TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/52elect/52elect.003

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                                                                                June 16, 1952

REPUBLICANS

Homecoming



     They saw Ike, and they liked what they saw.

     They liked him because he turned out to be an amazingly good
campaigner: he could shake a man's hand and say the gracious word
graciously; he could catch a delegate's name and remember it 24
hours later: and he could shoulder gently through a harassing
crowd and never get harassed. They liked him for his strong,
vigorous manner of speech, for his quiet control when schedules
collapsed or plans were drenched with rain, and for an
overriding, innate kindliness and modesty.

     But most of all, they liked him in way they could scarcely
explain. They liked Ike because, when they saw him and heard him
talk, he made them proud of themselves and all the half-forgotten
best that was in them and in the nation.

     Back Door. It was a crashing conquest for the man who flew
westward out of Washington one afternoon last week, a known
soldier but an unknown candidate. He landed at Kansas City,
Kans., and spent a quiet, secluded night on the 14th floor of the
new Town HOuse, waking up at 4 a.m. and worrying about his first
campaign speech. At 7:30 a.m. Ike, Mamie, newsmen and the
campaign brass climbed aboard a Santa Fe streamliner bound for
the little (pop. 6,000) town of Abilene, where the U.S. would
watch Ike make his political debut.

     The first omens were discouraging. When the train stopped at
Emporia for a crew change, Ike's green campaign managers suddenly
realized that it was time for the candidate to make a back-
platform appearance. Then, to their horror, they discovered that
the duck-tailed streamliner had no back platform. Ike spent the
first few minutes waving and grinning through the windows at the
crowd. A porter struggled with a small door at the rear of the
car and finally got it open. Ike stepped to the door and was just
reaching down to shake an upstretched hand as the engineer
started up, leaving half the reporters and photographers behind.
a trainman flagged down the train half a block away. Said Ike,
grinning ruefully: "I darn near fell out the door."

     First Platform. The train was still honking its way across
the flat, green wheatland when the crowds began to drift into an
open field beside the tracks in Abilene. At 12:30 p.m. the
humming Diesel nosed its way past the band and the bunting,
stopped so its last car was even with a roped-off boardwalk. The
Kansans cheered and crowded close as the ruddy, bareheaded man in
the grey double-breasted suit climbed down the steps, beamed,
waved and shook hands around. Then, with Mamie on his right, Ike
made his way through the clamor and the handshakes to his first
political platform.

     The ceremony in the center of the field was only a
preliminary to the big political speech scheduled for later in
the afternoon. Ike and three of his brothers-Milton, the
president of Penn State College, Arthur, the Kansas City banker,
and Edgar, the Tacoma, Wash. lawyer-were there to trowel the
cornerstone of the $100,000 Eisenhower Museum set up by the
citizens of Kansas. The television cameras and the radio networks
stayed away, and Ike had no prepared speech. But as he sat
pensively, waiting for his turn to talk, his eyes drifted toward
the small white clapboard house across the field, half hidden by
poplars. There, on the wrong side of the tracks, David and Ida
Eisenhower had raised their six boys. (Son Earl, a Charleroi, Pa.
electrical engineer, was missing from the ceremony; Roy, a Kansas
pharmacist, died in 1942. A seventh son, Paul, died in infancy.)
When Kansas' Governor Edward F. Arn introduced him, Ike stood up
at the rostrum with an intent and distant look across his face.

     "Inevitably, on such an occasion as this, memory is bound to
turn backward," he began. "In fact, this day eight years ago, I
made the most agonizing decision of my life. I had to decide to
postpone by at least 24 hours the most formidable array of
fighting ships and of fighting men that was ever launched across
the sea against a hostile shore. the consequences of that
decision at that moment could not have been foreseen by anyone.
If there were nothing else in my life to prove the existence of
an almighty and merciful God, the events of the next 24 hours did
it . . . The greatest break in a terrible outlay of weather
occurred the next day and allowed that great invasion to proceed,
with losses far below those we had anticipated . . ."

     Before Ike began talking, the people in the audience had
drifted back & forth to shake hands with friends, to visit and
titter while the preliminaries droned on. Now they were silent
and attentive in the intimacy of great events.

     "But that is not really where my memory wants to land today
as it travels back over the years. It is to the days of my
boyhood . . . I want to call attention to the virtues of the
times, to-at least as my brothers and I devoutly believe-the
extraordinary virtues of our parents. First of all, they believed
the admonition, 'The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.'
their Bibles were a live and lusty influence in their lives.
There was nothing sad about their religion. They believed in it
with a happiness and a contentment that all would be well if a
man would take the cards that he had been dealt in this world and
play them to the best of his ability . . ."

     "What Are You Afraid Of?" By now the audience had caught
both Ike's mood and his memories. There were scowls when a baby
squawled in the damp afternoon heat, and the baby was quickly
hushed. When two photographic planes sputtered low over the
crowd, the people glanced up at the heedless intrusion, then
turned back to listening.

     "And they were frugal, possibly of necessity, because I have
found out in later years we were poor, but the glory of America
is that we didn't know it then. All that we knew was that our
parents-of great courage-could say to us: 'Opportunity is all
about you. Reach out and take it. Do you want to go to school?
Well, go. What are you afraid of? Do you have to stand around
until someone comes along with a fat checkbook and takes care of
every possible care or difficulty you can have in that school?'
They didn't believe so. They were thrifty, they were economical,
and they were honest . . .

     "They were people of great courage, and I think they never
stooped-they never had time-to hate or despise an enemy, or those
that used them spitefully. I don't think they ever loved the
drought and the locusts that ruined their first business down in
your little town of Hope, a few miles south or here-a drought and
the locusts that really drove them to Texas and brought about the
strange paradox in our family that I was born in Texas. (The
Kansans rumbled a laugh.) But they accepted these trials and
tribulations, and met them with courage and with never a thought
of failure. They were a part and parcel of their community, of
the philosophy that then governed our lives . . ."

     Days of Interdependence. "Those days were essentially simple
ones. We did not feel intimately any relationship with Iran. We
did not think about needing the tin and tungsten of Malaya, or
the
uranium of the Belgian Congo or the tin of Bolivia. We felt,
rather, independent and alone . . . But now we realize the world
is a great interdependent, complex entity . . . We have learned
no part of us can prosper, no nation can really in the long run
be at peace and have security unless others enjoy the same."

     Then, with great humility and clarity, Eisenhower made his
main point:

     "And yet, in spite of the difficulties of the problems we
have, I ask you this one question: If each of us in his own mind
would dwell more upon those simple virtues -- integrity, courage,
self-confidence and unshakable belief in his Bible -- would not
some of these problems tend to simplify themselves? Would not we,
after having done our very best with them, be content to leave
the rest with the Almighty, and not to charge all our fellow men
with the fault of bringing us where we were and are? I think it
is possible that a contemplation, a study, a belief in those
simple virtues would help us mightily."

     The Level. As Ike said, the creed was an old one. But the
man, the year and the place made it new and alive. This was not
the local-boy makes-good story. It was not the up-from-log-cabin
story. Nor was Ike suggesting that all problems could be solved
by the simple equations of rural Kansas. This was the story of
fundamentals which had served Ike Eisenhower well -- and through
him, the nation. It was the creed of the man who could say "Free
government is the political expression of a deeply felt religious
faith."

     Ike still had ahead of him his formal plunge into partisan
arguments and specific debates, but the 5,000 Kansans who
clustered in the open field by the clapboard house knew the level
and temper of his character. In simple, unmistakable words, the
man had described his philosophical foundations. Now the
candidate could go ahead.

     By the time the cornerstone speech was over, the skies were
dark and threatening, and a few drops spattered down on the black
sod. Ike perched on the top of the back seat of a green Cadillac
convertible and was driven out through the crowds, smiling and
waving. The car turned up toward Abiliene's business district,
past the "Welcome Home Ike" banners on every lamppost and in
every store window. It stopped on Northwest Third Street at the
Sunflower Hotel, a plain, eight-story square brick building which
is Abilene's only skyline.

     Ike and Mamie pressed through the sidewalk throng, through
the crowded lobby, and into a waiting elevator. On the sixth
floor they found comparative quiet; newly redecorated, this floor
was reserved for the Eisenhower party and guarded by two burly
cops from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. For lunch, the
Eisenhowers went down one floor to the apartment of Hotel Manager
Mike Biggs and his wife Eulalia. They hurried through fruit
salad, stewed chicken peas, mashed potatoes and a dish of
pineapple sherbert. Then Ike and Mamie climbed out on the top of
the hotel marquee to join the political brass in a review of the
Ike homecoming parade.

     Pink Clouds. Ike took the salute like a candidate who was in
love with his job. He nudged Mamie when the first float rolled
by; it was a replica of the white frame house where he was born
in Denison, Texas, and bore a sign which read: "Birth Date Oct.
14, 1890." He did a little caper on the marquee when the
highschool band played Alexander's Ragtime Band. And he grabbed
Mamie and hugged her when he saw the "marriage float," bearing
two Abilene youngsters on pink clouds in front of a heart-shaped
lattice. The last float-Ike at the White House-had just passed
when the dark clouds opened up and the rains spilled.

     It rained in torrents while every eye in town watched the
clock hands turn toward 5 o'clock, the time for Ike's big,
nationwide TV and radio speech from Eisenhower Park. Ike's old
high-school friend, Howard Keel, ran down to his clothing store,
snatched 26 raincoats off a rack and hustled them up to the sixth
floor of the sunflower for the official party. he knew Ike's
size-42-without asking. And to keep the rain off Ike's glasses,
Howard lent his own broad-brimmed hat to the candidate.

     By the time Ike got to the park, the grandstand was half
empty, and the highschool bands-drawn from all over Kickinson
County-were huddling in cars and under eaves, dodden and
miserable. The television men urged Ike to talk from a dry room
under the stands, but when he heard that half of his audience had
stuck through the rain, he turned on his heel and splashed
through the thick, black mud to the outdoor platform. A
solicitous aide tried to shield him with a big umbrella, but Ike
brushed it aside. Then he tossed away his broad-brimmed hat, and,
with rain splattering on his bald head, began his maiden
political speech to the U.S.

     Four Threats. First he established that he was a Republican
and gave his reasons why. "Evils which can ultimately throttle
free government are present in today's situation," he said. He
listed "four of these threats, which seem to me to be dangerous
lapses from the American way of life . . . disunity, inflation,
excessive taxation, bureaucracy."

     He scrupulously mentioned no names, but touched a responsive
chord when he said: "On party has been in power too long in this
country." On foreign affairs, where he could have hit hard, he
seemed to pull his punches. "The mystery must be removed from
foreign relations -- our essential requirements and objectives
must be clearly set forth," he said. "Americans astinctively and
properly dread the kind of secrecy that surrounded Yalta . . .
China was lost to the free world in one of the greatest
international disasters of our times -- a type of tragedy that
must not be repeated."

     Cut away from the drama of Abilene, Ike's formal address
sounded like too many political speeches ("Five-star
generalities," snorted the pro-Taft Chicago Tribune). Ike's
speaking ability was not of high enough order to sustain the
thread of meaning through some crudely tailored sentences.
Overelaborate West Point English, completely absent from his
morning talk in the field, sat stodgily on the afternoon address.
(Ike wrote the speech in Paris, and it was pawed over by a
committee of his strategists in the U.S.). Radio listeners liked
it least. For those at Abilene and for the estimated ten million
who saw Ike deliver it on television, the speech was redeemed by
the speaker. In his face were force, sincerity and spontaneity;
it was a very fine performance by a man who understood, and cared
about, what he was saying.

     Tactful Command. The next day brought the toughest ordeal in
the candidate's initiation -- the press conference. Just before 9
o'clock, he walked on the stage of Abilene's little Plaza Theater
to face the popping flashbulbs of the still photographers, the
batteries of photoloods from the newsreels and television
cameras, and 300 reporters. He had not counted on television, and
took his stand at the seven microphones with his head ducked and
a frown on his face. But when he looked out into the glare and
promised to answer "as many questions as I can in a period of 45
minutes," he took tactical and tactful command over the situation
and he never once lost it, either at Abilene or at his subsequent
press conference in New York.

     On the Record. It was clear at the outset that Ike wanted to
get on the record just what brand of domestic Republican he was.
Without waiting for a question, he identified as the basis of his
"political philosophy" a joint declaration by the Republicans in
Congress and by the Republican National Committee on Feb. 6,
1950. Few reporters could remember it. But later they recalled
that the "liberty v. socialism" theme of the statement was more
conservative than the 1948 Republican platform, that it was
drafted by Bob Taft and opposed at the time by Ike's prime
campaign worker, Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

     Ike had one other major point to clear up: he shares no
blame for the policy-making of the two Democratic Administrations
eh has served with military rank. "I never heard President
Roosevelt directly state a single political concept of his in my
life, except over the radio . . . I have never been a part of any
administration. Therefore I have not been a part of . . . the
total foreign policy of the U.S., nor, indeed, have I been
cognizant of many of the factors."

     End Runs. Ike stuck to his promise that he would not engage
in personalities during the campaign, but he did manage two
notable end runs around it. When he was asked about General
MacArthur, who has been pointedly anti-Eisenhower and pro-Taft in
public speeches, Ike blended charity and wisdom in an effective
reply: "I could not have served any man . . . as I did General
MacArthur, without gaining a tremendous respect for his
intellectual and professional capacity. If I had to have any
position of great responsibility in this country . . . I should
certainly want to know what he thought (about the Far East)."

     End run No. 2 took care of Joe McCarthy. Said Ike: "Any kind
of Communistic, subversive or pinkish influence (must) be
uprooted from responsible places in our government. Made no
mistake about that. On the other hand, I believe that can be done
under competent leadership . . . without besmirching the
reputation of any innocent man or condemning by loose association
or anything else."

     Very Unpleasant. The only question that rocked Ike
momentarily was one popped in Manhattan two days later by a
crank. The questioner tried to pin down his charge that
Eisenhower was associated with Alger Hiss. The question was only
half out when Ike reddened, scowled and snapped: "What did you
say? What did you say?" Then he quieted the uproar from the
legitimate correspondents and said:

     "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say one thing. I do not
believe that it is necessary for me to defend myself against (the
taint of) Communism or Fascism in any form . . . The man whose
name was just mentioned I saw once in my life. I joined the
Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, and when I went up I
found that mr. His was its president . . . I never saw him before
or since . . . To my mind, that is a very unpleasant question."

     Ike's natural warmth could not be caught by headlines. He
delighted reporters in Abilene by coming up with the word
"skyhootin'" (what prices do during inflation.) He misused a
favorite word of Fourth-of-July orators-"shibboleth"-by adding
that it meant something that's "just false; not true." (Real
meaning: criterion or watchword, because the Gileadites
recognized the Ephraimites as their enemies when the Ephraimites
mispronounced the hebrew word "shibboleth" as "shibboleth."
(Judges 12:6). Ike's own troops used a similar shibboleth during
the Battle of the Bulge when they tried to trap English-speaking
German spies by asking them who won the World Series.) he did not
once say "no comment," and pleased many with a frank substitute:
"I don't know."

     He retired from the Plaza Theater leaving the conference in
a glow, thanks to a curtain question shouted across the
auditorium by a newsreel cameraman. The question: "Mr.
Eisenhower, did you ever dream some day when you left Abilene
that you would come back and run for the presidency of the U.S.?"
Ike smiled rubbed his head, and squinted into the lights. "I
don't know what dreams crowd the head of a young boy," he said,
"but I think that before I left, my real problem was whether to
try to be a Hans Wagner" or a railroad conductor. I remember that
both of them were very important."

     The fact was that the politicians began to dream about Ike
as a candidate long before he himself ever dreamed of the
presidency. In 1948 he turned down substantial support for first
the Republican and then the Democratic nominations. After Dewey's
defeat, Ike was approached by a group of badly shaken Republican
brasshats, who were beginning to fear that the G.O.P. might go
out of existence unless it got a winner-and that with it would go
the two-party system and all chances of ending centralized, new
Deal government. Said the G.O.P. men: "We might have to use you."
And they asked Ike to keep his availability open and his mouth
shut.

     Ike heeded only half the request, but he decided that if a
political movement was building under him, it was his duty to
speak out and make his position clear. As president of Columbia,
he expounded his philosophy of free enterprise in series of
speeches ranging from New York to Texas. He stopped talking
abruptly when Harry Truman called him back into uniform to set up
SHAPE in January 1952. But the political movement bubbled and
boiled at home until, at the end of 1952 Ike told his U.S.
backers that he would be willing to try for the nomination.

     He flew home into the arms of a campaign organization that
is half enthusiastically amateur and half coolly professional
Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. is its No. 1 man and
coordinator. He is no great shakes as a political organizer or
strategist, but he has skillfully managed to keep the diverse
elements of the Ike drive in one camp (e.g., the New York
Deweyites and the Westerners like Lodge slightly better than they
like each other). The others on Ike's strategy board are Paul
Hoffman, General Lucius Clay, Kansas' Senator Frank Carlson, Tom
Dewey and Pennsylvania's Senator Jim Dough. The tough essential
job of collaring delegates is left to the calloused hands Dewey's
1948 campaign manager, Herbert Brownell.

     "I Don't Suppose It Matters." If Eisenhower must win more
delegates win the nomination, and Ike knows it. On the way from
Kansas City to Abilene Ike doggedly went through the train shake
hands with his boosters and saw 50 Midwestern delegates who were
about. For the most part, these were already technically his
delegates, but the open-handed, hearty, Eisenhower charm turned
many into glowing enthusiasts. What Ike came to Mr. and Mrs. John
Hayes of Hutchinson, Kans., he said, to their delight: "I don't
suppose it matters to you, but it matters to me. I played
baseball in Hutchinson on May 15, 1909."

     He was even better when he stood in the corner of the living
room in charlie Case's house in Abilene and shook hands down the
long, long line. To an Abilene man who had been in the homecoming
parade Ike said: "Say, you did a swell job!" To a young man
introduced as a veteran Ike gave the big grip and shouted above
the din: "You look like a damn soldier." To an Iowan delegate who
wanted to know if he was a me-too candidate, Ike was blunt: "If
they say I'm me-tooing just because I want to keep the good
things that have been done in the last 20 years while I'm
throwing out the bad things-if that's me-too, why they can go to
hell."

     Mamie, with a cool eye for business, was a great help. When
Ike was getting ready to start out on one of his hand-shaking
tours Mamie told him: "Tell the girls-I mean the ladies-to come
on back here and I'll talk to them." A man from Missouri rode up
to the sixth floor of the Sunflower to report proudly that
Missouri probably would go 22 for Ike and four for Taft. Said
Mamie: "What's the matter with those four? Let's work on them."

     Ike and Mamie both felt like seasoned campaigners when they
flew into New York for their second major political welcome. Tom
Dewey greeted them at the airport and drove them across manhattan
in his limousine to Ike's New York residence, the president's
house at Columbia University.

     On Sunday the Eisenhowers slipped off to the 11 a.m. service
at the interdenominational Riverside Church, stopped after the
sermon to chat with the minster, Dr. Robert J. McCracken. Ten
minutes after they got back home, Pennsylvania's Governor John
fine arrived for lunch and a political conference which lasted
nearly four hours. After that the delegate parade was on: by the
end of the week, when he makes his Detroit speech, Ike will have
shaken the hands of some 500 delegates from 18 states.

     The Real Measure. Some of Ike's managers wildly claimed that
their candidate had picked up 50 Taft delegates in Abilene alone.
Such claims were wishingful thinking, of which there is a lot in
the Eisenhower camp. But in his short first week, Ike had
certainly struck a spark in his own followers. Ikemen, who had
hoped-before Abilene-that they might win, now fanned across the
U.S., convinced that they must.

     But the real measure of Ike's first days in politics
stretched beyond handshakes, delegate counts and party workers.
By laying down the values and convictions of his own faith, Ike
Eisenhower had already done much to lift the 1952 political
campaign toward his own high level of character. For that, win or
lose, the U.S. could be grateful.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
IKE GIVES SOME ANSWERS

     "The press conference," wrote Columnist Walter Lippmann this
week, "has become an institution . . . for overcoming that
growing threat to honest journalism, the ghost-written speech and
the public-relations facade . . . In its fullest modern
development (it) is an ordeal which searches a man's personality
far more deeply than it does his principles and his policies."
The words were especially true in the case of Ike Eisenhower, and
it was Ike's character that won the week with newsmen. But Ike's
press conferences also produced answers on policies & principles.
Samples:

     -- Foreign Policy: He would "go any place in this world" to
talk to Stalin if he thought it would do any good, but nothing is
negotiable as long as the Soviet Union uses "subversion, bribery,
corruption (and) threat of force . . . to try to destroy our form
of government." He believes the loss of Western Europe would put
the U.S. "in mortal danger," and favors a more dynamic U.S.
foreign policy.

     -- Korea: "I do not have any prescription for bringing the
thing to a decisive end . . . I believe we have got to stand firm
and take every possible step we can tko reduce our losses, and
try to get a decent armistice out of it . . . There has been
built up behind the Yalu River a very definite air strength that
would make very dangerous any attempt to end the war at this
moment, until we have a bigger buildup of our own." But he
implies that he would favor counterattacks on china "if I am
attacked in a broad way by anything that you can call a
nationalistic attack."

     -- China: "I do not know who is to blame for the loss of
China. I do know that the diplomatic triumphs of that period, if
any, were claimed by the party in power. The party in power,
therefore, has to take some responsibility for any losses we have
suffered . . . When we see 400 million people falling under the
domination of this communistic dictatorship . . . it is a
diplomatic, or let us say, an international disaster of the first
magnitude."

     -- FEPC: He would not endorse the current FEPC program
because eh objects to its "federal, compulsory" nature. But he
gives small comfort to the advocates of segregation, promises "my
unalterable support of fairness and equality among all types of
American citizens. I believe that insofar as the Federal
Government has any influence or any constitutional authority in
this field, all of its means, all of its expenditures, all of its
policies should adhere firmly and without any kind of
equivocation to that principle . . ."

     -- Federal Aid to Education: He opposes a law which puts
"Washington bureaucracy" into education, because "education is
one of those local functions that we should guard jealously . . .
(But) I think that there is a certain level of education that is
absolutely necessary . . . When we can show when any particular
section does not have the proper, adequate means to educate its
children to that level, I would certainly be in favor of help to
that specific area."

     -- Socialized Medicine: "I do believe that every American
has a right to decent medical care, (but) I am against
socialization . . . and submitting our lives toward a control
that would lead inevitably to socialism."

     -- The President's Powers: As he sees it, Congress is the
agency which should first decide when the nation is in a national
emergency. It should also empower the President in advance to act
in an emergency. It should also empower the President in advance
to act in an emergency. Thus empowered, the Chief Executive
should have the right "to act decisively when single action and
quick action is demanded." This does not mean that Ike agrees
with Harry Truman's seizure of steel, because there is a "vast
difference" between a real emergency "and what we were discussing
in the steel difficulty."