Aside from trying out for the Olympic
decathlon, there may be no more enervating enterprise in the U.S. than
campaigning in the presidential primaries. Never before has the ordeal
been more punishing than it is this year for the eleven major
Democratic candidates, who have no fewer than 24 pre-convention
primaries to contend with. It is enough to make strong men weep, and
finally one did. The tears were all the more conspicuous because they
were shed by the leading Democratic contender. Senator Edmund Muskie of
Maine. Standing on a flatbed truck in a snowstorm before the offices of the
Manchester. N.H., Union Leader, Muskie defended his wife Jane against a
snide bit of gossip about her in the newspaper. Its editor, the
vitriolic, archconservative William Loeb, had reprinted a Newsweek item
detailing Mrs.
Muskie's alleged penchant for predinner cocktails and an incident in
which she supposedly asked reporters if they knew any dirty jokes.
Muskie was particularly angered by the headline Loeb put on the Union
Leader item: BIG DADDY'S JANE. As the Senator later complained: “It made her sound like a moll.” In a voice choked with emotion, Muskie began to weep as he announced the
title to the crowd. “This man doesn't walk, he crawls,” sobbed Muskie.
He tried to regain his composure, then said loudly: “He's talking about
my wife.” Muskie calmed himself; unfortunately for him, however, his
breakdown was caught by CBS-TV cameras and shown round the country. The moment of weakness left many voters wondering about Muskie's ability
to stand up under stress. His aides were troubled by the performance,
and one official of the Democratic National Committee observed: “You
have Nixon in China meeting with the Communist leaders and you have
Muskie having that difficulty in New Hampshire. I imagine the contrast
would be somewhat harmful.” Expectably, there was some gleefully negative reaction in both parties.
Washington Democratic Senator Henry Jackson asked: “If he's like that
with Loeb, what would he do with Brezhnev?” Added Republican National
Chairman Robert Dole: “I don't blame Muskie for crying. If I had to run
against Richard Nixon, I'd do a lot of crying too.” As it happens, Muskie had not even intended to make an issue of the item
about his wife in the address outside the Union Leader office. But en
route to Manchester, he brooded over the article, then startled his
aides by bringing it up after he had finished the first part of his
speech. That part was devoted to answering charges in an earlier Loeb
editorial that Muskie had laughed at an aide's sneering reference to
Franco-American New Englanders as “Canucks.” Someone named Paul
Morrison had claimed that he had witnessed the incident while Muskie
was visiting a drug treatment center in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and had
sent a crudely written letter to Loeb castigating Muskie. By week's end
Morrison had not been found. Reporters who had accompanied Muskie to
the center recalled no such incident and agreed that the Senator had
appeared somber and deeply moved by his visit to the center.
