National Affairs: Just the Beginning

Just before 8 o’clock one morning last week, Ike Eisenhower drove up to a sleek DC-6B at Denver’s Stapleton Airport, to embark on his long-promised big drive for the presidency. At Ike’s insistence (“This is one thing I’m odd about”), the 20 members of his staff and 30 newsmen climbed aboard the plane first.* Then Ike swung through the door and the “Eisenhower Special” was off to Boise, Idaho.

In Boise, Ike lunched and conferred with the Republican governors of nine Western states. In late afternoon, he faced a record turnout of 19,000 of the city’s 35,000 citizens to define his “middle road” political philosophy. Said he: “As you go further & further to the right, there is less & less concern for the individual. As we pursue this policy to its extreme . . . a resentful people become so powerful in their distrust . . . that Government must use compulsion to force its will upon them and we have tyranny . . . To the left . . . the Government does more & more of the things that are to be done, as it takes your property and compels you to work on it . . . The great problem of America today is to take that straight road down the middle, the path of progress that will never allow tyranny to become the feature of American Government.”

Ike’s next stop was Kansas City, Kans., and the DC-6 arrived over Kansas City in the midst of a heavy rainstorm. For 75 minutes the plane circled. Then it made one hair-raising pass at the field and pulled up again. The final landing was a thriller. The pilot came down in thick rain through pitch blackness, hit the runway with engines roaring and bounced 50 feet into the air before settling back. It was 3 .a.m. before Ike got to bed in Kansas City’s Town House.

Next morning he was up for an 8:45 breakfast date. At 10 o’clock, he met some 400 Republicans—some friendly, some hostile—from seven Midwestern states for a prolonged question & answer session. Then he flew back to Denver long enough to help break camp. His personal campaign adviser, New Hampshire’s Governor Sherman Adams, set out for Washington to open Ike’s main headquarters near the Republican National Committee. Part of the staff took off for Manhattan with Ike for the Legion speech, and conferences with Eastern G.O.P. leaders.

When Ike landed in Manhattan, a reporter asked him how things were going. Replied the candidate spryly: “This is just the beginning . . .”

*One of Ike’s few throwbacks to his days of military rank. By military protocol the senior officer is always last to enter a plane, boat or automobile and the first to leave.