Thoughts of Home

REPUBLICANS Thoughts of Home Minutes after California's Governor Goodwin J. Knight marched before his legislature one afternoon last week to deliver a session-opening message, news tickers in an adjoining pressroom began clicking off a bulletin that all but drove Goodie's 49-minute oration off the front pages. At speech's end the word buzzed through the assembly chamber: Bill Knowland has announced that he will not run for re-election to the Senate in 1958 (TIME, Jan. 14). In California, where the body politic revolves around the uncomfortable triumvirate of Knight, Vice President Richard Nixon and Senate Minority Leader William Fife Knowland, gossips thought they saw what lay in Knowland's mind: return to California, wrest the governorship from Goodie Knight in 1958, battle Dick Nixon for the GOPresidential nomination in 1960.

Concrete Stand. Back in the Senate, which was just about as surprised at Knowland's news as Goodie Knight, such political speculation was suspended while the niceties of senatorial eloquence were observed. Two days after Knowland announced his retirement, colleagues on both sides of the Senate aisle seized half an hour for a peculiar ritual at which they excel: lauding each other in terms that would make an egomaniac blush.

"Those opposed to him," boasted Georgia's Richard Russell, who frequently opposed, "do not have to fear that they will be sandbagged in the back of the head in any legislative dark alley." "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, but go ahead and do some more," sang Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley. "No greater patriot ever served his country," defiantly barked Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey. Tennessee's Albert Gore added he had heard it proclaimed that "when Bill Knowland takes a stand, he stands as if his feet were in concrete." New Hampshire's Styles Bridges was sobered by an obvious thought: "Let us not talk about Bill as though he were no longer our colleague. Instead let us hail the fact that for two more years his matchless leadership will be found in the No. 1 seat on the right-hand side of the aisle." In the No. i seat, the hero of the hour sat stoically staring ahead, grinned occasionally, until the last of 29 colleagues had hurled a rose petal.

Neighborly Distance. Knowland's reasoning on the big decision was typically direct: he wants to be near his father, Oakland Tribune Publisher Joseph R. Knowland, now 83, to take over the family burdens if necessary. Since California's State Capitol in Sacramento is only a neighborly 90 miles from Oakland, Knowland by no means rules out the possibility that in two years he may decide to joust with Goodie Knight--an endeavor in which he would have the ardent support of Knight-blind California Republicans, currently including the powerful Los Angeles Times. Then, as governor of the second largest state, he might well emerge in 1960 as a powerful candidate for the presidential nomination.

On one point nearly all his friends are agreed: having lived politics all his life, Bill Knowland is not likely to retire for long from the political scene.

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