A Case of Nerves

Months of work and worry had pulled the President's nerves tighter than a banjo player's E string. The first few days in Denver were as bad as Washington.

Card Game. Ike's first chore was a nationwide television broadcast. He spent two days with speechwriters, laboriously polishing a text he had no intention of using. One day last week, an hour before the broadcast, the President arrived at a side door of Denver's KLZ. In the main studio, Ike's TV Adviser Robert Montgomery checked and rechecked equipment and staging. Fifteen minutes before air time, the President posed for still photographers and a cameraman asked him to say something so it would look as if he were delivering his speech. "What'll I talk about," Ike asked, "my .golf score?" "That would be fine," said the photographer. "No, it won't," said. Ike emphatically.

The President ducked out. of the heat and glare of the TV lights and paced the floor slowly, hands behind .his back. He looked stricken momentarily when he found that his glasses were missing from his breast pocket, calmed down when he remembered they were in place on a walnut desk in the studio. A technician gave the two-minute warning, and Ike took his position in front of the desk. Two easels, out of camera range in front of the desk, supported stacks of 3-by-4-ft. cue cards, designed to allow him to get through the speech without reading from a text. The deathly quiet of the studio was broken by a network announcer: "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

Batter Up. Nothing happened for a moment until Montgomery belatedly flagged Ike with a white handkerchief, and the President broke into a broad grin. The heart of Ike's speech was his program. The program, he said, had been contained in 64 proposed bills. Said Ike: "Now 54 of them were enacted into law. We didn't always make home runs but we did have 54 hits . . . Now that, after all, is a batting average of .830. And any baseball fan will tell you, that's pretty good going in any league." He recalled some of the hits: St. Lawrence Seaway, tax reform bill, the new farm bill. Later, the President said that he was disappointed with the speech; he had tried to do too much in 30 minutes. But at least the speech was over. His shoulders sagged with relief the moment he went off the air.

Putters & Fly Rods. Then Ike began to relax. In the mornings at his temporary office at Lowry Air Force Base, he signed congressional bills at a furious clip (292 last week). He usually managed to get away from the office before noon and hurry to Cherry Hills Country Club for a quick lunch, a round of golf and a rub ber of bridge. As the President settled down to the Denver routine, his golf score dropped from the 90s to the 80s.

At the end of the week Ike left Denver for some fly-fishing in the north branch of the South Platte river near Pine, Colo. As he fished, 50 men, women and children gathered on a highway near the stream to watch him. The onlookers offered advice and encouragement, and Ike goodnaturedly bantered with them. On his first strike he lost both fish and fly. When the President brought a trout to net, an onlooker called: "Yeah, Ike." The stream, specially stocked with 500 Ibs. of trout by Ike's host, Bal Swan, provided fast action for the rest of the day. White House correspondents couldn't keep perfect tab on the President's catch because part of the time he was screened by boulders, bushes and trees. Next day the New York Times infuriated Press Secretary Jim Hagerty by saying that Ike had caught more than the legal limit of ten trout. More important than the number of fish was the fact that every time Ike's fly line tightened to a strike his taught nerves loosened a little more.

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