Exit Charlie, Grinning

Of all the big businessmen recruited by Dwight Eisenhower for his first Administration, the biggest was Charles Erwin Wilson, president of General Motors Corp. When blunt, chain-smoking "Engine Charlie" was named Secretary of Defense, he promised to give the job "the darnedest whirl it ever had." This week, as he heads into retirement, Charlie Wilson, 67, can look back on quite a whirl.

The spinning started even before the Senate confirmed him. Clashing head-on with conflict-of-interest laws ("If I had come here to cheat, by God, I wouldn't be here"), Engine Charlie battled the Senate Armed Services Committee for ten days before agreeing to sell his General Motors stock (39,470 shares then worth $2,500,000; current market value: $4,500,000). It was from word leaked out of the secret Senate confirmation hearings that Wilson reaped headlines and outraged diatribes for one of the most famous remarks never made: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." What Wilson really said was something quite different: "For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."

Dog-Bitten. Such excitement was merely the beginning. In the midst of the nip-and-tuck 1954 congressional campaign, Wilson remarked in Detroit, referring to laid-off auto workers: "I've always liked bird dogs better than kennel-fed dogs myself--you know, the one that will get out and hunt for his food rather than sit on his fanny and yell." This sent Democratic columnists, cartoonists, and labor leaders into paroxysms of protest. He addressd august congressional committeemen as "you men," dismissed a Capitol Hill boost in Air Force funds as "a phony." He called the Pentagon a "five-sided doghouse," upset the military convention of equating rank with intelligence by remarking: "I haven't noticed it made a man any smarter to put another star on his shoulder." Asked what was said at a conference with the President, Wilson nodded toward the White House and said: "This is not my dunghill. Anything to be announced, somebody else ought to announce."

Wilson's freewheeling comments brought him plenty of drubbings from Congress and the press, but through the bitter days he kept his own sense of humor intact. "The price of progress is trouble," he once remarked, "--and I must be making lots of progress." The turning point probably came after Ike himself reproved Wilson for saying that the National Guard was a hideout for draft-dodgers during the Korean war. Wilson's wife Jessie promptly cracked right back at the President. She was "indignant" she said. "I think the President should have stood back of Mr. Wilson instead of spending his time commenting on how wonderful Foster Dulles has been." Charlie Wilson, said his wife, was "a blunt man; he speaks what he thinks, and most of the time what he thinks is true." While cheering dauntless

Jessie, Washington suddenly realized that it had become quite fond of her Charlie.

Orchid-Bedecked. Last week as Charlie Wilson said his goodbyes, Washington realized something else: it was saying goodbye to a distinguished Defense Secretary. President Eisenhower wrote a warm "Dear Charlie" letter, took time out from the Little Rock crisis to show up briefly at a black-tie dinner given in Wilson's honor by Secretary Dulles. The three service Secretaries and Chiefs of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps stood up beside Charlie at Fort Myer as jet bombers and fighters roared by in an honorary flyover. And--perhaps in the most meaningful salute of all--newsmen jammed his final press conference, rose and applauded when Charlie walked in with an orchid-bedecked" Jessie on his arm.

In his blunt talk about defense cuts Charlie made it clear that he knew that in his final months he had let military spending (see below) get away from him, made it equally clear that he would characteristically try to repair the damage right down to his last minute in the Pentagon. Inevitably, during the nostalgic levity, the immortal "good for General Motors" misquotation came up again, and once more Wilson explained what it was he really had said. Then, grinning broadly, he added: "I have never been too embarrassed over the thing, stated either way." The newsmen laughed--this time with Charlie, not at him.

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