REPUBLICANS: Give ‘Em Hello

The President headed west from Washington on his 5,284-mile congressional-election tour in such a cheerful, eupeptic and thoroughly nonpolitical mood that one reporter called it a “Give ‘Em Hello Campaign.” His first stop: the National Corn Picking Contest on the 400-acre Lumir Dostal Farm, ten miles northeast of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There he stood up before a sea of 85,000 or more farmers, a tremendous forum for a campaign opener, got off to a sharp start when he proclaimed that realized net farm income was up 20% over last year and per-capita farm income was the highest ever.

But the President, for reasons unexplained, had billed this part of his tour “nonpolitical.” He neither replied to Massachusetts Democrat Jack Kennedy’s needling of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson (from the same platform just an hour before), nor appealed for votes for Republican Congressmen, nor even said a ringing word on behalf of Iowa’s G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate William G. Murray, Iowa State University agriculture-economics professor, who stands an outside chance against lackluster Democratic Governor Herschel Loveless. Instead, Ike threw in a statement from hastily jotted notes on foreign policy: “You cannot bargain or negotiate in a world that is torn by dissension except from a position of strength.” That stirred interest. But in general, Ike’s reception was unenthusiastic.*

“If I Can Live . . .” When the President flew on to Salina, Kans., then drove with Mamie in his bubbletop limousine 24 miles through sizable, friendlier crowds to home town Abilene (first visit in four years), he showed much more of his famous, warm, arms-up humanity. In Abilene, in the small white frame house in which he and his brothers grew up, Ike happily showed Mamie how the family had used an old cradlelike dough tray in baking bread.

Visiting Abilene’s Eisenhower Museum, he spotted Army Nurse Major Florence Judd, who had looked after him following his ileitis operation in 1956. He recalled without being reminded that she had been transferred from Washington to nearby Fort Riley. A boyhood friend, Abe Forney, who had worked with Ike hauling ice at Belle Springs Creamery, came up, told Ike how well he looked. The President wagged his head and said, “If I can live two more years . . .”, let his voice trail off. Said Abe Forney: “You will, Ike.”

“In His Corner.” But he was soon back again from the glowing legend to distasteful politics—a perfunctory huddle with Kansas’ able Gubernatorial Candidate Clyde Reed Jr. (“I’m in his corner.” said Ike. “Is that clear enough?”), who has high hopes of unseating wily Democratic Governor George Docking; a fast flight on to Denver, Mamie’s home town, where the Eisenhowers’ arrival got fouled up by a wretched little scene at the airport. There Ike was greeted and all but engulfed before the photographers by Colorado’s Governor Stephen McNichols, another of the Eisenhower era’s new Democratic governors, plus photogenic wife and five photogenic children, while unphotographed G.O.P. candidates stood waiting and fuming and cursing at Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty—”Damned White House staff.” Hagerty flared back: “You’re not talking to me that way.” Later the GOPsters and Ike were photographed together at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel.

Having missed many a chance to win votes for his party in three key states, the President headed for California, where his tour, he said, would become “outright political.”

* To a group of escorting Iowa politicians, Ike told one of his rare jokes. It seems that there was a little boy who lived hard by the missile test center at Cape Canaveral and was asked by his teacher if he could count. He replied, “Oh yes—nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, nuts.” Ike laughed loudly at his own joke.