Rocking-Chair Candidate?

Buzzing for Press Secretary James Hagerty, President Eisenhower indicated an invitation from Washington's correspondents to join them at lunch at the National Press Club. Said Ike: "I'd like to do this. Do you think they would want me to come?" Press Club Member Hagerty knew full well that they would--and within minutes he was busy setting up the President's most successful public appearance in months.

Largely responsible for last week's success was Dwight Eisenhower himself. Pink-cheeked and purple-tied, Ike found his head table seat like a Rotary Club regular, ate filet mignon (rare) while 480 paying guests struggled with minute steak. He chatted amiably with tablemates, helped pass along scribbled suggestions from the floor for his own postdessert question-and-answer session to Press Club President John V. Horner of the Washington Evening Star. No sooner did the questions start than radio mikes opened, three television cameras blinked red, and a daytime audience of millions began watching the second live-TV presidential press conference in U.S. history (the first: in San Francisco during the 1956 G.O.P. national convention).

Answering a total of 15 questions in a little less than an hour, the President was at his best in paying personal tribute to men he has known--and most admired. One of these, said onetime West Point Halfback Eisenhower, was retiring Army Football Coach Earl ("Red") Blaik: "I've never known a man in the athletic world who has been a greater inspiration." Another was wartime colleague Winston Churchill: He was "great in the carrying of responsibility . . . You had to hang on tight to your basic conviction because the first thing you knew he would shove you out of it, but when the decision was reached he was absolutely loyal." There were others: General George Marshall, General Omar Bradley and Britain's Royal Air Force Marshal Portal. Said Dwight Eisenhower: "Each of these men, like each of us, had his own strengths, and here and there, I should think, his weaknesses . . . It's not profitable to try to show where you believe you were better than he."

Finally, the President was reminded of a remark he had made in 1948 when, as the Army's outgoing chief of staff, he had offered his personal prescription for retirement : "Put a chair on the porch. Sit in it for six months, and then begin to rock slowly." Had his ideas changed since then? Said the President of the U.S., looking like almost anything but a candidate for a rocking chair: "I don't know how long this type of retirement would last, but at least I want to sit in that chair until I really want to get out of it."

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