"The Thing I Should Try"

In the White House lobby one morning last week, a squad of newsmen latched on to Ike's personal physician, Major General Howard Snyder, with the No. 1 question in the public mind since the President underwent intestinal surgery on June 9: How is he doing? They knew that Dr. Snyder and two colleagues--Major General Leonard D. Heaton, who performed the operation, and Colonel Thomas W. Mattingly, the Walter Reed heart specialist--had just put their patient through a new physical examination. Summed up old (75) Doc Snyder: The President "is in fine shape." His electrocardiogram shows "no deterioration" of the heart. His weight is between 162 Ibs. and 163 Ibs., and "doing O.K." (but. said Snyder for the first time, the President's weight actually dropped to 157 3/4 Ibs. after the operation). In the fall campaign he "will be able to do as much as he would have without this [ileitis] attack."

Ninety minutes later, as Ike strode into the Indian Treaty Room of the old State Department Building for his first press conference in eight weeks, an overflow (311) crowd of reporters craned their heads to see for themselves. The President, dressed in a lightweight grey suit, looked more fleshed-out than during his Gettysburg convalescence, but still seemed thin.

Clinical Detachment. There was no pussyfooting about the questions--or Ike's replies. Almost every facet of his health was canvassed, including the question of when he expected to feel well enough to play golf again (early October&*), and reports that his ileitis had left him with a debilitating dysentery ("No, as a matter of fact, they warned me that I should have a little of that and I never did"). As for the possibility of a relapse, Ike cited his doctors' opinions that in older men the chances were small; of the four other known cases in people his age, there was no recurrence. On the basis of his progress until now, he had no doubt whatsoever of his ability to continue as President for another four years.

Ike's command of himself and his audience was forceful, sure, and accented by a remarkable candor. Only once did he hesitate--when recalling how he felt after his operation. "You must remember," he said, "I was in . . ." Then, rejecting the next, obvious word--pain--Eisenhower continued with combat-tested detachment: "I was having a pretty rough ride there for two or three days, [but] from that day on, I have improved every day." His insistence on candor took him farther. "Now," he observed wryly, "I feel good," but not as "well as I did a year ago at this time."

Question of Death. The moment of high drama came almost at the end. Even the correspondents sucked in their breath as the Chicago Daily News's William McGaffin raised an issue never before put to a President in public. Many of Ike's old friends in Gettysburg, said McGaffin, although anxious to return him to office, "feel you have done enough for the nation, and they are afraid that you won't last out; they are afraid you won't live for another four years."

The point, probing to Ike's deepest motives in seeking reelection, elicited an unhesitating and memorable response: "Well, sir, I would tell you frankly. I don't think it is too important to the individual how his end comes, and certainly he can't dictate the time. What we are talking about here is the importance to the country, and it happens that at this moment the Republican Party apparently thinks I am still important to them and to the country, and since I believe so much in the Republican Party, and I believe that it needed rebuilding so badly, an effort which I have been making, as you well know, I said I would continue to try. But this is a decision that the American people are going to have to face . . . I have made up my mind this is the thing I should try, and we will see what the American people have to say about it."

Last week the President also: P: Approved, with an exultant statement, the Administration-backed customs-simplification bill passed by Congress in its final week. The new law, said the President, marks the achievement of all the principal recommendations for customs overhauling made in 1954 by the Commission on Foreign Economic Policy chaired by Steelman Clarence Randall. P: Approved a $2.1 billion military-construction bill vetoed in an earlier form because he thought that Congress had overstepped by requiring the Defense Department to check back with Congress on certain missiles and housing programs. On the second go-around, Congress dropped its most objectionable demand: control over the Talos missiles program. P:Conferred, for about 40 minutes, with Australia's square-rigged Prime Minister Robert G. Menzies, on his way home from the British Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference.

* At week's end he jumped the gun by going four holes at Burning Tree Country Club with his son, Major John Eisenhower, was later reported by Assistant Press Aide Murray Snyder to have "felt fine."

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