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Newspaper clipping with hand-written underlining, notes and comments

File:Photograph CANDIDATE: Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Republican Senate leader, announced last week that at 72 he was about to embark on a campaign to win a fourth term. handwritten notes on picture of Dirksen with eyes colored with red ink For mayor of underlined : Saigon arrow pointing to eyes "Hawk" 8,000 miles from the action The "Open Mouth" Policy in Asia arrow pointing to open mouth 72

New York Times SUN 4 feb 1968 'Ev' Announcer for '68 by E. W. KENWORTHY

  WASHINGTON -- Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader, still pulls a full house for hs Tuesday press soirees.  But it is a ho-hum audience.  There is a growing body of Republican legislators who think the weekly "Ev and Jerry show" carries about as much wallop as "East Lynne."  And the Republican Governors, worried about the party's image, wish that Ev would content underlined in ink:   himself with, say, giving the nominating speech for Richard M. Nixon at the Miami convention next August, and not insist on being chairman of the platform committee.
  But all this has as much effect on Mr. Dirksen as -- to borrow one of his better metaphors -- "a snowflake on the bosom of the Potomac."  He is satisfied that age has not withered nor custom staled his appeal where it counts --in Illinois.  Therefore, the 72-year-old Senator announced last week that, unlike some of his septuagenarian colleagues--Hill of Alabama, Hickenlooper of Iowa and Carlson of Kansas--he had no intention of retiring and would run in November for a fourth term.  It was hardly news.
  Mr. Dirksen's biographers are likely to record that whatever enduring fame he deserved he earned in his contribution to the passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  At the outset he had opposed all three.  It is true, of course, that his come-about was designed to catch the wind--underlined in ink: Mr. Dirksen has a very sensitive finger.  ink in margin:  why "finger"? 
   Nevertheless, he earned the accolade--never before bestowed on him--of statesman, and if he had gone on from his high point in 1965 the Republican liberals would be happy to have him continue as their leader and to preside over the writing of the platform.
   This he did not do.  With that calculating, and sometimes miscalculating, perversity that has characterized his career, Senator Dirksen proceeded to espouse causes that were not only lost but, in the view of the party liberals, downright silly.   Such were his vain attempts to get Congress to stay all court orders on re-apportionment of state legislatures and to reverse by means of constitutional amendments the Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote ruling and its ban on public school prayers.
   Two weeks ago Senator Dirksen and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford were forced to surrender their monopoly of the Republican reply to the President's State of the Union Message in the interest of letting the nation see what was billed as a younger, more forward-looking, more representative profile of the party in Congress.   As it tuned out, Mr. Dirksen was hospitalized with the flu and could not participate.  It really made n difference, because the procession of Republicans only demonstrated  how nearly this collective mental profile (with one or two exceptions) approximate that of Everett Dirksen.
   The realization of this fact may explain why party chairman Ray Bliss is apparently unmoved by the request of the Republican Governors Association that Gov. Raymond P. Shafer of Pennsylvania be a co-chairman of the platform committee.
 underlined in ink:  In short, everything is going along in the Republican party just as Lyndon B. Johnson would have it.  As things are, the President has the best of both sides of his old friend Everett Dirksen.  He can point with gratitude to underlined in ink: Mr. Dirksen's support of Vietnam policy and he can point with scorn to the Republican leader's "neanderthal" opposition to welfare measure.
   Therefore, if Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, yields to the importunities of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and decides to run against Mr. Dirksen, the feeling in Washington is that he can expect about as much support from President Johnson as Representative Sidney Yates received from President Kennedy in his 1962 challenge against Senator Dirksen.   

sidebar to main article 'Honored' The Republican doves--what few of them there are--have been dismayed at Senator Dirksen because of his almost consistent support of President Johnson on Vietnam.

  Even those Republicans who are hawks think Mr. Dirksen is "too thick with Lyndon," and too eager to demonstrate it ("when he calls me, I feel honored, my party should feel honored to have him seek my advice.")  Many Republicans were appalled when Mr. Dirksen took the floor to charge that Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky had "demeaned" the Republic by [[underlined in ink: saying that President Johnson had been "brain-washed by the military-industrial complex."  written in ink just below this underlining:  Here!  Here!