McCARTHY AND KENNEDY

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It must have been one of the issues of the Crimson that I missed that announced the sale (or renting) of the front page of the Harvard Crimson to Robert F. Kennedy '48, for the duration of the campaign season. Surely such a transaction would explain the extraordinary bias the Crimson has shown in the past week.

First, on Monday, April 29, we were presented with John Herfort's news "analysis." Along with some genuine insight into the present condition of the Democratic party, Mr. Herfort also let drop the "analysis" that supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy were essentially neurotics, whereas Robert Kennedy '48, is the candidate of "new ideas" who would bring a freshness to American politics. The judgment about the first point must be left to those who know McCarthy supporters, although it can be said that Senator McCarthy's ideas about foreign policy and the CIA show great freshness, and that, on domestic policy, he has become the first candidate of a major party to endorse the idea of a guaranteed annual income. About the latter, I point out two things: the Indiana campaign seems to indicate a certain reticence on the part of the junior Senator from New York in presenting those new ideas to a hostile audience. What is good for blacks in Gary apparently isn't good enough for those Hoosiers more comfortable with appeals to "law and order" and assurances that Kennedy wouldn't consider unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam. Kennedy, the man who as Attorney General helped put the most racist judges in the nation on various tribunals in the South, is much experienced in tempering freshness with "realism."

Secondly, the willingness of Senator Kennedy '48, to accept support from Robert McNamara indicates, to put it mildly, that he does not understand the basis of opposition to American foreign policy. The War in Vietnam is not the result of the demonic malevolence of Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk, and Walt Rostow (all, incidentally, selected by John F. Kennedy '40), but follows quite directly from the policies pursued by the first Kennedy Administration. There is no confidence that a new Kennedy Administration would not feature the return to office of many men, of whom McNamara is only one, whose views on foreign (and domestic) policy have proved catastrophic for this country. Robert Kennedy '48, may indeed sometimes speak in the language of new ideas, but the faces in his entourage are the old faces, and they have no claim to be returned to high office. Sanford V. Levinson   Tutor in Government and Social Studies