The Valet's View

Any official preparing drafts of presidential pronouncements may well know the mind of the Chief Executive better than any member of his Cabinet, for the dialogue between the two is boundless. But the weight of the aide's role is easily exaggerated . . . All that Dwight Eisenhower chose to "wear" in public belonged to him, not to any valet or tailor of his language. And in this spirit I shall so report it.

And so he does.

No man, perhaps, is a hero to his valet. But in The Ordeal of Power, Journalist Emmet John Hughes uses his experiences as an Eisenhower speechwriter to strip not only Ike but almost everyone around him as well.

Hughes, 42, is a former TIME-LIFE correspondent, was political adviser to New York's Nelson Rockefeller from March 1960 to last January, is now a columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post. In his own politics, he says, he shares "the views and spirit of the Christian Democratic Left in Western Europe," and if he had ever voted in a national election before 1952, he would have voted for Democratic presidential candidates.

Down in the Diary. Yet, seven weeks before the 1952 election, Hughes became a speechwriter for Republican Eisenhower. Why, believing as he did, did he take the job? Hughes's reason is circuitous: "I believed the essential vigor of the nation's two-party system to stand in clear and present danger . . . In 1952, for the life of the two-party system, it was 'time for a change.' But I thought this change essential--paradoxically--less by reason of the faults so loudly imputed to Democrats, too long in power, than by reason of the political follies so willfully practiced by Republicans, too long in exile."

After Eisenhower's election, Hughes stayed on for ten months as a speech-writing presidential aide. As such, he had privileges given to few valets. He sat in on Cabinet meetings and other high Government councils, had long, earnest conversations with Ike and his colleagues. For them, these were unguarded moments --they could hardly know that Hughes was writing down everything that they said and did in his diary.

From the beginning, Hughes obviously felt himself surrounded by lesser men. Indeed, his disenchantment set in even before Eisenhower's inauguration, when the President-elect and some of his Cabinet choices cruised for three days on the U.S.S. Helena. Writes Hughes: "Attentively attending almost all the discussions of those three days, I found in them a somewhat dismaying contrast between their actual substance and their public appearance. To the world's news agencies, flashing their crisp reports across the globe, these meetings constituted 'the epic mid-Pacific conference' . . . And in succeeding years, there were widespread rumors and reports of the portentous 'strategic decisions' supposedly made aboard the Helena. There were, in fact, no such decisions. Nor did anyone present delude himself on the matter."

Hughes was particularly unimpressed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: "Whether expanding at philosophic length upon his estimate of the Communist challenge, or responding at legalistic length to a specific question of policy, Dulles apparently made one consistent impact upon Eisenhower: he bored him . . . From the 'epic' of these mid-Pacific meetings, I therefore returned with one impression that seemed, for the future, more important than all the others. This was the serious expectation that, in the great labor of redirecting American foreign policy, the partnership of Eisenhower and Dulles would surely break, most probably within a year or two. It was a memorably erroneous conclusion."

A Pair of Parentheses. As Hughes watched, listened, thought and jotted down notes during his White House months, he found only one among top Eisenhower colleagues who could command his continuing respect. Writes he of White House Staff Chief Sherman Adams: "The unselfish sense of service of a Sherman Adams offered a contrast, sharp as silent mockery, to the self-preoccupation of a John Foster Dulles."

But Interior Secretary Douglas McKay and Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks "paired off like parentheses--ready to close in upon words or views with any too dangerously 'liberal' ring." Treasury Secretary George Humphrey's "formulations of serious conclusions remained so bromidic ('In business, it is results that count') that his wife collected them, in memory, as fondly as photographs for a family album." Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson "personified, occasionally almost to the point of caricature, a classic type of corporation executive: basically apolitical and certainly unphilosophic, aggressive in action and direct in speech--the undoubting and uncomplicated pragmatist who inhabits a world of sleek, shining certitudes."

Then, too, there was that dreadful fellow, Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon was a "politician"--but not on Hughes's terms. For Hughes considers "the art of politics" to be "the subtle and sensitive attuning and disciplining of all words and deeds--not to mend the petty conflict of the moment, nor to close some tiny gap in the discourse of the day--but to define and to advance designs and policies for a thousand tomorrows." That's a pretty tough standard to live up to, and in Hughes's view, Nixon failed. Hughes quotes Ike as telling him in confidence: "I've watched Dick for a long time, and he just hasn't grown. So I just haven't honestly been able to believe that he is presidential timber." Hughes's own summation of Nixon: "He was always the pupil who 'heard the music but yet missed the tune.' He was the host obsessed with the setting of his table--but with no taste for food."

The Simpleton. But the real villain, the one to whom Hughes keeps returning again and again, with merciless hostility, was Dulles. Hughes disagreed deeply with Eisenhower's State Secretary. Hughes was, and is, the advocate of the master thrust in world politics, the grand scheme that can achieve the massive breakthrough to peace. After Stalin's death, Hughes was an all-out pleader for negotiating at the summit with Khrushchev, while Dulles, who had the responsibility of office, was reluctant. Hughes, therefore, derided Dulles' brinkmanship on the one hand and his caution on the other.

Ike apparently spoke with a great deal of candor to Hughes about Dulles. Once, according to Hughes, he remarked: "Sometimes Foster is just too worried about being accused of sounding like Truman or Acheson." Dulles, who obviously did not know quite how Hughes really felt about him, also spoke unreservedly, once saying: "Standing away from my job, I guess I don't think the chances of war are more than one in four. But in my job, I've got to act as if they were fifty-fifty." Comments Hughes: "From almost any other Secretary of State, these words would imply little more than the sensible appreciation of world life. From Dulles, however, they carried an inflection subtly suggestive of a disconcerting readiness to invoke martial power to prove a diplomatic point."

Hughes came to conclude that Dulles was a sort of simpleton: "A personality initially suggesting great complexity grew to appear, with time, increasingly simple." Hughes was therefore astonished as well as angered that Dulles' policies continued to prevail and that he stayed in office.

Back with the Team. Instead, it was Hughes who left. He resigned near the end of 1953 "to return gladly to journalism," spent much of the next two years abroad, "thoughtfully" watching and grieving at the course of international events. But Speechwriter Hughes returned to the Eisenhower team in 1956--and his reason was even more labyrinthine than before. In August of that year, he says, he paid "a courtesy call upon the President." He had had no intention of returning to work for Ike. But he was "seriously swayed by the counsel of some astute and conscientious Democratic friends." These friends feared that the Republican Administration, almost certain to be returned to office, might even begin "boasting of its fancied attainment of world peace," which "might not only leave the governments of other free nations aghast at such unrealism; it might also leave the embattled Administration believing, at least a little, its own domestic propaganda." As a check against this, Hughes's "Democratic friends earnestly urged me to return to work with the President for the duration of the campaign."

Thus, when Hughes visited with Ike that August and the President said that he might be needing "a little help and advice." Hughes was ready. Writes he: "I had no need to answer the offhand remark. But I knew that the request would explicitly come. And I knew that, with deep but silent reservations, I would respond."

Hughes came, wrote speeches, made notes in his diary of confidential conversations, and left. He saw Ike only a couple of more times--although he fired off several letters offering the President advice about how to run the world. At the beginning, Hughes says he had respected Ike: "Toward such a man. all kinds of dissent or doubt could conceivably be directed--except personal disrespect."

The Last Word. Hughes offers some wonderful flashes of Eisenhower. Ike waiting impatiently for Adlai Stevenson's concession of defeat on Election Night 1952: "What in God's name is the matter with that monkey." Ike fretting about riding to his inauguration with outgoing President Harry Truman: "I wonder if I can stand sitting next to him." Ike offering a definition of leadership: "You do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault.' not 'leadership.' I'll tell you what leadership is: it's persuasion --and conciliation--and education--and patience. It's long. slow, tough work. That's the only kind of leadership I know --or believe in--or will practice."

But so disgruntled is ex-Employee Hughes that, in his summing up of the Eisenhower Administration, he invokes a unanimity that excludes scores of millions of Americans: "By almost equally unanimous consensus of the national community of intellectuals and critics--journalists and academicians, pundits and prophets--his conduct of the presidency was unskillful and his definition of it inaccurate."

For his own last words about Eisenhower, Hughes quotes Winston Churchill: "The only guide to a man is his conscience: the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so mocked by the failure of our hopes; but with this shield, however the Fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor." Says Hughes: "I know that President Dwight David Eisenhower always believed this. And I believe he will be so remembered."

Churchill, as Hughes acknowledges, was not talking about Eisenhower. It was his eulogy of Neville Chamberlain.

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