National Affairs: Nothing Funny

The big event of the Eisenhower week was his reunion with Bob Taft in New York. There were three lesser but notable events: Ike’s hardest-hitting speech thus far in the campaign, his hardest-to-swallow act of political expediency, and his take-off for what may be his most grueling swing around the hustings.

When he deplaned at the Indianapolis airport, Eisenhower had reached the final stop of his first campaign tour (nine states, 13 cities). At Butler University fieldhouse, Eisenhower tore into the Democrats. He had never sounded more aroused as he pounded in oratorical wrath at “the mess in Washington.” Ike poured it on:

“No American can stand to one side while his country becomes the prey of fearmongers, quack doctors and barefaced looters. He doesn’t twiddle his thumbs while his garden is wrecked by a crowd of vandals, and his house is invaded by a gang of robbers. He goes into action . . . by getting into politics—fast and hard. I’m in politics just that way . . .”

Scornfully, Eisenhower belabored the Democratic theme song Don’t Let Them Take It Away: “A cracked phonograph record endlessly plays the same tune . . . Take away what, I ask you?

“An Administration that fumbles and stumbles and falls flat every couple of weeks? . . . When the hand-picked heir [i.e., Stevenson] wants no part of the heirlooms, why should we? … The 5% fees for . . . court favorites? . . . The $400 deficit that the average city family suffered in 1950? . . . The inflation that has cut savagely into . . . pension funds . . . [and] savings? . . . The record of losing our friends in Eastern Europe [and] in China? . . .

“Don’t Let Them Take It Away is a slogan only for the gullible …”

The crowd loved it. In Ike’s half-hour before the mike, they stopped him with cheers and yells of “Go to it!” “Attaboy!” a total of 61 times.

A Diapered Debt. For the sake of party harmony, without which the Republicans might not win Indiana in November, Eisenhower publicly stood beside Indiana’s demagogic Senator William Jenner, who is up for re-election and who has vilified Eisenhower’s friend, General George Marshall. (Among past Jenner epithets for the old soldier: “Living lie,” “Front man for traitors,” “Unsuspecting stooge or an actual co-conspirator with the most treasonable array of political cutthroats.”)

Jenner took every opportunity to stand at Eisenhower’s elbow, slap his shoulders, get photographed with him. At a roast-beef luncheon, Jenner closed a roaring speech by telling how he had visited a hospital nursery where the newborn squalled noisily. Cried Jenner: “If you came into the world and you had nothing but a diaper on, and you owed the Government $2,000 as your part of the national debt, and your diaper was wet, by God, you’d be crying too!” Ike colored, ducked his head, put both hands over his ears—then laughed gustily and joined in the applause for Jenner.

When it came to endorsing the Senator, Ike did it without mentioning Jenner’s name. He just asked his audience to vote for every Republican on the ticket.

A Touchy Nerve. This week an Eisenhower Special pulled out of New York’s Pennsylvania Station for a twelve-state tour through the West and South, with eight major speeches and some 70 whistle-stop talks on the candidate’s schedule. At the first stop, Fort Wayne, Ind., Ike, still without naming names, jabbed at the wisecracking of Adlai Stevenson.

“I am in this,” said Eisenhower solemnly, “because I believe America is in peril. There is nothing funny in that . . .

“We are involved in a war in Korea without any plans for winning it. We have had 117,000 casualties, killed and wounded. There is nothing funny in that . . .”

Ike’s whistle-stop crowds were larger than Dewey drew in 1948, and their response was warm, although not wildly enthusiastic. Whenever he mentioned the mess in Washington he touched a nerve, and the crowds let him know it.