I SEE BY THE PAPERS

...29," cried the New York Herald Tribune, and obviously believed it...

...The general attitude was that if Ike wanted it that way, that was the way he wanted it...

...The President was heard to tell an inquiring lady: "I don't have much strength, but I keep going...

...Hagerty has used this power to the fullest...

...By ROBERT LASCH I see by the papers The Skeptical Tradition James Res ton, chief of the New York Times Washington staff, is a vigorous and self-respecting newspaperman who objects to being used as a transmitter for official propaganda...

...Instead, most commentators took at face value his declaration that, after the operation, he felt better than he had felt when he announced his decision to run...

...President Can Run, Doctors Report —Providence Journal President Making Good Recovery...

...But within a few weeks the decision had been tightly buttoned up for Vice President Nixon...

...We can be sure of that...

...Going Along with Hagerty Yet if there was a change of temper in the Washington press corps I wonder how widespread, really, was the revival of the skeptical tradition out in the hinterland where most of the papers are published and most of the readers are...

...The Kansas City Star put it on the basis of elemental faith: "If there were any reason for concern he wouldn't run...

...The President was depicted as being "back on the job" when in fact he spent 30 minutes a day signing papers...

...Three—When he had recovered from his heart attack, the President told the people that his doctors had advised him that he was now much less likely to suffer further physical incapacity, particularly since in the White House he would be under constant medical attention...

...He was David Lawrence, editor of United States News and World Report, whose column is syndicated by the New York Herald Tribune...

...Doctors Say Eisenhower Will Be Able To Run For Re-Election —Springfield Republican Eisenhower Able To Run, Doctors Say —Norfolk Virginian-Pilot Doctors Say Eisenhower Is Fit To Run, He May Even Do Some Work This Week —New York Herald Tribune By Monday morning the headlines were running this way: Eisenhower, Assisted, Walks 30 Feet, Condition 'Excellent...

...Do you remember those Sunday papers, 24 hours after the operation...

...Besides, everybody liked Ike...

...All this, James Reston to the contrary, sounded very much like the outcries of sheer jubiliation that had gone up in March with the first announcement of the President's candidacy: "A man with too stern a conscience to be pressured . . . too modest a nature to be swayed by considerations of prestige or of power...

...The prognosis of his doctors was that "with the excellent care given him in the White House, he may live on considerably beyond his second term...

...It is true that John S. Knight, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press, a vigorous supporter of the Eisenhower ticket in 1952, wrote in his column: "The seriousness of the President's illness has been minimized by friendly editorialists...

...Cornered by a question as to whether he would now say that Eisenhower's convalescence had ended, he replied, No, he would not...

...News stories, headlines, and editorials all combined to perpetuate the myth...

...If Cooke had seen a wider sample of the American press, he might not have been so sure...

...The non-Eisenhower side of the story was given more attention than before, he thought...

...At that time Reston thought he could detect a revival of the skeptical tradition...

...On July 18, barely a week after the President had let Senator Knowland announce that he was still in the race for a second term, Lawrence launched the boom for a third...

...in short, some balance, said Reston, had been restored "to the flow of information on an important political subject...

...The Minneapolis Star, for example, handled the "not much strength story" with this headline: Ike Says He Keeps Going The Kansas City Star, same day, did not report the remark at all...

...Both in news and editorial columns, it seemed to me, a great many newspapers proved ready and willing to go along with Hagerty's game in at least four respects: One—The President, in his radio-TV talk Feb...

...The Post buried the convalescent remark in the body of the story and used this headline: WALKS A BIT MORE Ike Is Said to Feel Able to Wage a Vigorous Campaign And in Indianapolis the Star used much the same treatment: Ike Convinced Health to See Him Through So it may be that Senator Mc-Namara of Michigan was exaggerating but not entirely off the track when he made a speech in the Senate July 18 saying that a "Hagerty curtain" had been erected to keep the public "from the truth in one of the most masterful suppressions of the facts ever put across by the advertising techniques of Madison Avenue...

...Eisenhower had suffered a sharp stomach pain and seized the arm of the Panamanian President...

...The New York Times gave this item top headline treatment and was one of the few papers in the country to print another report that at one stage of the Panama ceremonies Mr...

...Lawrence, that Ike should be eligible also...

...One news commentator easily won whatever prize should be given for outdistancing all others during this period...

...With a sideswipe at the "vulgar and often mendacious discussion of President Eisenhower's health," the Mirror read the minds of the people: "There is so much confidence in the man that the people instinctively feel that if President Eisenhower did not believe that he could adequately fill the office, he would not want it...

...After the heart atttck, he wrote, few writers and editors had expressed publicly the doubts they candidly uttered in private about the wisdom of a second term...

...Hagerty did his job so well—with the cooperation of the bulk of the press—that we went far toward convincing the country that a heart attack and a major intestinal operation had improved President Eisenhower's health...

...In view of these New York headlines, and of the even greater play which the news got in London, Cooke concluded that "the devotion and skill of James Hagerty in encouraging the Republican leaders and soothing the press, to the point where it was bad taste to reckon the hazards of a second term, have come to naught . . . For all the skill of the Republican pacification campaign, the men who are determined to railroad Eisenhower into a second term may discover that their worst enemy is not a Democratic whispering campaign, or the balance of medical opinion, but the simple candor of the President himself...

...This was, indeed, a major premise of his decision to run...

...The Boston Herald admitted that "the quite real problem of his health" must be weighed, and then proceeded to weigh it with the undocumented conclusion that "very few men with a record of long activity in public affairs such as to justify taking the Presidency can offer a substantially better bill of health...

...What was the news in this press conference...

...Philadelphia Bulletin) And so it went...

...It was also true, as Reston pointed out, that the Alsop brothers, who had played the heart attack "pianissimo," approached ileitis in a different mood, writing about the none too encouraging insurance statistics on patients who suffered a heart attack and ileitis at the President's age...

...He believes the press should keep alive a "skeptical tradition" under which it "consciously tries to decontaminate political announcements...

...Failure of the Press The harvest of headlines during those first few days determined the tone of the news, and probably the temper of the public mind, for weeks to come...

...Indeed, Alistair Cooke reported to the Manchester Guardian that the attention given a chance remark by Eisenhower in Panama had shattered "the carefully contrived nonchalance of the Republican press...

...Few objections to this switch appeared in the newspapers I saw...

...His trip to Panama was taken seriously, though it had been arranged when his recovery was expected much sooner than it came, and obviously was carried out as a show to demonstrate how strong he felt...

...The Cleveland Plain Dealer, admiring the "skillfully handled" method of giving the information indirectly to the public—anything else, as it pointed out, "would have dramatized the health issue"—closed on the same note: "We can be sure that Mr...

...29 announcing his decision to run again, said: "I am determined that every American shall have all available facts concerning my personal condition and the way I am now conducting the affairs of this office...

...The Senator said newsmen in the capital had been talking about Hagerty's "skillful cover-up" but "few of them have been writing about it...

...Staff Office Set Up in Hospital —New York Herald Tribune Ike Walks As Wife Watches —Washington Post Then events moved so fast that by Monday afternoon the evening papers were saying: Ike Gets in a Little Work...

...The New York Times) "A leader committed absolutely to the best interests of all the people . . . his reason and modesty shun egotism . . " (Hearst newspapers) "Ike spoke frankly . . . Never before has a nation's leader talked to so many so candidly...

...His perfunctory 10-minute conferences with legislative and Administration leaders were treated as a full schedule...

...One paper that I saw, the Omaha World-Herald, whose editorial position generally is somewhere to the right of Senator Knowland, saw it this way: Ike Still Convalescent, Will Go South as One But I suspect that the more typical way of handling the story was that of the Indianapolis Star and the Houston Post...

...The Post decided that it would be prudent to wait until the nominations were made, and then weigh the risks of reelecting a twice-incapacitated President against "the qualifications of the strongest team the Democrats can nominate...

...Even the New York Herald Tribune, though preferring for its big type "Eisenhower Cheered by 50,000 in Surprise Panamanian Welcome," treated the "not much strength" remark as headline material...

...It was just that in the information business, as in war, he who gets there fustest with the mostest has an enormous advantage...

...Hagerty's strategy for ileitis was different from that for thrombosis...

...And A Third Term...

...Lawrence, who must have been one of the most enthusiastic backers of the two-term amendment, now decided that everybody had better get busy and repeal it, so that Eisenhower would be eligible to run in 1960...

...This pledge of candor was not kept...

...Winston Churchill was 79 when he withdrew from the Prime Minister portfolio . . ." To which it can only be added that David Lawrence is 67 and, as any fool can plainly see, going strong...

...everyone knows he means what he says now...

...The Herald Tribune, incidentally, had been one of the most extravagant in its March ecstasy...

...Truman would be eligible to run in 1960, and so it was only equitable, according to Mr...

...But Truman today is 71 and is eligible...

...The New York Daily Mirror embraced with enthusiasm the logical proposition that the President feels he can do the job, therefore he can...

...So he was an unhappy man during the spring and summer, when White House Press Secretary James Hagerty was displaying such remarkable skill in anesthetizing that skeptical tradition...

...Eisenhower's own evaluation of his condition...

...Realizing that another dramatic build-up would emphasize a second major illness within nine months, he treated this one as casually as possible, striving to create the impressiorr that ileitis was such a minor affair that of course it could not change any campaign plans...

...He won it by being first in the field, by creating events (or the semblance of events) which made news favorable to his point of view...

...At his press conference March 7 he said: "I think the people have a right to know about health...

...The reporters pressed Snyder...

...It seemed to me that the great majority of the newspapers went along...

...Perhaps the supreme demonstration of it was the June 9 press conference at Walter Reed hospital when, only a few hours after the President's life had been saved by an emergency operation, the doctors drew blackboard pictures of the President's large intestine and unqualifiedly stated their opinion that he could run...

...Walks Again, Suffers Less Pain —Louisville Times That was when Hagerty won his battle...

...His reasoning was interesting...

...reporters were more willing to dig into the medical facts...

...An offbeat in the chorus was sounded by the Washington Post and Times-Herald: "There has been a large dose of political medicine in some of the attempts to portray the President as more fit than ever as a result of his operation...

...The Chattanooga Times expressed gratitude for the President's decision to run, because of "his constant regard for the best interests of the nation, of his inherent personal honesty as well as his solicitous regard for the peace and welfare of the country...

...Yet when, within three months, he was laid low by a second serious illness, there was little disposition in the newspapers to point out that the major premise had now been canceled out...

...But in their anxiety over the future, the Republican strategists and the big guns in the business world are determined to have Ike run, even though he may not last through a second term under the pressures of the job...

...Eisenhower did not, as promised, discuss his "personal condition" with the people, though it had changed markedly with his operation...

...A Vigorous Campaign' As for the news columns, close observers could detect perhaps a slight increase in unfavorable facts and headlines after the second illness...

...Throughout, the bulk of the press seemed only too happy to cooperate in suppressing the fact that the President had been absent from effective direction of the Administration for something close to eight months in a year...

...Instead its headline read: Ike Stronger Each Day and its story quoted a remark by the President to another inquiring Latin American: "I've been improving every day...

...And if the result was a distortion of the facts, the fault lay not only with Hagerty but with the failure of the press to keep alive that "normal skeptical tradition" under which, according to Reston, it "tried to decontaminate political announcements...

...It is their business, and I think I have done pretty well in keeping them informed as to how I am, and I expect to do the same...

...The amendment was unfair to Ike, he said, since it excepted Harry Truman from its provisions...

...Associates" of the President, the public was told, were saying that the President felt definitely able to wage a vigorous campaign...

...Recalling that the President in March had promised that he would not run unless he felt absolutely up to the duties of the office, the Herald Tribune performed a feat of psychic intuition in these simple words: "He meant what he said then...

...Never before, to use a favorite editorial locution, had so many newspapers hurled themselves so unreservedly into an ailing President's campaign for a second term...

...How idle and misleading it is to pretend that the President, a former heart case and chronic sufferer from gastric disturbance, can fully regain his old vigor...

...Reston's unhappiness came out most sharply in a dispatch several weeks after the President's operation for ileitis...

...He feels in better shape than he did when he made his announcement on Feb...

...Not even when Harold E. Stassen started his belated anti-Nixon movement did the editorial writers seem to evince much interest in the fact that the President was lending himself to the hand-picking of a successor, after giving the public the impression that he would do no such thing...

...If the Senator thought there was a conspiracy between the press and Hagerty, however, he was mistaken...

...A White House press secretary, because of his great power of initiative, can make news and very largely determine the character of it...

...Walter Lippmann wrote a sober tract discussing the health issue frankly as a major aspect of the election...

...few thundering demands for more facts than Hagerty wished to give out...

...Scripps-How-ard newspapers) "A decision based on a sense of duty . . . That alone persuaded him...

...It had greeted his initial announcement of candidacy with such throbbing phrases as: "selfless decision . . . the acceptance of an added burden...

...Hagerty let the press talk to the President's surgeons just once—on the famous day after the operation when, with their patient still groggy from the anesthetic, the doctors pronounced him fit to run...

...Chancellor Adenauer is 80 and going strong...

...I noticed few challenges, few editorial complaints at the retreat from candor...

...Maybe so...

...And Lawrence noted that "at the time of the nominating conventions in 1960, Ike would be only 69, and, if elected, he would be 70 at his third inauguration...

...editors, publishers, and commentators were much more outspoken against Hagerty's efforts "to create the impression that the President was back running the government...

...But after the ileitis operation Reston saw a change...

...On the eve of the Panama trip, Press Aide Murray Snyder issued one of his cheerful bulletins, evidently for the purpose of answering some nasty talk then going around about the President's slow recovery...

...Eisenhower believes he is physically capable of handling his job...

...Drew Pearson consistently exposed the little frauds that went into the making of Hagerty's favorite myth...

...A Feat of Psychic Intuition A dominant note in the editorials greeting the President's back-handed announcement that he was still in the race, after his operation, was a childlike willingness to accept Mr...

...a record of inspired service and leadership . . . absolute personal integrity and genuine humility...

...Four—Finally, I noticed little of the skeptical tradition at work on Hagerty's masterpiece, the creation of the myth that, all during the long weeks of both convalescent periods, the President was really running his office...

...Two—In announcing his decision to run, the President told the people that he would reserve decision On a Vice Presidential candidate until the Republican National Convention met...

...Hagerty was subject to sharp questioning from time to time at his news conference...

...He can create the all-important first impression, and that is what counts...

...Now the Herald Tribune again exercised its peculiar power of reading the President's mind by finding that he "was completely candid—as he always is—and he made his decision on principle...