Before the Vote

Just as Ohio's Republican Senatorial Candidate George Bender puckered his lips to begin a curbside television interview in Cleveland, a passerby jeered at him, a Bender admirer took strenuous offense, and in an instant the cameras were staring wide-eyed at the best TV fight in a long while. In Pittsburgh, an orator invoked the gods of Republicanism and was promptly conked on the head by a picture of Dwight Eisenhower, which fell from the wall. In New York, Democrat Averell Harriman may have broken a coarse record by calling the state's G.O.P. leaders liars some 15 times in as many minutes.

Philadelphia's Democratic Mayor Joseph Clark Jr., about to begin a dinner speech, was summoned to an air-raid drill that just happened to be called by Governor John Fine, who just happens to be Republican. Oregon Republicans muttered darkly that someone--a Democrat, no doubt--had punctured the huge "Ike" balloon they planned to float over Portland. John Roosevelt, barnstorming for the Republicans, had an interesting comment: "I come from a traveling family--and the standards are still set by my mother." In New Jersey, Democrat Adlai Stevenson said that Vice President Richard Nixon had campaigned with "smut, smear and slander." In California, Republican Nixon said Stevenson was "snide and snobbish."

All over the U.S., all last week, the Sunday punches were thrown in the last round of the 1954 political campaign.

Fainting Spell. The man in the center of the ring was Dwight Eisenhower. The President's week began with the first televised Cabinet meeting in U.S. history, occasioned by the return of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles from Paris and the signing of new agreements for Western European unity. Reported Dulles: "It is my honest opinion that history will not soon forget the results which came about."

From time to time Dulles was interrupted by Cabinet members, e.g., Treasury Secretary George Humphrey asked what the Paris agreement would cost the U.S. and Dulles replied: "It isn't going to cost us a nickel extra." Later, Dulles confessed that "I was going to say $6 billion. Then Humphrey was going to faint, and we were going to carry him out in front of everybody."

At his first press conference in nearly three months, Ike was concerned about voter apathy. Perhaps, he mused, the people, far from being disenchanted with his Administration, are too well-satisfied to have much interest in the elections. The following evening, the President spoke at a banquet given by the Citizens for Eisenhower Congressional Committee. There was nothing apathetic about his audience, which interrupted him 20 times in 25 minutes with applause.

"We have an America at peace," said Ike. "We have a prosperous America. We have an America whose government is honest and efficient . . . I believe the overwhelming majority of the American people want this kind of progress to continue. Although the presidency is not at stake, this election will have a heavy impact on the future of all our people."

The Big Br-r-r-ing! Next day, the President took off on a whirlwind speaking trip to Cleveland, Detroit, Louisville and Wilmington. By leaving Washington at 7:25 a.m. and returning at 7:14 p.m., the President traveled some 1,500 miles and averaged an incredible 125 m.p.h., including stops. Everywhere he went, his theme was Peace and Prosperity: "We won't go to war in order to get work." At his last stop, in Delaware, Ike had a suggestion to make: "If everybody here in this audience would go home this evening and start calling up--would call ten voters and ask them to call ten voters--you would cover the state of Delaware with every man, woman and child in it in about two hours."

Back in Washington, Ike personally followed up on his Wilmington suggestion. Using a list of persons who had written letters to the White House, the President made ten long-distance calls and asked the recipients to start off the telephone chain reaction. The first person he talked to, Mrs. Frederick Saye, a Peoria cook, did not meet state residence requirements for voting--but she began dialing her telephone anyhow. A North Carolina man who received a presidential call said breathlessly: "I'll certainly do what the President asked me to do--if I live."

Quick to recognize a great political gimmick, Democratic national headquarters rushed out telegrams urging all party candidates and officials to visit ten homes and ask the residents to carry the campaign message to ten other homes. Within a few hours, telephones and doorbells were ringing across the U.S. as part of the final burst of political milling that was to end only when the voters clanged the last bell of the 1954's big political fight.

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