"Not Good Enough"

Showing the bluntness that he rarely lets the public see or hear, Dwight Eisenhower let fire last week with the toughest language he has aimed at Capitol Hill during his 5 1/2 years in the presidency. Target of the salvo: the defense reorganization bill unanimously reported out by "Uncle Carl" Vinson's House Armed Services Committee. When he first laid eyes on the committee's draft in mid-May, the President dubbed it "progress." But close analysis showed that three Vinson & Co. provisions sliced deep into the substance of the Administration's painstakingly thought-out proposal (TIME, April 14). Ike did a slow burn, then burst out with a ringing summons to the House to override its own Armed Services Committee. Charged Ike:

P: The committee's provision that the Defense Secretary's authority over the three services must be "exercised through the respective Secretaries" is a "legalized bottleneck" that would foster "frictions, delays,duplications."

P: The provision giving Congress what amounts to a veto over any Pentagon decision to transfer or abolish a "major combatant function" is an "endorsement of duplication and standpattism."

P: The clause handing any service Secretary and any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a license to run to Capitol Hill to make "any recommendations that he may deem proper" would be "legalized insubordination . . . bad concept, bad practice, bad influence."

For all three enfeebling flaws, Ike prescribed the same remedy: "Delete." The Armed Services Committee, he said, "has acted commendably on most of the needed changes. But in dealing with our defense establishment, pretty good is not good enough."

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