wil liams not to lock horns with Humphrey, thereby leaving Hubert a clear liberal field. A limiting factor in Humphrey's strategy: he is up for Senate re-election in 1960. therefore will probably not be able to enter and campaign in presiden tial primaries.
Hubert Humphrey has come a long way from the damn-the-consequences liberal who first came to the Senate in 1949 after helping drive the South out of the 1948 national convention with a humdinging civil rights speech. "There is no radical movement in America today." he told a TIME correspondent last week aboard the Liberte, "and no call for one. It's a progressive party, an adventurous and international one. with vigor, not just vivacity, that is called for." Senator Humphrey might have been describing a party after his own image. But as he spoke, he realized that his chief competition might well come from someone less progressive, less adventurous, less international, less vigorous and certainly less vivacious—someone like Fellow Midwesterner Stuart Symington.
Symington: Everybody's Second
Missouri's Symington plays it safe. As a U.S. Senator, he has proved himself a master at not making enemies. With his authority as Harry Truman's Air Force Secretary (1947-50), he has spoken up determinedly for stronger national defense. Organized labor rates him as one of twelve Senators with a "perfect" voting record; yet. as the onetime board chairman of St. Louis' Emerson Electric Manufacturing Co., Symington is viewed benignly by businessmen. His close personal and political friends range from Convair Vice President Tom Lanphier to the Electrical Workers' President Jim Carey. He has stood consistently with the Senate's liberal civil rights bloc; yet he has somehow managed to keep in the good graces of the South.
Symington's strategy has been to act as if he never heard of the word "President." Early last winter he had a visit from Indiana's Frank McKinney, former Democratic national chairman (1951-53). who still speaks with the political voice of Harry S. Truman. McKinney wanted to get going right away on a Symington-for-President organization. Stu Symington threw up his hands in horror. All he wanted, he cried, was to campaign hard for re-election in Missouri—and win big.
He did campaign hard, and he did win big, by a near-record 402,000 votes over a nice Republican lady. That consolidated his position as a Democratic hopeful:
Symington is the first choice of Harry Truman's dwindling band of intimates and. as the man who has made no ene mies, stands No. 2 on nearly every other list. Last week handsome, athletic Stu Symington was playing golf (mid-70s) in Puerto Rico, still keeping his silence, still making no enemies. But there is a peril in his policy: if Symington has given no one reason to be against him. neither has he given anyone much reason to be for him.
The greatest danger for Stu Symington is that someone like Jack Kennedy or Hu bert Humphrey will walk away with the nomination before anybody gets around to second choice.