National Affairs: Eve of the Message

The thermometer hung at a sharp 20° at the rambling Eisenhower farm outside Gettysburg at 8:49 one morning last week as a helicopter from Washington touched down on the lawn. The passengers were Presidential Assistant Wilton B. (“Jerry”) Persons and Presidential Speechwriter Malcolm Moos. Their briefcase cargo: an all-but-final draft of the 1959 State of the Union message incorporating changes that the President had ordered two days before. The President greeted them just inside the door, led them to his long, heated sun porch, where he had been working on a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. They spread out the papers on a coffee table, got down to a line-by-line discussion.

In the next 2½ hours the President made more changes, deletions, marginal notes, here and there ordered re-emphasis. The tenor of the message: hold-the-line fiscal management. On defense, the President wanted to stress the need to cut down on costly weapons duplication. On agriculture, the President hoped and expected that Congress would reduce the drain of crop-support programs. On foreign aid, the President wanted an increase in funds that was modest in terms of the need, e.g., a jump from $400 million to $700 million for the Development Loan Fund. Already the President had ordered a whole section of the message to be devoted to the national need to balance the budget as an essential element of U.S. and free world stability. And he got some support for his case from the news that the dollar was losing some of its appeal to European currencies following Europe’s recent moves to ease convertibility (see FOREIGN NEWS).

At conference’s end, as Speechwriter Moos headed back to Washington with a heavily marked sheaf of papers for revision, the President got set to deliver the speech to Congress this week in a setting dominated by the U.S.S.R.’s dramatic emphasis not on budget-balancing but on reaching into space.

Last week the President also:

¶ Proclaimed May 1, 1959 as the U.S.’s second annual Law Day—”Appreciation of the importance of law in the daily lives of our citizens is a source of national strength.”

¶ Celebrated on New Year’s Eve the seventh birthday of his granddaughter Susan, second girl of son and current junior presidential aide Major John. Ike’s highlight: helping apple-of-eye grandson David, 10, pick out a $2 cloisonne necklace, a $1 box of stationery, a $1 spelling game for sister Susan. “Well,” muttered Ike after peeling the bills out of his pocket, “we did the best we could.”

¶ Thanked Soviet Leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Kliment Voroshilov for a New Year’s greeting they had popped over by commercial cable, sent back with his return greeting a sharp reminder that U.S.S.R. policy on Berlin was hardly in accord with Happy New Year sentiments.