Confident Campaigner

As the political campaign rolled to its climax, the President of the U.S. was a calm and confident candidate. Wherever his plane or train had carried him across the land, Ike, had found full crowds, enthusiastic faces. Wherever Democrats had raised an issue to badger him, he met it quietly, succeeded (so his supporters thought) in turning it to his own advantage. Less and less White House aides discussed the presidential race, more and more they made optimistic estimates about the number of G.O.P. Congressmen who would ride in on Ike's coattails. Last week, to spread those coattails even wider, the President again hit the campaign trail he has come to enjoy.

The week began with a visit to an uncommitted element of U.S. labor, banqueting in the same Sheraton-Park Hotel ballroom where he had appeared at a press photographers' dinner on June 9, less than two hours before he woke up with a world-shaking "bellyache" (TIME, June 18). His hosts last week: The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, celebrating with formal dress and caviar its 75th anniversary. Sharp in a tartan cummerbund presented him by the Black Watch, famed British Highland regiment, the guest of honor disposed of steak, enjoyed the Hollywood-flavored floor show, then delivered a low-keyed address saluting American trade unionists as "the living proof that Marx was wrong."

"Built-in Maid Service." Next day Ike and Mamie motored across Washington to the CBS television studios, there sat down in a living room set to chat about campaign issues with seven ladies chosen by G.O.P. Assistant Chairman Bertha Adkins. The special show had been geared for women voters; nudging The Big Payoff from its daily spot, Ike and his questioners aimed at women across the nation. The questions were routine--what about the draft, the cost of living, the chance of another depression? But Ike caught the spirit of the occasion, with easy grace enjoyed a 29-minute parlor chat, gave the ladies some succinct answers for housewives to ponder; e.g., "All of the economic factors . . . point toward a continuation of good times." And though the cost of living had edged up in 3 1/2 years, "you ladies are buying a lot of built-in maid service with your [prepared and frozen] food these days." Sparkle-eyed at program's conclusion, the ladies clustered around for autographs. Sighed Mrs. Violet Byg of Sioux Falls, S. Dak.: "I'm speechless. My children are so proud."

One day later Ike took the train to New York for short motorcades through Manhattan and a triumphant evening appearance (20,000 inside, 10,000 outside) in Madison Square Garden, two days after Adlai Stevenson. Neat in blue worsted suit, Ike marched into the Garden to an ear-shattering welcome touched off less by the mawkish maneuvers of such professional crowd churners as Walter Winchell and Fred Waring than by the President's own grin and greeting. Ike plugged heartily for Republican Senatorial Candidates Jacob Javits of New York and Prescott Bush of Connecticut, then proudly reviewed G.O.P. accomplishmients during the last "four years of memorable meaning" and his expectations for the next four.

Turning to deal with the Democrats, he needled Stevenson for the abortive charge that the Eisenhower Administration had underwritten Argentina's Dictator Juan Peron (TIME, Oct. 8). "For it was their Administration that had made these loans. Now they have fled from the scene in headlong silence ... to bury this issue, no doubt, somewhere far, far down the high, high road." The Democrats "urge a vigorous and realistic policy towards the Communist empire, and they suggest that we begin ... by trusting our national safety to agreements that have no effective safeguards and no controls. They urge a bold American defense of freedom, and they urge us to try achieving this by starting to plan an end to our military draft . . . There is no political campaign that justifies the declaration of a moratorium on common sense."

Dispatched Heckler. Returning to Washington, Ike next day headed a National Security Council meeting, prepared campaign treks: a one-day sortie into Virginia and Florida, another to Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the White House neatly dispatched a heckler. Columnist Drew Pearson's report that Ike had suffered a relapse in Minneapolis during his swing last fortnight (see PRESS) was categorically denied by Press Secretary James Hagerty, and later by scores of Minneapolis officials and police guards who shook hands with Ike just before his departure. At week's end the President entered Walter Reed Hospital for his long-promised, long-scheduled physical checkup. Smiling broadly, he left Walter Reed 26 hours later, said he felt "fine, fine."* Reported Major General Howard Snyder, the President's physician: "Everything came out just as well as could be expected."

* Ike's doctors agreed. Their report: "The President has made an excellent recovery from the operation for acute intestinal obstruction due to an old 'burntout' ileitis . . . The heart is not enlarged . . . The size of the heart's shadow [is] unchanged in comparison with the films made during the past ten years . . . The electrocardiogram shows the same residual changes of a well-healed heart-muscle scar which have been present since recovery from the attack last year." Ike's weight, 163 when he checked out of Walter Reed last June, is now 172.

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