Theodore H. White
The incident embarrassed the administration but had little impact on the campaign in which Johnson led his opponent by large margins. One columnist wrote on October 15, "Walter Jenkins has revived and dramatized all the harsh feelings about morals, and political cliques, and the Texas gang in Washington." Yet the incident disappeared so quickly from the political scene that Theodore H. White, surveying the 1964 election campaign, assessed its impact this way: "Perhaps the most amazing of all events of the campaign of 1964 is that the nation faced the fact fully—and shrugged its shoulders." Jenkins' arrest was quickly overshadowed by international affairs: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was deposed on October 14, the British electorate voted Labour into power on October 15, and China successfully tested a nuclear weapon on October 16.