New York: Back to the Hustings

Up before 1,480 tuxedoed and begowned guests in Manhattan’s Coliseum last week arose former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower—to deliver an ill-tempered rebuke to a 23-year-old girl. Ike was exercised about Peace Corps Member Margery Michelmore, who had committed the sin of writing accurately about the primitive conditions that she had seen in Nigeria and having her postcard fall into the hands of leftist Nigerian students.* There was, cried Eisenhower, “postcard evidence” that Peace Corpsmen “did not even know what an undeveloped country was.”

“I Have Not Known Him.”Then Eisenhower, whose funnybone is about as small as his wishbone is large, had essayed some heavy sarcasm at the expense of the magna cum laude from Smith. The Peace Corps, he said, is a “juvenile experiment. If you want to take a trip to the moon, why not send a Peace Corps up there? It is an undeveloped country.”

Ike was in New York to offer a coattail to Republican Mayoralty Candidate Louis J. Lefkowitz — and to use a $100-a-plate Lefkowitz dinner as a forum for his views on the present Administration. But Lefkowitz could hardly consider the occasion an unqualified success: Ike praised both Republican Congressman Paul Fino, who is running for city council president, and former Assistant Secretary of Labor John Gilhooley, as men he had known and respected in Washington. But, said he. “I have not known Louis J. Lefkowitz very well.” Following Ike to the speaker’s stand. Senator Jacob Javits had to eliminate from a prepared speech the paragraph of gratitude to Eisenhower for his warm endorsement of Lefkowitz.

On to Texas. Only when he turned to one of his favorite subjects—fiscal responsibility in Government—did Ike sound like his old self. There is, he said, a “tornado of confusion” in Washington. “We have been told we are balancing the budget, and the next day we are told how we have a $6.7 billion deficit. We have had advice and contrary advice. We have been told everything, and then it is refuted. You can see I have been confused. I believe this country is in a time of prosperity. If it cannot pay its debts, what is going to happen? Are we just going to pile up debt after debt? We need responsible progress. We cannot have responsible progress by having shrinking dollars and finally calling them ‘dollarettes’ because there are more of them and they’ll be worth so little.”

Flying out of New York, Ike kept up the pace. He stopped off in Gettysburg for a modest $10-a-plate fund-raising dinner staged by Adams County Republicans. At week’s end, he would move on to San Antonio to jump into a key congressional race. Battling for a vacant House Seat representing big Bexar County are liberal Democratic State Senator Henrv Gonzalez, 45, and conservative Republican John W. Goode Jr., a 38-year-old lawyer and former county chairman. Ike hoped to drum up enough support for Goode to add a third Republican to Texas’ congressional delegation. For, as he said last week in a rallying cry sounded at Gettysburg: “We have stretching out before us a fight that is worth sacrificing for. If we persevere a lot in 1962 and win the House—then in 1964, oh, boy!”

* At President Kennedy’s urging, Miss Michelmore withdrew a letter of resignation, last week was assigned to corps headquarters in Washington to process comments, requests and suggestions received from other members overseas.