THE PRESIDENCY: Answer in Oklahoma

Dwight Eisenhower’s political fire, according to all the polls, was burning low. But no one could ever have told it from his appearance in Oklahoma City last week for the second of his television series on national issues. From the moment of his arrival, he threw off the old popularity sparks. Riding in from Will Rogers Field in the presidential Lincoln, he stood like a campaigner with hands aloft before sign-carrying crowds (“We Liked Ike in ’56. We Like Him Today”). That night at the Municipal Auditorium, he brought down the rafters with his retort to Khrushchev’s threat that Russia would “bury” the West. Snapped Ike: “Oh yeah?”

The President did not underestimate Khrushchev’s menace. “You may recall,” he said, “that there was once a dictator named Hitler who also said he would bury us. He wrote a long, dull book telling precisely how he was going to do it. Not enough people took him at his word. We shall not make that mistake again. We must, and do, regard this as a time for another critical re-examination of our entire defense position.”

Preventing the Prelude. There was no question but that “a very considerable” increase in defense spending would be required. Where would the money come from? Said the President: “Most emphatically, the answer does not lie in cutting mutual defense funds overseas—another important part of our own nation’s security . . . The same applies to economic aid.”

Instead, the solution lay in making “some tough choices” in nonessential, nonmilitary federal programs. “Now, by whatever amount savings fail to equal the additional costs of security, our total expenditures will go up. Our people will rightly demand it. They will not sacrifice security to worship a balanced budget. . . Some savings may still be squeezed out through the wringer method. But the savings of the kind we need can come about only through cutting out or deferring entire categories of activities. This will be one of the hardest and most distasteful tasks that the coming session of Congress must face, and pressure groups will wail in anguish.”

Correcting the Critical. Continued the President: “We need more scientists”—and, he said, his scientific advisers had told him that “this is, for the American people, the most critical problem of all . . . We should, among other things, have a system of nationwide testing of high school students, a system of incentives for high-aptitude students to pursue scientific or professional studies, a program to stimulate good-quality teaching of mathematics and science, provision of more laboratory facilities, and measures, including fellowships, to increase the output of qualified teachers.

“Our defense effort . . . goes only far enough to deter and defeat attack. We will never be an aggressor. We want adequate security. We want no more than adequacy. But we will accept nothing less.”