Nation: Ike on the Frontier

The Republicans do not have a present President to carry their campaign flag. But they do have a past President who ranks among history’s great crowd pleasers—and last week ex-President Eisen hower was wowing them around the land with his denunciations of “the new—farout—frontier.”

Ike made a triumphant entrance into San Francisco—where 120,000 Californians jammed the sidewalks of the Montgomery Street financial district to give him a roaring welcome. He was there to give Dick Nixon a boost in his campaign for Governor; if there was ever any doubt about Ike’s enthusiasm for his Vice President, none remained after he spoke at a Cow Palace banquet. “Several months ago in Denmark,” said Ike, “I observed that one of the biggest mistakes of my political career was not working harder for Dick Nixon in 1960. I urge all of you, and I urge all Californians, not to make the same mistake this year. Richard Nixon has served his country well. I have faith in the man. I endorse him 100%.”

Reasonable Facsimile. Ike took his successor in the White House bitingly to task for demanding that the nation give him more men of his own party in Congress. In Los Angeles, Eisenhower pointed out that during six of his eight years as President he faced a Congress controlled by the opposition—and despite that handicap had run up a “much better record and performance” than Jack Kennedy has with a 3-to-2 majority in the House and a nearly 2-to-1 edge over the Republicans in the Senate. “What does he want?” Ike demanded. “One-party government?”

In Boise, Idaho, he told a group of Republican candidates: “One of my biggest concerns is that government be run by wisdom instead of by callow youth.” Foreign crises like Korea, he said, were met “headon with firmness, and they were solved.” Guatemala was rescued from Communist domination. Wages, income and the gross national product went up; the rate of increase in the cost of living went down. “If this is not moving,” said Ike dryly, “it is a reasonable facsimile thereof.”

“Brassy Words.” In Denver, Eisenhower zeroed in on the New Frontiersmen with measured scorn. Said he: “For my part I am tired—terribly tired—of hearing America run down by them, of hearing their brassy and boastful words and watching their bumbling actions. The Washington record of these past 20 months presents a picture of political connivance instead of statesmanship, of selfish grabs for power instead of respect for our concepts of balance in government, of arrogant assertion of Washington infallibility instead of readiness to trust in the wisdom of the American people.”

Ike was plainly pleased by his campaigning. On his way back East, he stopped off in Omaha to pay tribute to Fred Seaton, Secretary of the Interior in his Cabinet and now candidate for Governor of Nebraska in an increasingly close race with Democratic Incumbent Frank Morrison. What Kennedy needs in Congress, said Ike. is “a darned good influx of Republicans.” What Nebraska needs, he added, is Fred Seaton as Governor—”the kind of Governor who will repel this assault on the rights of state and local government.”

Last stop was Minneapolis, and there Dwight Eisenhower summed it up. “I have been on the hustings for one purpose only,” he told 5,000 Minnesotans. “That is to try to tell people: take back your faith in yourselves. Don’t let any one man make your decisions.”