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rupture of common sense.
    I pointed to the Undecided and said, “These are the Republicans and Democrats who voted for General Eisenhower last time but who don’t like Nixon. For them to slide into the Kennedy camp involves no rupture of common sense at all. So all the disaffected Democrats will have to vote for Kennedy, whereas at least half the disaffected Republicans can very easily vote for Kennedy.” I pointed to the Undecided again and predicted, “That’s where we’ll win the election.”
    My wife argued, “Your diagram doesn’t take into account the anti-Catholic vote.”
    I replied airily, “I explained all that before. The screwballs on one extreme cancel out those on the other.”
    “Don’t you wish it was as simple as that?” she asked on her way to bed.
    I refused to dignify her doubt with an answer, but as I looked at my diagram I was assailed by an ugly fear and had my first premonition that John Kennedy might not win this election after all. Suppose that the Republican party had sense enough not to nominate Richard Nixon, who might not win, but Nelson Rockefeller, who most certainly could. What would be the situation then? With some apprehension I altered my diagram and studied its fateful signals:
    Stevenson    Kennedy    Undecided    Rockefeller    Goldwater
    How different the strategy was now. The extreme right would have no place to go, so they’d have to vote for Rockefeller. But what was important was that the Undecided could now slide into the Rockefeller camp with no embarrassment. And I was convinced that a large proportion of Stevensonians could leapfrog over Kennedy and join Rockefeller without insulting their common sense. “With all that support,” I said glumly, “Rocky can win!”
    Very soberly I went to bed and told my wife, “I’ve just figured out that if Rockefeller runs against Kennedy, the Republicans will win. If I can see this, I’m sure the Republican bosses can see it, too. So they’ll nominate him. How do you think he’ll do?”
    “I’d vote for him,” my wife said without hesitation, and I realized with dismay that so would each of the other ten Stevensonians who had been arguing with me that night.

During the primaries my personal work took me to Mexico, where I had the good luck to form an acquaintanceship with our ambassador, Robert C. Hill, a new type of State Department man with a most aggressive determination to see, to know and to appreciate all of his command. We spent a week together flying in a small plane to the most remote airfields, where Mexicans awaited us with mariachi bands, festivals and dinners. Ambassador Hill was an eye-opener, both to me and to the Mexicans, and he apparently accomplished a good deal for the United States, for wherever we went the crowds immediately recognized him, and favorably. They also asked him embarrassingquestions, which he tried to answer in stride, insofar as his orders from Washington would permit.
    Apart from getting to know Mr. Hill, the most enjoyable part of the trip came when we were aloft, with only ourselves to worry about and with the forthcoming Presidential election to discuss. Ambassador Hill, naturally, was a Republican. In private life he had been a successful businessman and had been hand-picked by the administration, rather than by the State Department, for the critical Mexico job. He loved politics and was friendly to both Richard Nixon, whom he expected to see in the White House, and to Lyndon Johnson, who was a political hero of his. Robert Hill was never afraid to say what he thought, and we had some vigorous debates.
    His entourage on this particular trip was also mainly Republican, which was proper, since he served under a Republican administration, but he did have along with him a hilarious press officer from the Midwest, and this delightful man was an ardent supporter of Hubert Humphrey. I was the other Democrat aboard and the first John Kennedy man that any of the group