Washington-U. S. A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. By Tris Coffin Will Ike Resign? Each morning at 10:30, reporters hear White House news secretary James Hagerty describe the ''excellent improvement" of the President. In...
...Nixon must be extremely cautious and keep proving his personal loyalty to the President...
...There is doubt, too, on how much power the President may delegate to the Vice President...
...But the daily briefing should not hide the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower in the remaining three years of his term cannot meet the ruthless crises of our times with the vigor of which he was capable when first elected...
...If another major crisis (say, fighting on the Turkish-Syrian border) exploded, Nixon and Adams would consult Secretary of State Dulles and General Twining, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Congressional leaders...
...The President's physicians are well aware that arterial spasms are often caused by undue tension...
...Thus it appears that if the functions vested in the President by statute are discretionary in nature, the Court will not imply authority to delegate...
...Under similar circumstances, Mr...
...No one really knows what his philosophy is...
...Bridges and Sherman Adams are old political enemies...
...Union-Leader, asking for his impeachment, deeply disturbed this group...
...An editorial prior to the stroke in the Manchester (N.H...
...he helped write the extreme House version of the Taft-Hartley bill in the House Labor Committee, and won his first headlines as a sharp member of the Un-American Activities Committee...
...Mr...
...Vote...
...On the Monday evening when the President was stricken and his physician feared that he might have suffered a serious stroke, the possibility of his resignation was real...
...He must carefully take over functions of the President without arousing fears that he is usurping the office...
...As Vice President, he has seemed a Dewey Republican, international-minded, concerned with civil rights, tolerant of the opposition...
...Nixon is extraordinarily sensitive to public opinion...
...Resignation has been widely discussed here, though not with any enthusiasm...
...They argue that Eisenhower is valuable as a symbol in world affairs, that Nixon cannot obtain united support, and that he has a tendency to recklessness which Eisenhower can veto, even if bedridden...
...Many White House correspondents still believe that he will bow out and give Nixon at least a year to occupy the Presidency before the 1960 election...
...Nixon's role in the next three years would excite and try a Richelieu...
...For the next six weeks to six months, Mr...
...The impression is of a man mildly incapacitated by a bad cold, held down only by a fussy, conservative doctor...
...In this convalescent period, the President will withdraw even farther...
...Although Hagerty heatedly denies this, the President will unquestionably have to make a decision as to whether to retire from his office, and he will have to review this decision regularly...
...There is even, at this writing, the possibility that Mr...
...He will preside at Cabinet and Security Council meetings, hold occasional press conferences, represent the President at foreign-policy meetings, and take his place at social functions...
...In the first days of the President's latest illness, Nixon occupied a desk in Adams's office...
...A thorough study was made last year by the Senate Government Operations Committee, and a staff paper written by Eli E. Nobleman stated: "The Supreme Court will only imply the President's authority to delegate the performance of his statutory functions with respect to what it has characterized as executive or administrative acts, and it is only with respect to such duties that department heads are presumed to act for the President...
...Nixon's focus is entirely different from that of Mr...
...He began his political life as a Congressman who voted with the right wing...
...Even the Taft Republicans are not sure where he will stand tomorrow...
...Some contend that the Constitution implies that the Vice President serve as acting President "until the disability be removed...
...He can push but not dictate policies...
...The Constitution says that in case of the President's "inability to discharge the powers and duties . the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide" for the case of inability, "declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed or a President shall be elected...
...Wilson could not pass on legislation for nearly six weeks...
...Eisenhower will fly to Paris for a brief "inspirational" appearance at the NATO meeting next week...
...Eisenhower...
...He would then ask Milton, whose opinion he respects above all others...
...He is likely to spend much time away from Washington and in the company of his closest friend, the humorous George E. Allen...
...It is doubtful that Mr...
...Thus, even in the event of more serious illness, the President's duties would probably fall on an informal committee of his advisers—unless he resigned...
...He sat in with Adams, Budget Director Percival Brundage and Defense Secretary Neil McElroy making crucial decisions on military programs...
...But precedent is against it...
...He is deeply distrusted by the South and its lords in Congress, as well as by liberals...
...Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1908: "No other man's day is so filled as [the President's], so full of responsibilities which tax mind and conscience alike and demand an inexhaustible vitality...
...His best chance of remaining alive through 1960 is to live in a carefully filtered atmosphere...
...Quite often, President Eisenhower has not sat through the entire meeting of the Council...
...When President William Henry Harrison died on April 4, 1841, Vice President John Tyler took the oath as President two days later—Secretary of State Daniel Webster ruling that the powers and office of the President were indivisible...
...in succeeding to one, the Vice President succeeded to both...
...Vice President Richard M. Nixon has been too partisan, too ambitious to win the wide support a President would need in these awful hours...
...The two would knead out a policy and present it to the President...
...Forty years later, when Garfield was shot, Vice President Chester Alan Arthur was urged to declare the President incapacitated...
...Congress has never provided an enabling act for inability...
...More recently, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, probably the most powerful Republican in the Senate, has suggested that Nixon be given full authority...
...Such irksome duties as press conferences, give-and-take discussions with Congressional leaders and foreign diplomats, Cabinet, budget and Security meetings, and visits from officials, politicians, Congressmen and business groups will be infrequent...
...He will, however, act under three handicaps: • The inner core of Eisenhower friends and advisers are upset by cries that the President get out...
...His knowledge of current events will be supplied principally by Hagerty, security assistant Robert Cutler, and chief of staff Sherman Adams...
...Men of ordinary physique and discretion cannot be Presidents and live if the strain be not somehow relieved...
...Eisenhower is 67, has suffered three major attacks in the last 26 months, and has a long history of minor illnesses when confronted with racking dilemmas...
...28 bills became law without his signature...
...The President's close friends and advisers are insisting, almost grimly, that he will not step down as long as he can sign his name...
...Garfield lived 80 days after he was shot, during which time he signed one extradition paper...
...The President's advisers believe that this psychological triumph would quiet demands in the press and Congress that he resign...
...He told a press conference on May 8, 1956: "I have said unless I felt absolutely up to the performance of the duties of the Presidency, the second that I didn't, I would no longer be there in the job, or I wouldn't be available for the job...
...The White House staff and Presidential duties have been so organized as to divert the huge flow of information and questions, and keep it from flooding the President...
...Eisenhower might well resign...
...This view has a high priority in the White House...
...In meticulous detail, he tells how Mr...
...Twice in American history, Presidents have spent weeks as almost complete prisoners of illness...
...Perhaps this is too much to ask of any man...
...Three major questions, nevertheless, are being strongly argued: the immediate roles of Eisenhower and Nixon, and the prospects if the President suffers another, more serious attack...
...or Vice President Nixon has presided for him...
...Nixon was the boldest of the four and was able to swing teetering decisions, but not to get his own way...
...Eisenhower signed 15 letters, talked with the Secretary of State, ate three eggs, sang in his shower, walked for 20 minutes about his farm, read two chapters of a Western, and took a long nap...
...The alternatives are resignation, or a new and perhaps more damaging illness...
...He refused...
...The National Security Council, for example, was set up to take from the President's shoulders the burden of analyzing world problems and framing appropriate policies...
...Along with admiration for Nixon's vigor, shrewd mind and boldness, there is an amazing mistrust of him here...
...Thomas Marshall took the same position when Wilson was stricken...
...But if he chose to remain, no one could force him out, unless Congress used the extreme weapon of impeachment...
...The biggest question is what would happen if the President suffered a more debilitating illness...
...For days on end, he has performed little more than the ceremonial duties prescribed by the Constitution...
...Eisenhower never has been daring...
...the President is protected from it...
...The President will depend increasingly on the advice of a triumvirate: Nixon, Adams and brother Milton Eisenhower...
...His campaigns for the House and Senate were featured by virulent attacks on two liberals, Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas...
...Eisenhower will be a convalescent whose visits to the harsh alarms of his office will be brief...
...The General is not a quitter," they say flatly...
...Eisenhower would personally engage in protracted discussions with Dulles or General Twining...
...Yet, in last month's New Jersey campaign for Governor, Nixon attacked labor in a way that led the Machinist to headline: "Nixon's Union Smear Fails in N.J...
...Nixon is willing, even anxious to take calculated risks to improve his standing with the American people...
...Ever since his heart attack, his physicians have insisted that he not be subjected at long intervals to the upsetting diet of crisis and conflict that falls on a President...
...Nixon is looking to 1960, while the President is mainly concerned in getting through the next three years without undue crisis...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 49
