On the Offensive

By last week any precampaign hopes that President Eisenhower could separate himself from Candidate Eisenhower dissolved in the crisp, electric, fall air. Under calculated and sustained personal attack from Adlai Stevenson (see below), Ike last week used the forum of his press conference for jab after jab at his Democratic opponent. Then, within 24 hours, he delivered two roundhouse punches: the White House released two documents berating Stevenson for his stand on H-bomb testing and the draft (see box).

Carefully, Eisenhower summed up for newsmen his ideas on a variety of election-year questions--including his reasons, as a reporter put it, for deciding "to begin attacking the Democrats." The answer was simple. As always, his purpose was to state "the truth as I know it, the facts as I know them." Some people, however, occasionally distort the truth. In such cases, although he didn't personally enjoy it, it becomes "necessary to clear away this underbrush of misunderstanding."

Bull by the Horns. For 26 minutes the President belted away. Would he care to comment on Stevenson's claims that the G.O.P. is attempting to seize partisan credit for civil-rights progress--for example, in the armed forces? Ike would and did. Frequently using the pronoun "I," which he generally shuns, he spoke feelingly of his efforts to foster military desegregation during World War II. As far as he knew, Ike said, he was the first combat commander who ever incorporated Negroes into white units on the battlefield, and "they all got along together." Thus, when the Administration came to power in 1953, "it looked to us like it was time to take the bull by the horns, and eliminate it all, and that is what we have done." Ike's point, in line with his insistence on the facts and the truth: as a military commander he personally had put integration into effect even over the objection of some of his generals ("General Patton, who at first was very much against this, became the most rabid supporter of the idea"); then, as President, he had finished the job begun under the Truman Administration.

Why had he increased pace of his own campaign activity? "I like to go out and see people. I get awfully tired of just listening to reports." Had Vice President Nixon made any suggestions about places to go or subjects to cover? No. All that Nixon had told Ike was: "Don't let them work you to death." As for his doctors, far from placing any limitation on his campaigning, they "always tell me I can do more than I want to."

The Future by the Tail. There were frank replies to other ticklish questions. The chances for a tax cut in the next year, the President said, are not "bright" or "right around the corner." To a West German correspondent, who pointed out that the Bonn Cabinet was concerned about proposed reductions in U.S. troop strength, the President made painstaking answer. Declared he: all decreases in U.S. manpower are predicated on an increase in new machines and striking power. "Never have we said we are going to reduce the strength of the American Army."

The surprise came almost at the end. What, he was asked, did he think of the constitutional amendment (the 22nd) limiting the presidency to two terms? Ike's answer might well have raised the eyebrows of Old Guard Republicans who had pushed the amendment in angry memory of Franklin Roosevelt's four terms. The ban, said Ike, "was not wholly wise. . ." The people should choose their President, "regardless of the number of terms he has served."

Would the amendment tend to blunt Ike's leadership of the Republican Party if he is reelected? "I don't believe that a President's influence on his party is lowered too much. Certainly whoever is the aspirant at the end of two terms will want that President's support and ... his blessing. I do believe that the office, the power that goes with it, is such that his influence [i.e., of the outgoing President] with his own party will still be great." Ike was plainly speaking of himself; he not only believes his own promise to revitalize the Republican Party, but he has already thought through the problem of just how much influence he will have in pushing the Eisenhower line--plenty.

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