Bogged Down or Warming Up?

A successful political campaign is part light and part reflection. A candidate can work himself into a bright glow, but he must also get a bounceback of enthusiasm from his audience. Last week Ike Eisenhower's bounceback was dim.

The trouble came mostly from Republicans who have been in opposition so long that they fall naturally into critical attitudes. Early in the week, the 19 newspapers of the Scripps-Howard chain, in a front-page editorial headlined: IKE, WHEN DO WE START?, clamored for a fighting attack on the Truman Administration. "Ike," said the editorial, "is running like a dry creek."

In Maine, the Guy Gannett newspapers carried a story from their Washington correspondent which the Portland Press Herald bannered: BOGGED-DOWN IKE COULD LOSE ELECTION THIS WEEK. Here & there, individual enthusiasm for Ike was giving way to nervousness. An Eisenhower worker in Chicago reflected the general reaction. "People are willing to wait for General Eisenhower to take a firm stand," said she, "but not much longer. We've lost some independents to Stevenson already."

A Practical Matter. The most unexpected reaction of all came from the general direction of Ohio's Bob Taft, vacationing in Quebec. Taft spent a leisurely day with his good friend, Correspondent Ed Lahey of the Chicago Daily News. Then Lahey filed, from Montreal, a story that Taft would not campaign for Ike unless: 1) Ike promises that certain unnamed Taftmen will be considered for jobs in the new Administration; 2) Ike promises that certain unnamed Ikemen will not be made Secretary of State ("It's a safe bet," wrote Lahey, "that one of them is Governor Dewey"); 3) Ike will not "repudiate" the Taft-Hartley law even by indirection; 4) Ike will conduct his campaign more like what Taft calls an authentic Republican.

The Ike camp found this story hard to believe. Ike has taken the initiative in harmony overtures ever since he rushed over to meet Taft right after the nomination in Chicago. Since then, Taft's responses have always been friendly. Moreover, Ikemen who have visited Taft in Quebec have heard him voice no such conditions. He has promised, they report, to privately "warm up" his friends in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. But he wants to talk at length with Ike before he campaigns--mostly to make certain, as a practical matter, that he and Ike aren't making conflicting speeches.

A Start. Busily working on campaign strategy in Manhattan's Commodore Hotel, Ike's staffers readily rationalized their difficulties; they planned it this way, they said. The Ike campaign will "peak" just at election time. They don't want to throw the big punches too soon. What needs doing now is being done. In the most important states, Eisenhower-Nixon organizations have already completed the groundwork for local campaigning, and have done it with remarkably little friction between volunteers and Republican regulars (a friction that plagued G.O.P. Candidate Wendell Willkie).

The Ikemen were also taking a little cheer from the Gallup polls. A survey of the Middle Atlantic area (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) showed Republicans holding 52%, Democrats 42% with 6% undecided. In a midwestern test (Ohio. Indiana, Michigan and Illinois) Ike did much less well. Gallup's figures showed 49% for the Republicans and 49% for the Democrats with 2% undecided.

As for the complaints about Ike's speechmaking, Ikemen knew that their candidate had made an excellent beginning at writing his speech for the American Legion last week (TIME, Sept. 1). The delivery was woeful largely because Ike will not follow a speech manuscript, but insists on revising as he speaks.

Last week, between strategy conferences, Ike:

P: Registered (ahead of the regular registration period) as a New York Republican, admitted to a reporter: "This is the first time I have enrolled in a party registration," but added: "I've always voted Republican."

P: Received a promise of support from Richard J. Gray, president of the A.F.L. building and construction trades department, who said that Ike would probably get the endorsement of "eight or ten" other A.F.L. leaders.

P: Issued a Labor Day proclamation promising that, should he serve as President, labor would be able to say at the end of his term: "He has been fair, he has been my friend. He has not coerced us with laws, nor divided us by class . . ."

P: Spent half an hour with Old Democrat Bernard Baruch, who refused to endorse Ike but quipped: "When you see me looking at him you can tell I don't hate him."

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