THE PRESIDENCY: Life with Father

The head of an average American household is beset, from breakfast to bedtime, by a multitude of problems. He is expected to cope with everything from mortgages and merit badges to carburetors and kittens. The President of the U.S., as head of a family of 162 million and a leading figure in the neighborhood of nations, has similar headaches, multiplied a millionfold. Last week, at a lengthy cleanup press conference before he leaves for a Denver vacation. President Eisenhower let the White House reporters in on a few of the staggering problems that currently preoccupy him.

Good Partner. There were some com plaints, for example, that the U.S. was throwing its weight around too blatantly. The President seemed to think that the U.S. ought to talk less about its “leadership” (a word dear to Harry Truman), while leading more effectively. “I think we should talk less about American lead ership in the world,” he said, “because we are trying to be a good partner . . . We want to do what is right, what is just and what is decent and try to get [other nations] going along because they believe in the same things … A platoon leader doesn’t get his platoon to go [with him] by getting up and shouting and saying ‘I am smarter; I am bigger; I am stronger; I am the leader.’ He gets men to go along with him because they want to do it for him and they believe in him.”

Then there was the problem of the bad neighbor. The President said that the people of the U.S. violently disapprove of the government of China, and are not going to accept that government under present conditions in any organization where the U.S. has any say. He added, however, that he could not predict conditions in China five years from now; he would be a little off his rocker if he tried. So he was not going to try. He was always ready to see whether the sinner reformed and was ready to come into the fold, the President concluded.

Tough Neighbors. Last winter the President proposed an international pool of atomic information and material intended for peacetime uses. But a tough neighbor from across the Iron Tracks had bluntly rejected his offer. Said the President: “The proposal as placed before the Soviets was not favorably received . . . One of the purposes I think we should attempt to achieve is to … make certain that . . . the world knows there is some useful purpose to which this new science can be devoted rather than mere destruction . . . I should like to make every nation in the world know that there is the possibility, the potentiality here, for a great increase in their standards of living . . . Therefore, I don’t propose to be defeated in this merely because the Soviets won’t go along.”

Troublemaker. In the President’s own family there was a troublemaker, who had precipitated a first-class family row. Ike Eisenhower was going to let the kids work the problem out themselves—up to a point. The Republican Party, said the President, is bound to be affected by the kind of controversy that is going on in the Senate over the censure of Joe McCarthy. That controversy is the Senate’s own business, he added, but anything that tended to divide the party is something that must concern him. as the party’s chief. And he would take whatever meas ures are available to avoid and ameliorate such a division.

For the second time, McCarthy had insulted an old associate of the President’s, and Ike was angry and dismayed (see below). General George Marshall. said Ike, “to me has typified all that we call—that we look for—in what we call an American patriot … I think it is a sorry reward, at the end of at least 50 years of service to this country, to say that he is not a loyal, fine American, and that he served only in order to advance his own personal ambitions.”

Last week the President had appointments with two distinguished ladies: ¶ Mrs. Joseph Farrington, widow of the Hawaiian Delegate to Congress, called at the White House (see cut) after being sworn in by Speaker Joseph Martin to succeed her husband.

¶ Mrs. Gisella Kapus, the gallant Hungarian refugee who lost her left foot in a land-mine explosion as she was escaping through the Iron Curtain (TIME, Aug. 9). stopped over in Washington with her family to meet the President, on her way to a new home in Texas. “I am delighted to welcome you to this country,” Ike told Mrs. Kapus. “I hope you grow to love this country, and I hope you like Texas particularly, because I was born there.” He was especially pleased to learn that the Kapus family had been helped by private organizations in its flight to freedom. “We don’t believe in governments’ doing it all,” he said, a bit wistfully.