Wrapping Up

THE HUMPHEREY surge, it turned out, was not just a concoction of Lou Harris and the New York Times. Voting Americans, those people that discouraged New Politicians were sure had swung to the right for the duation of the political season, must have been swinging back during the last three weeks. And if you sat in front of a television set Monday night, as many of those people are said to most nights, you could begin to see how it might be true.

Wallace's half-hour finale exuded cheerless defeat. The candidate and his running mate General LeMay sat behind bare, petty-bureaucrat desks, the General seated not really next to Wallace but off well to the left, not so near as to be frightening but available just in case we need a little of that nuclear hardware.

Before the evening's real business--attacks on anarchists and open housing--we met the candidate's families, posed awkwardly in domestic tableaus, not knowing what to do with their hands and faces for the few seconds the camera stopped on them.

The Wallace message, in summary, was disconnected. He and the General sounded vaguely sensible and doughty as they chastized the two major parties and congratulated themselves on their grass roots support. Wallace was best reading from the Wall Street Journal with a sly smile, worst reeling off preposterous promises that farm prices would double with the country under his command.

The already garbled message was further confused by electronic blips telling Wallace voters DO NOT ALTER YOUR BALLOT or A VOTE FOR WALLACE-GRIFFIN IS A VOTE FOR WALLACE-LEMAY. The former name was on the ballot in most states and that confusion seemed a microcosm of the campaign.

The show ended with a wretched recording of "America the Beautiful" accompanied by sustained shots of amber waves of grain, purpose mountains...right on up to brotherhood at which the screen flashed an extra dose of shining seas.

IT WAS understandable, maybe even intended, that Wallace's performance looked unprofessional, but the miscalculation of Nixon's election eve special are harder to explain. Perhaps his staff was complacent, perhaps pig-headedly conservative. In either case they chose to offer no more during prime time than a two-hour telephone version of his tedious citizens' panel shows.

To make sure the lines weren't jammed by mischievous Democrats asking "Where's Spiro?" Nixon began with a non-too-convincing testimonial to his running mate--a peculiarly defensive start.

On the issues, it was Nixon as usual. He seems at time almost to have convinced himself that he has taken a position on everything ("Call in a question, the tougher the better."). But the invariable "let me make one thing very clear" or "speaking frankly" did nothing to mask what a very mechanical process this question-and-answer business had become for the candidates by Monday night and how little interest for anyone it held.

Nixon has always pushed his family on the public earnestly and gracelessly. Monday was no exception. There among the rows of faceless operators earnestly jotting down questions were Julie and Tricia, who both took a moment or two from their labors to tell the nation what young people are thinking.

As he has on almost every citizens' panel show, Nixon told with a smile the two things that are keeping General Eisenhower alive--he wants to see the Republicans win and wants to go to the wedding. It's not a great anecdote under the best of cirumstances, but a nervous Nixon phrased it with particular tastelessness Monday and his over-quick laugh tang hollow against the silence of the audience.

People still don't like Nixon and may be a little afraid of him after his ill-advised adventure with the missile-gap issue. Monday's program could not have changed many minds on either score.

HUMPHREY did the same sort of thing at the same time with a lot more success. He let the men and women on the telephone ask their question in their own voices instead of filtering them through an oily moderator, he decorated the proceedings with celebrities, and kept big Ed Muskie at his side to check bouts of verbal diarrhea.

The Vice-President's best decision was to schedule several early evening showings of a remarkable half-hour campaign biography, filmed by a firm that has sent hordes of congressmen and senators into office with similar production. The art of it all is not impenetrable and contrivances cloy a bitr, like the ending, which shows a barefoot Humphrey pushing sand on a deserted beach like a pudgy reincarnation of John Kennedy.

The half-hour opens with Humphrey getting ready to a film a TV-speech, shifting position, worrying out loud whether he would look better behind a podium. Peek behind the scenes and there is a real Humphrey, the opening says, and the apparent frankness of what follows is indeed disarming.

Humphrey, the family man, is shown talking affectionately of his retarded granddughter. Humphrey, the Vice-President, jokes about the unknowns who have held the office. He, Muskie, and their wives go bowling and the pinsetter jams--it is a joke to show just how bad the first month of the campaign was.

Even hecklers make their way into the film, shouting "Dump the Hump," as the candidate tries to speak. A younger man encountered the same problem, the sound track says, and there is Teddy Kennedy facing a sea of angry chanting faces at the Common. There's a quick cut to Humphrey who has just the right expression--not angry, but troubled, determined to set communications aright if only given the chance.

Of course every time the narrator tells how hard it was for Humphrey to get his message across during those early months we're given the message--the old Humphrey record--once again. There's some idle chatter about the year 2000 so we won't mind looking back so often, and all the self-deprecation helps build the ethos of an underdog, gaining momentum all the time, winning this damn election against the longest of odds.

One doesn't really know for sure of course, that the real Hubert Humphrey is the real Hubert Humphrey of this film, just as one cannot be certain that the present bombing halt is an end to the bombing. Driving a Mustang doesn't necessarily make you potent either, but that's no reflection on the quality of the ad,