THE PRESIDENCY: On the Firing Line

“The President,” argues one White House staffer, “is the biggest gun we’ve got.” Last week, amid mounting evidence of Democratic campaign achievement, Dwight Eisenhower wheeled dramatically onto the political firing line on behalf of his own candidate, Richard Nixon. In a nationally telecast speech before 1,800 G.O.P. faithful in Philadelphia, an indignant Ike struck coldly back at John Kennedy’s “amazing irresponsibility” and “unwarranted disparagement of our moral, military and economic power.” It was, by far, his most forceful political speech of the past four years.

Never once mentioning Kennedy by name, the President spelled out the accomplishments of eight years of a “happy and fruitful partnership,” concluded his summation of the record with a cheerdrawing line:

“In glib political oratory we have heard this progress called standing still. If the great things you have done are ‘standing still,’ then I say America needs more of it.” Ike’s best crack, by far, was a stinging jab at Kennedy’s repeated references to a drop in U.S. prestige: “My friends, anyone who seeks to grasp the reins of world leadership should not spend all his time wringing his hands.”

“Best Qualified.” Eisenhower forcefully praised the “superlative team” of Nixon and Lodge, argued that Nixon has the four qualities America should look for in its candidates: character, ability, responsibility, experience.

“By all odds,” he said, “Richard Nixon is the best-qualified man to be the next President of the United States.”

To Republican leaders, the President’s speech was gladdening evidence that he had not lost his old campaigner’s touch, and a good omen for the political talks still to come. Ike had carefully prepared for its impact. On a cross-country “nonpolitical” tour for the past fortnight (TIME, Oct. 31), Ike generally confined his formal endorsements of the NixonLodge ticket to small gatherings of G.O.P. brass. In public he spoke instead on such broad national goals as fiscal soundness and the continuing struggle for world peace—but left no doubt as to who should score the goals. The trip was aimed at the wavering and undecided voter—there are more of them in this election than ever before, Ike believes—who might be swayed by Ike’s personal prestige to vote Republican once more.

The President’s first stop of the week was carefully calculated to woo a political minority with whom Dick Nixon so far strikes few responsive chords: the big Mexican-American communities of Texas and California. At Del Rio, Texas, the President crossed the Rio Grande to pay a farewell call on his good friend, Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos. Despite a steady drizzle, thousands jammed the plaza of Ciudad Acuña to hear Eisenhower proclaim the indestructible friendship of the two neighbors.

“Domestic Imperatives.” Then Ike took on Texas and Virginia, both pro-Eisenhower and leaning strongly to Nixon. In Houston, a roaring crowd of 300,000 greeted him on a seven-mile motorcade through the city; 8,000 more jammed into Rice University’s field house for a summation of the President’s financial views and hopes. Ike’s three “domestic imperatives” for future Presidents: public programs “must be guided by long-term and easily recognizable goals”; “national solvency [is essential] to national security”; only a true balance of federal-local authority can assure “continuance of the widespread liberties our citizenry has enjoyed.”

Problems of the political future were still very much on Ike’s mind when he landed in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. There his host was conservative Demo cratic Senator Harry Byrd, who has stubbornly refused to endorse his party’s ticket, and all but urged his supporters to vote for Nixon and Lodge. With Byrd by his side, the President looked in on the drab little home at Mount Sidney where his mother was born, attended the annual luncheon of the Woodrow Wilson Birth place Foundation in nearby Staunton. (Notably absent was President Wilson’s widow, a Kennedy supporter.) At the town’s Mary Baldwin College for women, Ike utilized his eulogy of Wilson to suggest that the nation once more “must choose between the conflicting teachings of political expediency on the one hand and the pursuit of noble, long-term goals on the other.”

In the long campaign’s final week, Dwight Eisenhower will make at least three more political broadcasts and ride in a motorcade with Nixon and Lodge through Manhattan. Only Election Day would tell whether his strong intervention in the campaign had come too late or whether, having been planned that way, it might prove to be decisive.