Biggest Gun

Jabbing a finger toward his desk chair, Dwight Eisenhower told a recent White House visitor: "Listen, dammit, I'm going to do everything possible to keep that Jack Kennedy from sitting in this chair.''

Last week Ike left his chair and charged into his first week of active politicking with the gusto of a veteran G.I. answering chow call. The week's high point came as a drumroll of applause beat up to the speaker's dais in Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel. Ike flashed a Nixon-Lodge badge as big as a butter plate, grinned mightily, pumped his arms skyward in the familiar big V for the benefit of 40,000 Republicans, linked at fund-raising dinners in 36 cities by closed circuit TV. Then well aware that Republicans were still hurting from the TV debate between Dick Nixon and Jack Kennedy, the biggest political gun in the land fired a barrage for Nixon and Cabot Lodge.

The Dark Continent. "I have noted allegations of late that the Vice President has contributed little to the affairs of Government over these last seven and a half successful years," said he. "On this matter, let me set the record straight.* During these years Dick Nixon has participated with me and high officials of your Government in hundreds of important deliberative proceedings of the Cabinet, National Security Council and other agencies. His counsel has been invaluable to me." Nixon, he said, is "the possessor of a vast richness of experience in domestic affairs, foreign relations and person-to-person diplomacy . . . man capable of calm decision in the midst of frenzy, a man who is neither intimidated by selfish pressure groups at' home nor tyrants abroad." It was all-out praise, and if political popularity can be transferred, Ike had certainly done his part to decide who would sit in his chair next.

Ike proceeded to lob a couple of shells into the Democratic camp. Most of them were intended for Nominee Kennedy: "Leadership is not proved by a mere whirling across the public stage in a burst of campaign oratory. We do not want leadership that sees only dark continents of despair in American life. We do not want leadership that recklessly exhausts the rightful heritage of our grandchildren. We are against leadership that seeks to center all government in Washington."

The High Pie. In Philadelphia earlier, Ike told why he had dedicated his Administration to stopping "the spenders." Under Ike's four commandments, a government of fiscal responsibility shall not:

P: "Use the taxing power to weaken or tyrannize the private economy; P:"Resort to the borrowing power to escape the sacrifices that go with responsibility;

P: "Delude the people into taking the deceptively easy road of deficit spending, unbalanced budgets, or inflationary fiscal policies;

P: "Use the power of appropriation falsely to offer the people something for nothing."

Deficit spending, he warned, is "the way of the political coward" and a sure road to national weakness. In a barbed aside, Ike urged his receptive hearers (2,900 certified public accountants) not to be decoyed by "glittering political promises of pie in the sky."

Ike flew on to Denver at week's end (for the funeral services of his beloved "Min," Mamie's mother Elivera Doud, 82--see MILESTONES). From a purely political point of view, Republicans could take comfort from the roar of the week's crowds wherever he went, particularly those he heard in New York. Clearly his eight-year honeymoon with the American voter had not lost its glow.

Part of the record: in August Ike was asked at a press conference to cite an instance of the Vice President's decisionmaking. Said he: "If you give me a week I might think of one."

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