Ike's Second Week

All week Ike's friends--and enemies--watched for that big, liberating moment of battle, the breakout. The moment did not come. General Eisenhower won no famous victories last week. It was probably unrealistic of Ike's supporters to expect any sensational developments, but they were nevertheless disappointed as they saw their hero fighting uphill in the face of strong Taft resistance.

But Eisenhower was in top fighting form, and getting better. At the beginning of the week, he was an excellent campaigner, but still calm. At week's end, Ike was fighting mad.

"When a Man Is in a Battle." Eisenhower's hands were red and swollen from shaking hands with delegates. That was his main task: to meet delegates, explain himself and his ideas. In one week Ike talked personally to nearly 500 delegates from 19 states. No sooner had the general and Mamie returned from Abilene to New York than the delegates began arriving. All day for four days, a Negro porter pulled open the heavy, iron-grilled door of Eisenhower's residence on Morningside Heights, near Columbia University. On the first day it was Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Delaware. Next day it was Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina; on the third day New York and Maryland; on the fourth New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Virginia, South Carolina. The visits were pretty much alike. First the delegates got a little opening talk from Ike. His words to the Jersey delegates were typical: "I have no panaceas. Certainly I'm no miracle man. I'll make no promises over and above those I think can be accepted by a wise administration in frugality and thrift ... I doubt if there are any among you so innocent of politics as I. All I can do is put before you what I believe. All I can offer is honesty."

Then he called for questions.

Some of the questions & answers were repetitions of what had been said before, on socialized medicine, FEPC, federal aid to education, etc. Others raised new topics. Ike leaned easily against a marble banister or paced the room as he hammered home his points. Sample:

On the charge that he is a me-tooer: "I. have had a lifetime of trying to do something. You have to have your own plan . . . [But] I don't think we should be scared of labels. We can't turn the clock back to 1932. When a man is in a battle he doesn't say, 'Oh gosh, I should have used the 30th Division yesterday.' He asks, 'What have I got to do the job now? Where do I go from here?' "

Most delegates stayed about an hour and most emerged smiling. But smiles are not necessarily votes. Said one North Carolina delegate as he shook hands with Ike: "I've been talking to Taft, but I wanna say it sure would take a son of a gun not to like you." Replied Ike: "Well, you do what your conscience tells you." Later, the delegate said he was still for Taft.

Between delegates' visits, Eisenhower found time to have his eyes examined, chat with an old West Point gym trainer, meet the trustees of Columbia University (they extended his leave as president indefinitely) and talk to Republican Statesman John Foster Dulles. Dulles' aim, he said, is a foreign policy plank both Ike and Taft can agree on. Asked whether he was for Ike, Dulles smiled and said: "I haven't made any public decision." Asked if he thought the two factions could agree, Dulles made a somewhat circular pronouncement: "If they do not agree, the party will be split."

Picnic in Pennsylvania. On his plane heading for his meeting with the Pennsylvania delegation, Ike breakfasted off a tray balanced on a pillow on his lap, then went forward and sat in the pilot's seat. At Harrisburg, Governor John Fine welcomed him. At his farm three miles from Gettysburg, Ike had a happy reunion with his old friend Arthur Nevins, a retired brigadier general who runs the place (189 acres, twelve Holsteins, ten Guernseys, 500 chickens) while Ike is away. From New York Ike had phoned: "I'm coming down for a picnic. Don't sell the milk. I'll buy it that day."

To the picnic came 58 members of the important 70-man Pennsylvania delegation, including determined Fence-Sitter Fine, plus 60 alternates and 160 newsmen. Ike spoke to them from the back porch. It was his duty, he said, to tell delegates how he would tackle Government problems; it was their duty to decide whether they liked what he said. "I will abide by their decision cheerfully."

The questions started popping across the lawn. If elected, what would Eisenhower do with top State-Department personnel? His voice was hard as he replied: "When I say we need a new administration, I mean in all parts." The guests applauded.

Wasn't he too close to Democrats? "A lot of my friends have worn the Democratic label. But to no one in any political place do I owe anything. I'm in just as good a position to slug as any free American." But he would not stoop to character assassination. "I don't believe in it. I will not do it."

Had he taken an interest in politics when he was at Columbia? "I went around this country making at least 40 speeches where I shouted for free enterprise against creeping socialism."

Where Is Fine? The delegates were impressed. The Pennsylvania delegation now contains at least 25 fairly solid Ike votes, while Taft has 15 fairly solid promises. If Fine decides to swing to Ike he would have 55 of his delegates with him; if he swings to Taft, he would have only about 45. But which way will he swing?

Fine was being passionately noncommittal. He agreed that Eisenhower had handled himself very well and had probably converted some delegates--but not Governor Fine. He agreed that his differences with Ike on foreign policy had grown much smaller--but he still considered himself somewhere between Ike and Taft. When a politician handed Fine an "I Like Ike" button and asked him to put it on in courtesy to their host, Fine replied: "When I get to like Ike, I'll put a button on." Asked by a newsman what factors he would still consider before definitely making up his mind, Fine said: "Well, if I thought that a candidate couldn't win [the election], then you would have to stop consideration on the basis of principle and put it purely and coldly on a party basis."

Above all else, Fine wants to be "right," but that requires being right not only at Chicago in July, but at the polls in November. Republican control of Pennsylvania is being vigorously challenged by the Democrats, and Fine does not need much imagination to see his state administration crumbling, unless the Republican Party has a candidate who can win the election. Fine is obviously afraid that Taft, while a good bet for Chicago, may be a bad bet for November.

"Make Him Fight!" The most striking suggestion that Ike Eisenhower is a candidate who can win came next day, in Detroit. All along, Ike has been chafing under the conflicting and sometimes inept advice from his campaign managers. His first big speech at Abilene had fallen somewhat flat. On the train to Detroit last week, Ike sat up with his speech writers, going over suggested drafts. He rejected them all. "It doesn't sound like me," he said. In the morning, he made his decision.

"All my prepared talks are thrown out the window," he told a reception committee at the Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel. "If what I have to offer in the way of honest, decent approach . . . is not enough, there is nothing more I can do . . . If I make blunders, I know my friends will excuse it. And I hope the others will realize, at least, that I am sincere."

A little nervously his advisers agreed.

Detroit gave Ike a parade down Woodward Avenue to Cadillac Square. Paper showered down and cheers echoed loudly among the tall buildings. A man leaned out of a window and shouted: "Make him fight, Mamie, make him fight!" Mamie, carrying a red-and-white silk parasol, blew kisses at the crowd.

In the square, Eisenhower made a short Flag-Day speech. The American flag, he said, stands for a civilization built on religious beliefs. "And now another type of civilization challenges it; a civilization based upon the godless theory that man himself has no value."

The Big Speech. In the afternoon, he saw most of the Michigan delegation, later delegates from Indiana and Ike fans from Bob Taft's own Ohio. Then after dinner, he drove to Detroit's Olympia Stadium for the big speech.

The hall was not filled (a lot of people seemed to prefer to watch the speech on TV), but 10,000 people had turned up and waited for Ike in the sweltering heat. When he appeared the applause sounded like thunder on a hot June night. Said one reporter: "It filled the huge arena with that type of wild, emotional cheering, naming one man as the pride and choice of thousands, which is something few men ever experience." It struck Ike almost physically as he entered the hall. His face and balding head, already pink from the sun, flushed a deeper pink. He was dazed by it all, and obviously just a little scared. Four times he held up his arms before the cheering stopped and he could speak.

Eisenhower's face was stern, his lower lip and chin jutting out in anger as he began to answer some of the attacks made upon him. It was a fighting speech. He was often asked, said Ike, what political deals he had made. "I have heard of all kinds of deals, all of us have," snapped Ike. "They have borne many adjectives in this country in the past 20 years. I am a strictly No Deal man."

The crowd roared.

A lot of people wanted to know whether he would make a fighting campaign. "For 40 years it's been my business to learn the trade of fighting. And I would know of no reason why, when I got into the most significant battle of all my life, why I should suddenly ease up . . . A change in administration in our federal government is absolutely mandatory. America needs new national leadership, and the Republican Party is in a position to give it . . ."

He swung hard at the Taft machine's delegate-grabbing tactics, particularly the Texas steal (TIME, June 9): "When I say let's clean out corruption, that pertains to . . . our political processes as well as to government itself. It applies to political parties. It applies to primaries. It applies to my native state, Texas."

Who Asks Second Looies? Eisenhower brought up the often-heard question of why he did not take Berlin ahead of the Russians. His reply: 1) he had to push forward with his left to protect Denmark from possible Red occupation; 2) the Russians were 30 miles from Berlin when Eisenhower's armies were 300 miles away; 3) after his armies reached the Elbe--a line he had chosen--a political decision in which he had no part forced him to withdraw 200 miles west. At Potsdam, said Eisenhower, he had unsuccessfully opposed the division of Germany and the idea of begging Russia to come into the war against Japan. "Why did I agree to the political decisions of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam? Well, some of you men out there were second lieutenants. Did they ask you?"

But, he continued, "the political leaders . . . in our form of government, do not ask soldiers to participate in political decisions--and they should not do so."

Cheers interrupted Eisenhower 30 times in 28 minutes, engulfed him at the end. But how effective was his off-the-cuff experiment? It put across his strong and often moving sincerity. It created a suspense (will he make a mistake?) which some found exciting and others painful. While Ike has much off-the-cuff speaking experience, he was not quite equal to the hazards of public-address systems (sound engineers vainly worked on the Detroit p.a. system till the last minute), the emotional impact of facing a vast crowd, the split-minute timing necessary for TV and radio. Ike rambled on about Berlin, then saw a TV technician flashing a warning sign that he had only three minutes to go: Ike threw away part of what he had wanted to say, raced on to the finish, and then had two minutes to spare. After a press conference (most notable statement, on votes for 18-year-olds: "If a man is old enough to fight he is old enough to vote"), Ike and Mamie took off for Denver. They were welcomed by a crowd of 100,000. Ike hoped to play a little golf before meeting Western delegates.

Time Fuses? What has Ike accomplished?

He has not caused what some of his backers had hoped for--an "explosion"--but no one could tell in how many delegates' minds he may have planted the time bombs set to go off at Chicago.

He has certainly put on a different kind of campaign. He has scared the professional politicians by saying "I don't know" when he doesn't know, by talking off the cuff, and (as he put it in Denver this week) "saying what is in my heart." Sound or not, that is the way Eisenhower intends to run his show.

He has shown himself a good Republican, which has already cost him a good deal of support from liberals, but may improve his chances in general. Perhaps his greatest failure so far has been the lack of a positive, forward-looking program. His supporters feel that Ike's career proves him a forward-looking man who believes in getting things done, but he has not clinched that point.

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