THE PRESIDENCY: Busy

For the first time in ten weeks, Dwight Eisenhower met the Washington press corps once again last week. The President opened his jampacked press conference with the observation that he didn’t suppose there was any more important news than the World Series. Then, with the news-hungry correspondents pitching the questions, the President proceeded to slam out a dozen headlines.

Measured in terms of laughter and anger, the conference was as lively as anything since the testiest press go-rounds of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. There was a roar of good, natural laughter when the President expressed the modest certainty that the State Department would not ignore the suggestions of his brother Milton, after his five-week goodwill trip through Latin America. There was reportorial anger over the news leak on the Warren appointment (see PRESS). And the President in turn was angered when a reporter asked for his version of ex-Secretary of Labor Martin Durkin’s contention that Eisenhower had agreed to 19 specific changes in the Taft-Hartley Act, and then run out on his word (TIME, Oct. 5). Said the President, jaw outthrust and eyes cold: he refused to speak of personalities publicly. To his knowledge, he had never broken an agreement with any associate in his life. If there was anyone there who had contrary evidence, he could have the floor and make his speech. In stony silence, the President waited for an unchallenged moment.

In his opening statement, the President produced enough front-page news items to make up for the ten-week intermissions between conferences. Items:

¶ The belated announcement of the appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States (see above).

¶ The assurance that the Government would not seek a federal retail sales tax. He did not rule out the possibility of a manufacturers’ excise tax, however, as a means to make Federal ends meet.

¶ The announcement that there would probably be no special session of Congress this fall. “The savings in expenditures…make it appear that no special session will be necessary [to raise the national debt limit],” said the President, “and that we will get through to January and still have something left.”

¶ A condemnation of the enforced retirement of Cardinal Wyszynski by the Polish Communists (see RELIGION).

In one of the busiest weeks since he took office, President Eisenhower also received President Remón of Panama (who brought Panamanian Indian costumes for the Eisenhower grandchildren), Crown Prince Olav of Norway, and Chiang Kai-shek’s eldest son, Lieut. General Chiang Ching-kuo (who presented him with a Formosan edition of his book, Crusade in Europe). He also got a 7 ft., 200-lb. pop-eyed halibut from Representative Thor Tollefson of Washington State. “Gee whiz,” said the President when he met the monster fish on a porch bordering the Rose Garden, “I’ve never seen such a big fish.”*

The week’s most famed visitor was Adlai Stevenson, who turned up for a conference with the President and a stag luncheon with 16 other top Administration officials. In two hours at the White House, Stevenson gave the President a report on his five-month tour of the world, and urged a nonaggression pact with Russia. The President, said Stevenson, was “very much interested” in his proposal, and assured him that “the Administration is examining closely [the proposed pact] as well as all other ways and means of relieving tension in Western Europe.”

At week’s end, Press Secretary Jim Hagerty gave White House reporters a statistical survey of the week’s work. The President, he disclosed, had struck an average of 8 a.m. for arriving at the office. He had kept 31 official appointments, attended six official meetings with committees and commission, greeted 341 visitors at the White House, spoken on seven public occasions, attended two state dinners, two official luncheons, and had posed for photographers 20 times, in addition to his routine duties. With such a crushing schedule, Ike was ready & willing, when Sunday came, for a day off.

* At her own press conference this week, Mamie Eisenhower revealed that she does not go fishing with Ike. “Not me,” the First Lady told the assembled newshens. “I’m the world’s best sitter.”