Cold & Distant

"Well, so far as I am concerned," said President Eisenhower at his press conference, "here is some irresponsible reporting." The President was referring directly to a news story describing his relationship with Chief Justice Earl Warren as "cold and distant and marred by disapproval on both sides." Author of the story: the

New York Herald Tribune's Washington Bureau Chief Robert J. Donovan, elected in 1955 by the White House to write the authoritative story of the Administration (Eisenhower: The Inside Story).

Donovan was merely reporting what those closest to the Administration have long realized: that Dwight Eisenhower and Earl Warren do not see eye to eye on the directions taken by the Supreme Court under Warren. Several months ago, for example, the President, referring at a dinner party to the series of court decisions overturning federal convictions in security cases, shook his head, saying: "I don't understand what the court is doing in some of these decisions." For his part Earl Warren could only resent the President's steadfast refusal to express his approval of the court's 1954 school-desegregation decision--although the President sent troops to Little Rock to back it up.

Ike and Warren have never had words about their disagreement--and it is almost unthinkable that they ever would. But aside from that, the relationship between the heads of two of the branches of U.S. Government is just as Reporter Donovan described it: cold and distant and marred by disapproval on both sides.

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