Straight Down the Middle?

Dwight Eisenhower was chipping and putting as if he were 37 instead of 73. In a charity match at Ardmore, Pa., last week, Ike paired up with Arnold Palmer, almost stole the affections of Arnie's Army in helping beat Dancer Ray Bolger and Golfer Jimmy Demaret three and two. Even with the match won, Ike insisted on finishing the full 18, stroked in a superb 40-ft. birdie putt over two rolls and a dip on the 17th green, left the golf course exuberantly, and cried to reporters, "I don't know what I would do without this game. I really love it."

All of which had long since led a lot of Republicans to fear that the G.O.P. might be playing second fiddle to Ike's nine iron during this year's match-play presidential campaign. For months, many influential Republicans had been desperately trying to get Ike to think less about par and more about politics--at least to the extent of expressing himself on party principles, policies and candidacies before the G.O.P. convention in July. Again and again, Ike said he'd prefer a straight-down-the-middle stance, supporting no one, rejecting no one.

Most of the pressure on Ike came from anti-Goldwater people, specifically including Milton Eisenhower, Minnesota's former Governor Elmer L. Andersen and, very actively, New York Herald Tribune President Walter N. Thayer.

The Prelude. Ike was not exactly warm toward Goldwater, who in 1960 had labeled the Eisenhower Administration "a dime-store New Deal." Still, he declined to become part of a stop-Goldwater movement. On May 14 Eisenhower told newsmen he would support "whoever is nominated," and the next day he appeared on national television to say that "I personally believe that Goldwater--Senator Goldwater--is not as extreme as some people have made him. But, in any event, we are all Republicans."

The fact was that Eisenhower simply did not believe that Goldwater could get the nomination. Therefore, why should he help bring on a party split by coming out against Barry? Not until he had pointed out to him a TIME report that Goldwater already had some 550 more or less committed delegates, not including California's 86, was Ike convinced. At that point, he agreed to write a Republican "profile"--without mentioning names--that would detail the kind of G.O.P. candidate Ike really favors. Eisenhower started to draft the statement in his Gettysburg office on May 19, went to New York on May 22 and showed it to Thayer, handed a finished copy to Thayer in Gettysburg the next day, then phoned in some last-minute changes to the Herald Tribune on May 24.

The Statement. "I do fervently hope," wrote Ike, "that the person selected to lead our party in the coming campaign will be a man who will uphold, earnestly, with dedication and conviction, the principles and traditions of our party." G.O.P. principles, said Eisenhower, were "spelled out at length" in the party convention platforms of 1956 and 1960. "These platforms," said Ike, "represented the responsible, forward-looking Republicanism I tried to espouse as President, the kind that I am convinced is supported by the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party, the kind I deeply believe the party must continue to offer the American people."

He listed some of his Administration's domestic accomplishments--establishing the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, extending social security, a new program for medical aid for the aged, urban renewal, the U.S.'s first depressed-areas legislation, as well as the first civil rights bills since Reconstruction. Said Ike: "As the party of Lincoln, we Republicans have a particular obligation to be vigorous in the furtherance of civil rights."

Then, speaking of foreign affairs, he said that "the overriding concern of the Republican Party--of either party-must be the maintenance of peace while protecting and extending freedom." This, he said, requires military strength and "loyal support for the United Nations in its peace-keeping efforts." He warned that "in today's nuclear-age diplomacy, there is no time for indecision, but neither is there room for impulsiveness."

The Reaction. Ike insisted that his "profile" was neutral, but it hit the Goldwater camp like a hurricane. Everything, from backing the United Nations to supporting civil rights and domestic social legislation to the crack about avoiding "impulsiveness" in foreign affairs, struck at least obliquely at Goldwater. Worse, after the 1960 presidential election, Goldwater had scoffed at the same party platform that Ike now praised so highly by saying, "We lost on it." To make sure no one missed the point, Thayer's Tribune planted a column by Pundit Roscoe Drummond squarely alongside the Eisenhower text. Said Drummond's lead paragraph: "If former President Eisenhower can have his way, the Republican Party will not choose Senator Barry Goldwater as its 1964 presidential nominee." And the New York Times headlined its Page One analysis piece: STATEMENT BY THE GENERAL APPEARS TO FIT ALL IN RACE BUT GOLDWATER.

Ike himself appeared taken aback by the stir. When a reporter said, "My editor wants to know if Senator Barry Goldwater fits your specifications," he replied enigmatically, "Let your editor try to fit that shoe to that foot."

As for Goldwater, he tried to make the best of Ike's statement. Said he: "I hail its forthright restatement of the basic Republican principles upon which I proudly stand and its public rebuke to those who would rule or ruin." But Barry knew better. The same day Ike's message was published, he appeared before a Redding, Calif., audience with an arrow tucked under his arm so that, in profile, it appeared to have pierced his back. Said Barry sadly, "This is just to show you some of the problems I've had in the last few days."

Indeed, as things were going, Barry never really could get his foot out of his mouth long enough to try on Ike's shoe. Early last week he raised a new crop of scary headlines by implying his support of the idea that Viet Cong supply lines in North Viet Nam could be uncovered through "defoliation of the forests by low-yield atomic weapons." Barry had to make it clear later that what he really meant was that "it could be done, but I don't think it should be done." When asked why he thought Eisenhower had issued his statement, Goldwater said bitterly that a "mysterious clique in the East that nobody seems to know anything about but everyone agrees is in existence" had probably prevailed upon him.

On the other hand, Nelson Rockefeller happily recalled that he had helped draft the very 1960 G.O.P. platform that Ike liked so much. Cried Rockefeller: "I fall within the framework of Eisenhower's description. I don't think Senator Goldwater's views are compatible." Workers for Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., having thrown their support to Rocky in the California primary, quickly chimed in that Lodge, too, fitted Ike's qualifications.

On the eve of that primary, there was no telling about the contribution Ike had made to the outcome. But one thing was certain: in the long-range G.O.P. situation, the last Republican President of the U.S. had, intentionally or not, thrown his considerable weight against Goldwater.

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