State of the Union

Beyond men, missiles, nuclear weapons and foreign aid, what the U.S. has to offer the non-Communist world--and what the non-Communist world asks of the U.S.--is leadership based on strength. It was to meet this need for leadership that the President flew to the NATO conference in Paris last week at the risk of health and thus of his leadership in the longer range. But even as the President waved to cheering crowds from his open car in winter .weather, a symbol of past victories and present challenges, present and future problems stretched as far as eye could see.

Behind him in the U.S., the economy was still in recession--unemployment up to 3,000,000, steel production down to 70% of capacity, automobile production down in the light of falling sales (see BUSINESS). Big Labor was getting set to press new wage demands in next year's collective bargaining. And at the Pentagon the mess in missilery and the mis-organization of command, as shown up by the Johnson Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee hearings, was such as to raise serious questions as to whether Commander in Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower had done his homework as a military administrator.

Next month the President is scheduled to make his State of the Union message to Congress. Before he will be entitled to make the claim that the State of the Union is good, he will have to exert every ounce of his old leadership to make it that way.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.