Work Unfinished

Like toy boats in a bathtub, bright bits of Dwight Eisenhower's program are spinning crazily around in Congress, while others lie becalmed in the slack water of indifference. Mindful that Senators and House members are already yearning for a July 31 adjournment, the President observed last week that "the time is late" for action. And he gave serious thought to both short-and long-term cures for obstinacy and inaction on Capitol Hill.

The President considered a drastic immediate remedy: a special fall session of Congress. White House aides were predicting that, barring a marked improvement in the congressional score card during the next five weeks, their boss would call Congress back to work for an extra session either before or after the November elections. An alternative might be keeping Congress around town during the dog days (no more distasteful to the legislators than to the President, yearning for a rest in Denver). For the long run, the President theorized at a White House stag dinner that the Constitution might well be amended to provide four-year terms for House members.* The President's reasons: Congressmen now spend half of their two-year terms campaigning and voting to please factions back home instead of for the nation's best interests; a Congress elected simultaneously with a President would assure more of a team approach, greater party responsibility.

The possibility that a Democratic Congress might be elected in November worried the President. His chief assistant, Sherman Adams, had already said that Dwight Eisenhower might not run again in 1956 if a Democratic Congress is returned this fall.

During the week, the President visited the convention of the National Association of Retail Grocers. His eye was caught by some shining machines in which hams, chickens and pork chops slowly turning on spits over a fire were being done to a nice, hickory-scented brown. "Brother, I'm just crazy about barbecues. I love 'em," beamed Ike. Manager R. C. Wilson of the D. & W. Manufacturing Co. immediately offered to send Amateur Chef Eisenhower a "Barbecue King" model (capacity of its four electrically powered racks: 20 chickens, 40 to 50 Ibs. of spareribs, eight 14-lb. hams. Cost: $400). The President hesitated momentarily, then said: "I'm afraid that is one gift I couldn't refuse." The President, a keen student of Western lore, exhibited a few deficiencies in his learning while signing a bill benefiting the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin.

Asking for the date, the President was informed that it was June 17. He turned to three Menominees witnessing the ceremony and asked if it wasn't on June 17, 1876, that "you fellows beat General Custer." The President was wrong. Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn was on June 25, 1876; his adversaries were the Sioux. The three Indians, nervously eying the President's still-poised pen, hurriedly denied all connection with the massacre.

* Harry Truman held the same belief, but had to back away when it became known that he also favored a twelve-year service limit in each chamber, and oldtimers in his party became enraged.

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