May 3, 1971
Page 13248
JAMES RESTON ON ED MUSKIE
HON. PETER N. KYROS OF MAINE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, May 3, 1971
Mr. KYROS. Mr. Speaker, as we know only too well, the corollary of leadership is exposure to intense criticism. Senator EDMUND MUSKIE's increased role as leader of the Democratic Party is, of course, accompanied by increased attention to his performance, and it is certainly not to be expected that this attention always be favorable.
Throughout the years, however, James Reston's columns have become noteworthy for the long-range perspective which they offer in the midst of the evanescent popular wisdoms expressed in Washington. In his column of April 28, appearing in the New York Times, Mr. Reston brings us back to what I personally feel so very strongly: Senator EDMUND MUSKIE of Maine is the most solid candidate for the highest national office. I am confident that the strength of his character and intellect will be reflected by increasing strength with the American people during the months ahead, particularly as more of our citizens have the opportunity to meet this man from Maine, and listen to him. For the benefit of my colleagues who may have missed Mr. Reston's column when it originally appeared, I insert it herewith:
BIG ED MUSKIE OF MAINE
(By James Reston)
WASHINGTON, April 27 – The man in the middle of Washington's smoky-room gossip these days is Big Ed Muskie of Maine. Much of the smoke is coming from the Senator himself, but suddenly all the pros in both parties are muttering against him, which is the treatment usually reserved for the frontrunner.
For example, John Mitchell, the Attorney General, who ran President Nixon's last campaign and may run his next, expresses the view that Muskie will never make it through the Democratic nominating convention. In his opinion, the Democrats will tear each other apart in the primaries and wind up with a badly wounded nominee, "probably Humphrey or Kennedy."
Publicly, the Democratic candidates are sticking to their pledge not to criticize each other, but privately they are sniping at the Senator from Maine. Muskie, they complain, is poorly organized. indecisive, inexperienced on urban questions and foreign policy, an Adlai Stevenson without Stevenson's eloquence, experience or big-state political base.
This, it should be noted, is strictly Washington stuff. Poor Ed – he has nothing going for him but the people, the pollsters and a quiet personal New England determination to ignore the gossip and run his campaign in his own careful way and at his own time.
Well, he says, maybe there is something to all this criticism. Maybe he has been ambiguous, maybe he has waffled on Vietnam, maybe he has not been too well organized, but let's wait and see. People keep drawing my profile every day, he says, and the pressure will get much worse, but there's plenty of time.
Muskie has recently responded to the criticism by stepping up the pace of his campaign and sharpening up his shafts at the Nixon Administration. He has kept adding to his staff, though he is still short on professional political advisers. He has been talking out on the Calley case, supporting the public protests against the war though not the violent militants, attacking the F.B.I. for its snooping on the Earth Day rallies, and working energetically but quietly on urban and foreign policy problems.
Nevertheless, he has not increased his lead since the first of the year, probably because he is a cranky Yankee and not so sure that the main issues of the moment – the war and the economy – will look quite so promising a year or fifteen months from now. So he has been holding back and conserving his energies and his ammunition for later on.
For the Republican strategists, this is good news. They might be worried if Muskie established himself early as a sure winner in the Democratic nominating convention and could therefore avoid a divisive struggle in the primaries and on the convention floor. But the longer he waits, the greater the chances are, in the Republican view, that the Democrats will fall out and the war and economy issues will begin to fade.
Attorney General Mitchell, for one, believes time is on the side of the Republicans. He says nobody has asked him to run the 1972 campaign, "and I'm not volunteering" but he thinks the outcry against the war and unemployment will have declined substantially by next spring, and that nobody, certainly not Muskie, will be able to unite the Democratic party.
Nor is Mitchell particularly worried about the 11.5 million 18-21-year-old voters who will be eligible to participate nationally in the '72 election for the first time. Though the Gallup Poll indicates that three out of four 18-21-year-olds favor the Democratic party, he is not convinced that they will develop enough enthusiasm for any of the Democratic candidates to be decisive.
Instead, he points to "about five and a half million" older floating voters who under the new 30-day residence requirements are likely to be a bigger factor in the 1972 voting than ever before.
He identifies these as men in lower and middle management jobs who are constantly moving from one location to another and who tend to be rather conservative. In 1968, long legal residence requirements for voting made it difficult for these men to cast their ballots, but the new 30-day rule, Mr. Mitchell believes, will bring them in far greater numbers to the Republican side.
Muskie and his staff are inclined to agree that this is a time for careful and quiet analysis of the changing electorate, rather than for starting a dramatic personal campaign which no candidate can maintain from now until the summer of 1972 and beyond.
What the Muskie men are concerned about now is holding the middle ground, avoiding any open splits in the party, and organizing the young. For example, one key issue is how to enable college students in the 18-21-year group to register and vote in the college towns and cities, where they will be on Election Day 1972 rather than at home.
So the muttering against Muskie is probably less important than the private organization building that is going on behind the headlines. The Senator from Maine is still the best television performer in the Democratic party, still more acceptable to most of the large voting groups in the ranks of the Democrats, and his problems, while formidable, seem desperate only when you forget the problems of his opponents, including Senators Humphrey and Kennedy and even President Nixon.