Washington - U.S.A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON-U.S A. By Tris Coffin The New Revolt Against Eisenhower In these bright days of August, President Eisenhower looks amazingly like Harry Truman embattled with the 80th...
...6. In foreign policy, where Mr...
...they are not segregated in schools or busses...
...The absence of shocked letters to Congress or of outraged defenders of the President is marked...
...This one took place during the civil rights battle...
...On July 17, he told his press conference of a three-hour conversation with Marshal Zhukov when the Soviet military leader had impressed him with his "idealism...
...Eisenhower could take off weeks or months while still retaining the title...
...Eisenhower is frequently badly informed, and shows little outward evidence of profound study of major problems...
...Under this program, Mr...
...5. The President spends relatively little time at his desk...
...Eisenhower was without brains...
...Just two years ago, when Senator Matt Neely (D.-W...
...leader of the Dixie bloc, had angrily referred to race riots in Chicago and Detroit...
...rose to answer him...
...This indifference to tiring official duties was dramatized when the White House sought (but failed to get okayed by Congressional leadership) an ingenious plan to create an "acting President" in case of illness...
...But this is only a small part of the explanation...
...Things are not always run smoothly...
...He seems at ease with them only when discussing relatively trivial matters, such as golf and weather...
...He looked like a beloved professor—tousled white hair, blue eyes peering from behind steel-rim spectacles, and a limp cotton suit...
...Eisenhower might be expected to show expert knowledge, he has occasionally startled Washington by his almost naive simplicity...
...The Senate was quiet...
...But I can say that in Chicago Negroes vote...
...Occasionally, there are moments of great drama and poignancy in Congressional debates...
...He spoke firmly and sadly, like Lincoln anguished by his divided land: "We have many faults in Illinois...
...snapped that Mr...
...Several times a week, the cartoonist Herblock depicts Ike in the Washington Post & Times Herald as a simple, child-like creature who never knows what he is doing...
...4. He does not fight for his own soldiers...
...And, when Ike does see members, he exhibits a massive indifference to their bread-and-butter problems...
...Even such dyed-in-the-wool "modern Republicans" as Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey have a tough time getting an appointment...
...Yet response to Kerr's equally rough outburst moved him to say: "I have never received more enthusiastic support...
...They are treated as human beings...
...A Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep...
...they have access to parks...
...Ironically, the first heavy blows came from the conservatives...
...We have very real problems in race relations...
...At a Wednesday press conference, the President asked Congress to reject a jury-trial amendment to the civil rights bill...
...to comment dryly: "If we are to invite the Russian leaders here for a visit, I hope someone will brief the President on some answers to Zhukov's arguments and inform him about some of the values of our free system of society other than the freedom to buy whatever gadget appeals to us at the moment...
...The President answered: ". I am merely saying that against that kind of belief you run against arguments that almost leave you breathless, you don't know how to meet them...
...And Mr...
...Eisenhower has a habit of dropping the rope and letting Congress sprawl awkwardly with one big tug...
...Only a few days ago there was a race riot on the south side of Chicago, and trouble is still occurring there...
...Bill Jenner (R.-Ind...
...Eisenhower's gifts and private income...
...asked if he wanted Ike's blessings in 1953, replied: "Out in Indiana, we like to have even the dogs barking for us...
...Eisenhower himself rather plaintively told a visiting delegation from Girls' Nation: "Your president tells me that you have been here since Sunday, and so probably you know more about Washington than I do, in some of its aspects at least...
...James Reston of the New York Times asked him: "Do you want to leave the inference that it is difficult to defend the proposition that democracy is a more idealistic system than Communism...
...Ike said with some bewilderment he knew nothing about it...
...Ike managed only a half hour with him...
...Gus Kelley, remarked, "Eisenhower may well be another Grant—an outstanding general who was apparently too bored or too indifferent to work at the job of being President...
...More recently, Mr...
...This is indicated by the daily report of his callers and the increasingly publicized visits to the golf course...
...In fairness to the President, he was quite frank with Republican leadership and the voters in 1956...
...Wiley had worked like a Trojan for Ike's foreign policy, realizing it might hurt him in isolationist areas of his state...
...A well-organized attack on his budget, engineered by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and abetted by his own Secretary of the Treasury, was the first wound...
...This prompted Senator William Fulbright (D.-Ark...
...Even in the fading weeks of early 1945, Congress treated him with respect...
...Eisenhower looked the other way when Senator Alex Wiley (R.-Wis...
...Ike replied: "I never heard of that...
...If that is true, why are you telling me something I never heard...
...This is not like 1952, when the Hoosier Republican moved heaven and earth to have candidate Ike bless him in Indianapolis...
...FDR had Congress eating out of his hand in 1937 when few on the Hill expected him to try for a third term...
...The anti-Eisenhower revolt in Congress has been building up to the explosive point because: 1. Under our system of Government, Congress and the Executive are constantly tugging at their end of the rope to achieve a balance...
...the very next night, the Senate voted 51 to 42 to do just the opposite, with twelve Republicans joining in the majority...
...On the floor of both Houses, Congressmen are saying in public what they have been fuming about in private for four years...
...The cautious Washington Star is running a series on Mr...
...Eisenhower, but not doused it...
...3. The President has not been accessible to Congressmen this year...
...its restless churnings and whisperings had ceased...
...Senator Dick Russell (D.-Ga...
...This is particularly embarrassing to Republicans, such as Rep...
...There will be tears and struggles, and there will be abuses of many kinds...
...was locked in a do-or-die struggle with the Wisconsin Old Guard and McCarthyites in last year's GOP primary...
...He said openly that his health had been impaired and he could not work as hard at the job as during the first term...
...Bob Kerr (D.-Okla...
...On issue after issue—school construction, defense of his Secretary of the Army against McCarthy, Middle East Doctrine and others in which controversy develops —the President has a habit of dropping the rope...
...A favorite theme of Administration spokesmen is that all this is due to that "terrible" 22nd Amendment limiting the Chief Executive's span to two terms...
...The President has been overexalted into a semi-religious figure by his well meaning friends and staff...
...Ex-Senator Harry Cain, reporting to him on injustices in the employe security program, found the President singularly ignorant...
...This verse was written in 1922 about Warren G. Harding...
...A Missouri Representative inserted this doggerel in the Congressional Record: ''When the great and mighty affairs o) state Are vexed with problems small and great The word goes out that they must wait Till the President plays some golf...
...In the process of guaranteeing full political democracy to all people," Douglas continued, "friction inevitably arises...
...Paul Douglas (D.-Ill...
...They were willing to go along with your bill, and their complaint is that you failed to go to bat for the legislation, so to speak...
...Before war broke out in the Middle East, the President was asked at a press conference of an urgent message sent him by Prime Minister Eden and reported in the press...
...Kenneth Keating of New York, who fought and bled to steer the Administration civil rights bill through the House, only to discover the President retreating like sixty under the attack of Southern Senators...
...When Chip Bohlen, one of the nation's few expert students of present-day Russia, returned from his post as Ambassador to Moscow...
...We are dealing with a human, inevitable problem, and it is highly important that we should deal with it, and not postpone action on it...
...suggested that the President's religious ardor was relatively recent, he was silenced and all but drowned by a tidal wave of indignant sermons and letters...
...Eisenhower was asked by a reporter: "Just before the House killed that school the support of the Administration bill...
...2. Mr...
...This has silenced, at least temporarily, criticism of Mr...
...In 1941, when a fourth term seemed as likely as a purple cow, his mastery over Congress drew the nation reluctantly yet firmly into the alliance against Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo...
...The solution will not be simple or easy...
...Now, at the first sign that he is vulnerable, all the unsaid words are being spoken...
...Their dignity is not offended...
...WASHINGTON-U.S A. By Tris Coffin The New Revolt Against Eisenhower In these bright days of August, President Eisenhower looks amazingly like Harry Truman embattled with the 80th Congress...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 33
