Why Ike Will Run:
ECKARDT, W. V.
Politicians' pressure is too strong Why Ike Will Run By W V. Eckardt WASHINGTON, D.C. SOME DAY, the Republican party hopes to be strong enough to elect a President, Vice President Nixon told...
...But, even on this issue, Republican conservatives seem more tolerant of the so-called "middle of the road" as long as it will lead to a second term for Ike...
...Eisenhower's health might prevent her husband from seeking another four years in the White House...
...Sadly noting a "downward trend nationally" of the Republican party, Goldwater sees hope only if his party "quits the stupidity we've been going through quits fighting itself...
...But we are told that, contrary to later judgment, his popularity rating was unusually high...
...Eisenhower's health will most likely influence his decision...
...Most Democratic leaders agree with the Republican command that persuasion and appeals to his sense of duty will probably prevail when the time comes for Mr...
...He wants them to try harder to relieve him of the burden of the Presidency...
...He was re-elected by an overwhelming majority...
...Yet, even this obedient patient appears to grow increasingly restless and irritable...
...I hate those pigeons," the President was heard to mutter during one of his recent inspections of the $150,000 remodeling of the Gettysburg place...
...She has a heart murmur...
...SOME DAY, the Republican party hopes to be strong enough to elect a President, Vice President Nixon told a meeting of party workers in Los Angeles the other day...
...Again we cite Morison and Commager's findings: "For all his obvious defects of character and of mind, Grant wielded an immense power...
...Gallup can be trusted...
...While his doctors assure us of his perfect health, his aides also assure us that his frequent escapes to the golf course are on doctor's orders...
...The plain man,' as Allan Nevins so well observes, 'had not elected Grant...
...Their parties have usually renominated them, lest the electorate might think their initial choice a mistake...
...At times, it would seem as though the only ones who would not regret such a decision are the squirrels which were recently deported, on General Eisenhower's orders, in just punishment for messing up the putting green on the White House lawn...
...This, as a matter of fact, is just one of the epithets hurled at Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler the other day by agitated Republicans because Butler dared imply that Mrs...
...He seeks every occasion to get away from the dreary White House routine, or "maelstrom" as he calls it...
...Turning from statistical to empirical evidence, historians find that, at least in terms of professional background and party affiliation, Ulysses S. Grant is the past President most comparable to the present one...
...Eisenhower still has a real fight on his hands if he wants his foreign trade program passed, for instance...
...he had elected an indestructible legend, a folk hero...
...President Grant, as Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager point out in their Growth of the American Republic, "brought neither understanding nor competence" to the complex problems facing him: "Of the new economic forces that were shaping the United States, he was completely unaware...
...Intra-party strife has subsided...
...But, he strongly implied, for the time being it's got to be the other way around...
...There was, of course, no syndicated public-opinion survey in the days of Ulysses Grant...
...His White House staff has learned to recognize the clanger signals that flash across his face when a Presidential storm is brewing...
...suappy, military manner...
...He makes no bones about his longing for the quiet life of bridge, golf and Angus-cattleraising which awaits him at his Gettysburg dreamhouse...
...The President finds it easy to keep everyone guessing as to his intentions next year, because, obviously, he hasn't yet made up his own mind...
...Historians agree that a desire to see his program to its ultimate conclusion, and to seek, as it were, a popular vote of confidence in it, has led so many a past President to try for a second term that the practice has become more or less a tradition in American politics...
...With less equipment for the Presidency than any predecessor or successor, his temperament unfitted him for high political office, and he was unable or unwilling to overcome his temperamental deficiencies...
...The thunder breaks with increasing frequency if the problems brought before him are not properly pre-digested and boiled down to the very simplest terms, presented in a concise...
...But they don't...
...Grant's administration, with all its dismal corruption, cannot honestly be compared to that of Eisenhower...
...these qualities were not expected of Grant, but it came as a shock that he seemed to have lost the qualities that he had shown in the war—a sense of order and of command, directness, resoluteness, consistency and intellectual honesty...
...And that is the simple and compelling reason why it's whispered, leaked, printed, broadcast, televised, and blurted all across the nation: Unless special circumstances prevail sixteen months hence, President Eisenhower will run for reelection in 1956...
...The Democratic timidity in calling public attention to some of the obvious shortcomings of the popular President might be understandable if they thought he would retire next year...
...Eisenhower to make up his mind...
...The Bricker Amendment seems forgotten...
...Mention that monosyllabic name, and the prosaic laborer, farmer, clerk, or businessman for once in his life saw a vision...
...Brilliance, subtlety, urbanity...
...While the President undoubtedly likes his job a little better now than in the beginning, he still isn't passionately devoted to it...
...And anyone who suggests that Ike might not want to run is a scoundrel...
...Butler's occasional indiscretions notwithstanding, he appears to agree with the Republican elephant that Ike should continue to be considered a sacred cow...
...For the devotion which he commanded from millions of men was devotion to something stronger than integrity or political wisdom or character or intellectual pre-eminence...
...Although a leader of men, he was not a good judge of men, and the very simplicity which had carried him safely through the intrigues of the Civil War exposed him to wiles of politicians whose loyalty to himself he mistook for devotion to the public weal...
...It was devotion to an ideal...
...But the people do?0 per cent of them, if Mr...
...Few of them, in fact, like Ike better than the leaders of his opposition...
...one of their own...
...With some 20 million more Democrats than Republicans among potential voters, according to a recent Gallup poll, the Republicans see no other choice...
...Not that dyed-in-thewool Republicans have happily embraced President Eisenhower's "dynamic conservatism," whatever that may mean...
...Both were graduates of West Point and popular generals...
...He doesn't want them to conic running to the White House every other day with their troubles...
...What's more, 14 out of 33 Presidents were elected twice...
...Republican Senators and Congressmen have quietly accepted White House proposals which they greeted with outraged cries of "New Dealism" a little while ago...
...It's his own, traditionally protectionist party which needs the convincing...
...On the other hand, considering the solidarity of the animal world, the squirrels might feel compassion for the pigeons around Ike's Gettysburg farm and wish him to stay in Washington for a while, after all...
...He threatened a fate worse than resettlement for the careless birds...
...Just recently, the President let it be known that he expects his subordinates in the Cabinet and other high places to make their own decisions wherever possible...
...The once vociferous right wing appears to have taken to heart the advice of Senator Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz...
...If they fail, if his team doesn't find ways to keep the President's weekend entirely free of either official or social engagements, then, they were told, they can't expect him to run again...
...Both were elected in a landslide...
...News and, World Report, not usually given to supporting Butler's views, reported that Mrs...
...Eisenhower does find current social obligations wearing, causing While House concern for her health...
...Yet, in both cases the question can be raised whether popularity can compensate for competence...
...Historical precedent tends to support the view that Eisenhower will seek a second term...
...Both were nominated in Chicago by Republicans after Democrats vainly wooed them...
...It was a vision of four years of terror and glory.'" Grant did seek renomination...
...The "draft-Ike" movement is in full swing...
...The Democratic donkey, at any rate, seems full of sweet forgiveness...
...Those who didn't even try obviously lacked a sense of history...
...He was naive rather than innocent, simple rather than unsophisticated, and his simplicity, as Adams shrewdly remarked, 'was more disconcerting than the complexity of a Talleyrand.' Nor did he ever come to understand the character of the Presidential office...
...A few days later, U.S...
...The realization that only the magic name "Eisenhower" printed across their ticket can assure Republican success next year has led to a remarkable change within the GOP recently...
...All this is not to say that all of the Republicans are now happily supporting the President's legislative program...
...To the end, he regarded the Presidency as a personal prerogative, a reward for services rendered rather than a responsibility...
Vol. 38 • April 1955 • No. 14
