A Time for Testing

At 8 o'clock on a miserable, sleeting Washington morning last week, a telephone alert went out through the White House. Presidential Secretary Ann Whitman glanced around her desk to make certain everything was ready; ushers and doormen snapped to attention. Down in an elevator from his living quarters, out through a rear door and across the Rose Garden to his office in the west wing came Dwight Eisenhower. The President of the U.S. was working back into a full-time schedule--and hardly had he sat down at his desk than the babble of speculation about his political intentions grew even louder.

For the President, it was clearly a time of testing, as much a part of his medically prescribed regimen as his four weeks of bed rest and his three months of gradual convalescence. He was on a six-hour daily work schedule, with two hours off for lunch and midday rest. Into his office throughout the week paraded a succession of important callers: Secretary of State Dulles (twice alone and once with others), Attorney General Brownell (to discuss the President's upcoming message on changes in immigration laws), Economic Advisers Arthur Burns and Gabriel Hauge, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss and National Security Aide Dillon Anderson (to talk about getting the President's atoms-for-peace program back on the international track), Defense Mobilization Chief Arthur Flemming, Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson and Republican congressional leaders (for an 80-minute conference in which the President urged high priority for his farm-policy recommendations).

"Excellent Condition." There was satisfying evidence of work done. The President appointed an eight-man watchdog committee, headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology President James R. Killian Jr., to examine and report on the work of the U.S. intelligence agencies. He sent to Congress a message proposing a fiveyear, $2 billion federal aid program for public-school construction. He asked Congress to appropriate $60 million for flood relief. He accepted the resignation of Treasury Under Secretary H. Chapman Rose, who is returning to his Cleveland law practice. He welcomed back Aide Bernard Shanley, who had left the White House staff briefly during the President's illness. Shanley's main duties are to hold down the number of presidential visitors to reasonable proportions and to devise ways of easing the President's workload; e.g., when Ike last week signed documents appointing 155 persons to public office, the lists were consolidated so as to reduce the number of necessary signatures to ten. All in all it was a well-spent week, and the New York Times said happily of the President: "He is giving us the leadership. There is nothing in the messages we have had, nothing in the immediate news from Washington since Mr. Eisenhower returned from Key West, to suggest that we are being governed by a coronary occlusion."

At midweek, in his upstairs study in the White House, President Eisenhower underwent his first cardiographic and blood-analysis tests in a month. Press Secretary James Hagerty reported that the doctors had found that the President's "condition is excellent, and he benefited greatly from the exercise and relaxation" at Key West.

"We Owe It . . ." Since Ike's return to work came against the fascinating political backdrop of his Key West news conference (TIME, Jan. 16), it was only natural that there should be a freshening tide of interest in his political plans. This began, inevitably, on the floors of Congress. New York's Republican Representative W. Sterling ("Stub") Cole, one of the staunchest Ikemen on Capitol Hill, handed Republican Leader Joe Martin a four-page speech and asked Martin to have it inserted in the Congressional Record. Martin did so without reading Cole's remarks. If he had looked at them, he would certainly have hesitated, for Stub Cole was saying what Republicans like to hear least: that four more years in office might very well kill Dwight Eisenhower. Said Cole: "As a partisan, it would serve the short-term interest of my party to have our , great leader once again at the head of the ticket. But as a Republican, it would be to substitute expediency for right, politics for principle. We owe it to Dwight Eisenhower, we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our country so to comport ourselves in compassion and understanding that in fulfillment of his highest duty he may relinquish with honor the heavy burdens of his office."

Republican leaders were still trying to figure out an answer to Cole when attention was distracted by some sneering remarks made by Oklahoma's Democratic Senator Robert Kerr in a newsletter to constituents. Wrote Kerr, referring to the fact that the President's State of the Union message had been read for him: "The fact that he was physically unable to deliver it in person is evidence that it was either much too long or that those so urgently pushing him . . . should take warning lest they put too great a burden on his physical reserve. However, these Republicans are so alarmed about their own low political reserve they plan to bring Ike to the G.O.P. Convention [in San Francisco] even if he has to stay in Letterman General Hospital, which reportedly is preparing a suite for him." Republicans said the hospital had received no such request, and they loudly cried foul at Kerr.

Assent or Dissent? Meanwhile, the relentless timetable of an election year moved on, and it had a direct bearing on Ike and Republicans.

New Hampshire's Governor Lane Dwinell entered his name in his state's March 13 primary as a delegate favorable to Eisenhower, said he would put Ike in the New Hampshire popularity poll (which is separate from the delegate contest), and that he looked for White House sanction for the move. But before Dwinell could get around to it, a car dealer named Maurice Grant rushed in and entered Eisenhower in the popularity poll. Informed of the New Hampshire developments, Press

Secretary Hagerty commented, "I would suspect that when . . . notification arrives from the secretary of state of New Hampshire . . . that notification will be answered by the President."

Illinois' Governor William Stratton said he would enter Eisenhower's name in his state's April 10 primary. Hagerty reported that "under the Illinois law, there is nothing the President needs to do. Consequently, there will be no official statement from here signifying either assent or dissent. I want to make it clear, however, that lack of any assent or dissent cannot be taken to mean that the President has yet made any ultimate decision."

Minnesota Republican leaders said they would place the President's name in their March 20 primary, claimed to have assurances that it would not be withdrawn (under Minnesota law, the name would stay on the ballot unless the President specifically asked that it be removed).

President Eisenhower seemed unbothered by these mounting pressures. He stuck to his desk and his schedule, still testing his heart, his body and stamina before making a final decision about running again. At workweek's end, he went to his studio on the second floor of the White House, faced his easel and painted under a north light. It seemed that at least Dwight Eisenhower was relaxed--even if nobody else was.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.