REPUBLICANS: The Heart Is So Full

There is no way that the President of the U.S. and the American people can conduct a dialogue on the political subject uppermost in the minds of both. Dwight Eisenhower knows this. “I could devoutly wish,” he said last week, “that there were some method by which the American people could, under the circumstances, point out the path of my true duty. But it appears that this is a question that first I alone must answer.”

The President was speaking over a closed-circuit television network-to more than 70,000 men and women in 53 cities. They had paid some $5,000,000, at up to $100 a plate, to attend Salute-To-Ike dinners (planned before his heart attack) honoring his completion of three years in office.

Party orators were out in corps force; they included nearly all the Cabinet, many of the White House staffers, more than a score of Republican governors, Senators and Representatives. The motif was partisan right down to the “First Lady Salad” in Spokane and the “Fresh Asparagus Spears Nixon” in Cleveland. There were the inevitable bloopers: in New York’s dingy Madison Square Garden a television screen went blank just as the President began speaking, came brightly back just as he finished. There was evidence of ward-level tricksters at work: the Los Angeles dinner committee, dominated by Nixon supporters, invited California’s Governor Goodwin J. Knight to appear only after making certain that Knight had already accepted an invitation from San Francisco. Sniggered a committee member: “When ‘Goodie’ found out that the San Francisco dinner wasn’t going to be on television and the Los Angeles one was, he almost busted a gut.”

But despite such flaws, the Salute-To-Ike dinners were an occasion for high emotions. In Flint, Mich. an audience of 635 alternated between wild cheers and near sobs. In Chicago Vice President Richard Nixon wept silently in the darkened amphitheater while Ike, speaking from Washington, expressed his thanks for the tributes that had been paid him. And Dwight Eisenhower’s own eyes glistened with tears as he sat in the ballroom of Washington’s Sheraton-Park Hotel and watched the television scenes flashing from city to city, with speaker after speaker talking directly to the President, thanking him, blessing him and wishing him well.

The Great Picture. The President and Mrs. Eisenhower stepped into the Sheraton-Park’s ballroom at 9:55 p.m., Ike in a dinner jacket with white carnation, Mamie radiant in a lavender cocktail dress, wearing a single strand of pearls and earrings with the word “Ike” printed on each. Ike raised both arms in familiar salute to the crowd, then went with Mamie to a table, where they sat sipping ice water and watching the movie-sized television screen. As the TV program began, a single spotlight centered on the Eisenhowers, forcing the President to shield his eyes with his right hand.

From Washington the television scene shifted to Chicago, where 10,000 candles, symbolic of friendship toward Ike, glowed in the darkness, and Fred Waring’s choristers sang, “Thanks, Mr. President, we honor you tonight . . .” Ike, chin in hand, peered intently; Mamie hunched forward in her seat for a better look. A few feet away Television Adviser Robert Montgomery murmured to himself: “Great picture, great picture.”

The speakers in eleven cities addressed themselves straight to the President; the messages were personal. Some were corny in their text, but all had a quality of rare sincerity. Ike got his first big laugh when Actor James Stewart, in Los Angeles, began haltingly: “Mr. President . . . General … Sir .. .” But the President was plainly touched when Stewart, who had served under him as a bomber wing commander, concluded: “God bless you, Mr. President.” When the Atlanta pickup came, both the President and Mamie gazed closely at the face of their old friend, Golfer Bobby Jones, as though trying to fathom Jones’s present state of health (he has long suffered from a spinal ailment). Ike laughed happily when Jones assured him that “the golf course is in fine shape.” Minutes later the scene switched to Houston, with the crowd roaring, “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You”—to which Ike briskly tapped time with his foot. A wide-eyed Texas housewife, Mrs. Calista Schneidau (a mother of six), delivered her little speech (“We’ve watched the performance of your Administration for three years and, sir, even in Texas we’ve never seen anything so good”) so neatly and devotedly that in Chicago Dick Nixon leaned over to Senator Dirksen and whispered: “Ev, let’s run that girl for something.”

To President Eisenhower’s delight, the deadpan face of Glenn Stephens, who was the engineer on Ike’s 1952 campaign train, flashed, onto the screen from Detroit. Stumbling in several places, Stephens read his lines woodenly—and still managed to sound as though he meant every word of what he was saying. “If you want to go train-riding again,” said Stephens, “just let me know. I have my hand on the throttle, my lunchbox is full, and I’m ready to start.”

“He’s Almost Bald.” Not one of these speakers made an open appeal to Ike to run again. They simply let him know that, as individual men and women, they liked him—so, too, in a different way, did the professional politicians who spoke during untelevised parts of the dinners. They told the President how much his leadership had come to mean.

On a personal basis California’s Goodie Knight marveled at “what it is that could cause so many people to express so much devotion. This man isn’t handsome. He’s almost bald. He is not an orator. He is not a politician in the sense of being skillful at the calling.”

In Hartford Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams explained the President’s position vis-à-vis his party. Said Adams: “There is one accomplishment that I happen to know the President of the U.S. hopes to achieve during these four years. It is this—that the Republican Party shall be built into an effective and dominating force in American politics. He speaks of this, not in any narrow partisan sense, but from his point of view that a national need exists for an organism that reflects the platform, principles and objectives for which he has stood.” In Pittsburgh U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. summed up the Eisenhower record and the “great fact that we have prosperity without inflation, without waste, and with an excellent chance of a balanced budget; and that we are having this prosperity without war and without war orders.”

Visibly Affected. By the outpouring of good feeling toward him, President Eisenhower was visibly affected. He showed his feelings during his brief talk, which closed out the evening. As he spoke, his physician, Dr. Howard Snyder, stood about 25 ft. away, watching the President closely. Several times Mamie Eisenhower smiled encouragement to her husband.

The President had written formal thanks into his prepared speech. But, finding it unequal to the occasion, he interpolated feelingly: “The heart is so full that it is indeed dangerous to try to say more than ‘Thank you.’ ”

* Closed-circuit television was begun seven years ago by Theatre Network Television Inc. (TNT), has since been used extensively for business conferences, medical demonstrations and heavyweight championship fights. Last week was TNT’s first political effort. The TNT company leased more than 30,000 miles of telephone lines from A.T. & T. Cost to Republicans for their closed circuit: $240,000.