THE PRESIDENCY: Careful, There

The President, a sentimental man, enjoyed the holidays. He ate turkey, went out on the front porch of the “little White House” at Independence, Mo. to greet the carolers, bought his 93-year-old mother “the usual sort of thing a fellow buys.” He granted full pardons to all the several thousand ex-convicts who served honorably in World War II’s Army and Navy. Once he had the rare luxury of sleeping late—for him: until 8:30 a.m.

But there were still a few citizens wondering whether his journey had been sentimental or just plain foolhardy.

When the presidential Sacred Cow took off from Washington National Airport, through cold rain and slush, all commercial airplanes had been grounded for three hours, and would be for ten hours more. The Sacred Cow flew in & out of a pea-soup overcast, ran into violent headwinds and icing. It arrived in Kansas City an hour and 19 minutes overdue. Even the President conceded that, while he had seen rougher trips, he had not seen many.*

Editorialists were in a dilemma; they did not want to argue that the President was indispensable, but they thought he should be taken to task. Said the New York Herald Tribune: “He gave many of his countrymen a slightly nervous afternoon. . . . While we all like and admire high officials who do not think that their own necks are the most important things in the world, the hard fact remains that those necks very often are.”

Up spoke Lieut. Colonel Henry T. Myers of the Air Transport Command, pilot of the Sacred Cow and final judge of when she can venture out. Pointing out that the presidential C-54 has greater power, range and operating ceiling than ordinary commercial airliners, Colonel Myers said the flight was “routine,” that he was amazed at the adverse comment. But the critics, knowing that some pilots would gladly try flying the Hump in a blizzard just for the hell of it, were not silenced.

*For news of the plane that followed his, see PRESS.