The General's General

Guy George Gabrielson's troubled term as chairman of the Republican National Committee expired with the last rap of the convention gavel last week. Next morning the new national committee met for the first time, dispatched a subcommittee to get Candidate Ike Eisenhower's ideas on Gabrielson's successor. When Ike had given his views and specified a Midwesterner, the committee chose Michigan's national committeeman, Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield.

Chairman Summerfield, 53, is a wealthy Flint, Mich. Chevrolet dealer, who entered politics in the early '40s. In 1948 Summerfield led a movement to get the Republican nomination for Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg. This year Summerfield kept his important Michigan delegation on the fence right up to convention time, finally went (35-11) for Ike on the first ballot.

In his new job he will replace Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as Eisenhower's field general, chiefly responsible for the conduct of the presidential campaign. In a sense-making rules change, the Republicans expanded the national committee to include--in addition to one committeeman and committeewoman from each state--all state G.O.P. chairmen whose states go Republican in a presidential election, or elect a Republican governor, or send a G.O.P. majority to Congress. This change gave Summerfield a 138-member national committee, the largest in G.O.P. history.

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