THE CAMPAIGN: Ike’s Promise

For late September, the day was warm; a stiff breeze whipped the flags atop the big tents and sent dust tides eddying and whirling among them. From the speaker’s platform, a sea of humanity stretched away to the rim of the shallow natural basin, where the crowd had gathered. Here, on rolling land near Newton, Iowa, some 80,000 American farmers and townsmen, their wives, kids and relatives assembled last week for the granddaddy of all harvest fairs: the National Field Days, better known as the National Plowing Contest. Now they were giving their attention to their honorary chairman—President Dwight Eisenhower.

Hard as they might find it to believe in a campaign year, said Ike, he had not come to Iowa to make a political speech but to visit again the Great Plains of his boyhood, “this great central granary of the United States.” Rambling on with appropriate corniness, the President harked back to the “peace” theme of the television speech he had made earlier in the week (see below). The plow, he told his overalled, khakied and cottoned audience, is man’s “symbol of peace”; in “that wonderful future time when there shall be no war,” swords shall be beaten into plowshares. Farm families consequently “feel closer to peace, feel closer to the need for peace” than any other group.

Holding to his no-politics promise, Ike touched upon the farm problem only long enough to say that he would discuss it in detail (at Peoria this week). He guessed that “many of you here will not agree with me. Some of you, frankly, will probably think I am a little bit crazy. But I am quite sure that none of you will think I am not honest.” The crowd applauded, and Ike went on to suggest how the nation might “find the right answers” to its problems great and small—by approaching them “as Americans and in the spirit of give-and-take.”

The Personal Touch. While the Newton visit gave Ike his best chance to rub shoulders with farm voters, thousands of other lowans got a closehand look at the President during the 24 hours he spent in the state. From Des Moines, where they had flown from Washington Thursday afternoon, Ike and Mamie drove to Boone—Mamie’s birthplace—in a bubble-top Lincoln. Ike stood throughout much of the 65 miles, waving to the crowds gathered in the little towns and at the crossroads, flashing his familiar grin, shouting greetings. At Boone, the Eisenhowers spent a quiet evening with Mamie’s uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Joel Carlson, then set forth for Newton. In such towns as Ames (where Ike chuckled at members of one Iowa State College fraternity standing at attention with golf clubs at shoulder arms), Huxley, Mitchellville and Lone Tree Junction, the streets were lined with friendly farm-belters.

But the high point of the trip came when the presidential party rolled back into Des Moines for the return flight to Washington. Jamming city streets from the State Capitol to the downtown district, more than 100,000 lowans gave Ike and Mamie a tumultuous, confetti-throwing welcome, the likes of which Des Moines oldtimers had never seen before.

“Get Behind It & Shove.” At the airport, Ike paused long enough to chat, again informally, with a group of Iowa Republican leaders and workers, all obviously buoyed by the results of his visit. He could not stand being “nonpolitical” any longer, he told them, adding high praise and re-election plugs for Governor Leo A. Hoegh and Senator Bourke Hickenlooper.

Then, before leaving the field to Rival Adlai Stevenson (see below), Ike defined for his audience his idea of what the G.O.P. should be. It should be “committed to no group,” yield to “no particular pressure,” have as its sole motive the welfare of 168 million Americans. If a measure is good for all Americans, advised Ike, “get behind it and shove.” If it is not, “don’t let them sell it to you, no matter how attractive it looks for votes or anything else.”