National Affairs: How’s That?

Your lips tell me no, no,

But there’s yes, yes in your eyes.

No man could say that General Ike Eisenhower had so much as cleared his throat to help the Eisenhower-for-President boom. But there was a sparkle in his eye.

Last week, in Washington, he held a press conference at the insistence of War Department reporters. In his big, deep-carpeted office, Ike blandly assumed that they wanted to hear about his recent Army inspection trip, and began talking.

He was soon stopped. A newsman asked for comment on an Eisenhower-for-President club which had recently sprung up in the capital, complete with secretaries and literature. Replied Ike, with some heat: “I deplore these activities. I earnestly think it is a mistaken idea.”

No Conniving. Did he know that Roy Roberts, the supercharged managing editor of the Kansas City Star, had predicted that Eisenhower would bow to an honest draft?

“Someone,” said the General, “showed me that article. It also said that a draft without conniving in advance was an impossibility in this country. Now I assure you I am not going to give any authority for conniving.” Then he added thoughtfully: “I have friends in all political parties.”

But when he was bluntly asked if he would run if nominated, the General literally left his listeners up in the air. “That is an impossible question,” he said. “If I asked you what you would do if you were flying to the moon, and halfway up you met a friend who was flying to the moon, and he asked you what you were doing there—why you’d say that was all impossible. It would be useless to answer the question.”

Just Call Me Ike. Later in the week, the General repeated his denials in Manhattan. He had gone there to visit with Thomas J. Watson, spare, ascetic president of International Business Machines, and to acquaint himself with some of the problems he will face after Jan. 1, when he becomes president of Columbia University.

No politician could have bettered the General’s comment on his house-hunting problem: “Fundamentally,” he explained with that famous grin which makes his eyes twinkle, “I’m a farmer boy. I want a place out of town where I can raise a few tomatoes and beans and get close to the soil.” When he was asked whether he would be addressed as “President” or “General” after he assumed his duties at Columbia, he replied: “As long as I live, I shall answer most readily to the name of Ike.”

None of this could be used as evidence that he wanted to be President. But it was fascinatingly apparent that if he did want to be, he was saying just the things which a more professional politician should be saying, nine months before convention time.