THE PRESIDENCY: Freezing Winds

Into Gettysburg last week clicked a New Year’s greeting from Russia’s Khrushchev, Bulganin and Voroshilov (“We express the hope that the forthcoming year will be a year… when the great principles of peaceful coexistence…will become the basis of mutual relations between our states””) that turned out to be one of the week’s cheerier messages to Dwight Eisenhower. At home, retired Defense Chief Charlie Wilson declared to New York Herald Tribune Washington Bureau Chief Robert J. Donovan (who wrote the authorized account, Eisenhower—The Inside Story) that Ike himself was to blame if this fiscal year’s defense budget was really cut too deeply. New York’s Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler sniped at “government by regency” and suggested that the President, if ailing, should retire. White House newsmen began pointing up the fact that Ike had not faced a press conference for nine weeks.

While the Ike-can-do-no-right cries were louder than ever before, the President seemed unperturbed. As the year’s first freezing winds swept his fields, Ike ignored the catcalls, sighted instead on his first major duties of 1958, the State of the Union message and the budget.

“Tentative Finality.” The 30-minute State of the Union report (“good”—with qualifications) and the budget (see below) were well roughed out before the President left Washington for his work-and-rest vacation (highlighted by granddaughter Susan’s sixth birthday and a quiet New Year’s Eve gathering with the John Eisenhowers, the Jim Hagertys, Farm Manager Arthur Nevins and Mrs. Nevins). But, as usual, there were final details to be decided. To Gettysburg came couriers carrying freshly typed drafts; back they sped to Washington, with here and there a penciled Eisenhower notation. Occasionally along the road the couriers passed higher-level visitors inbound to the farm. The week’s first: Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Marion Folsom, who came for final approval of HEW’s four-year plan for aid to scientific education (see EDUCATION). One day, comfortably dressed in a checked sports shirt and sports jacket, Ike sat at a coffee table for two hours with Budget Director Percival Brundage and Science Adviser Dr. James R. Killian Jr. for a page-by-page budget review.

At midweek the President motored back to the capital for a two-day round of talks. At the White House he saw Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy and Deputy Secretary Donald Quarles, reached with them a “tentative final figure” for defense next year. Next day he convened his first full Cabinet meeting in four weeks, led a general discussion on the State of the Union message, which each Cabinet member had received for review a day earlier. Leaving Vice President Nixon in charge of the meeting, the President went down the hall to witness the swearing-in of his new Civil Rights Commission. In high good humor Ike insisted on presenting Michigan State’s Dr. John Hannah and his five commissioners their “diplomas,” i.e., commissions neatly tied in blue ribbon. Then, in more serious vein, he invited them to pull up chairs to hear his own strong hopes for their work in racial relations and to ask questions.

Stay-at-Home. With the budget ready for returning Republican congressional leaders to see this week, Ike returned to the farm at week’s end with old friend and American Red Cross President Alfred Gruenther. He missed church, stayed indoors, and did not even play bridge with Gruenther, his favorite partner. Press Secretary James Hagerty admitted that the President would probably cancel his long-standing date to speak Jan. 20 at a G.O.P. fund-raising dinner in Chicago (honoring the fifth anniversary of his inaugural), would instead address a nationwide string of dinners by closed-circuit television. Apparently Ike was sidestepping both political fire and grass-roots politicking, was saving his energies for what he considered the major battles of cold war and peace.