A presidential campaign is more than a debate, more than a chance for the electorate to compare the "views" of candidates. It is also an ordeal, a trial of character. As debate, the Nixon case did not amount to much on either side; the Democrats started an argument, lost it and wound up defending Stevenson's fund which had been brought to light by the Nixon case. As ordeal, however, the Nixon case was by far the most important event so far, in the campaign.

Few verdicts of that obscure judge, public opinion, have ever been plainer than the reaction to Nixon himself. That part of the public that could be convinced (and had to be convinced) made up its mind that he was an honest and thoroughly sincere man. His fund was probably a mistake in political judgment (as was Stevenson's) but by the time Nixon had finished speaking, the snowballing charges against him had melted down to a tactical error--and no more.

Less obvious and more important than Nixon's acquittal was Eisenhower's ordeal in the Nixon crisis. From the start, the central (and unsolved) problem of the Eisenhower campaign was how to get over in public speeches the relationship between Ike's essential character and the problems facing the nation. What the speeches had failed to do, the Nixon crisis did.

Ike had two courses easier to follow than the one he took: 1) he could have fired Nixon instanter; 2) he could have promptly announced that Nixon would stay on the ticket. Most of the advice that Ike got was for one of these courses or the other.

Political amateurs, in general, were for the first course, some of them insisting that the Nixon case offered a heaven-sent opportunity to demonstrate Ike's political purity and independence. Reporters assigned to Ike's train were almost unanimous in this view, and many of their stories reflected the fact. The argument was that whether Nixon was right or wrong he had become a liability to the ticket, and should be dumped. Had Ike listened to this view and put seeming expediency above justice to Nixon he would have belied what his friends have said of him: that his character and experience fit him for the decision-making job at a time of moral crisis and leadership crisis in the history of his country.

Professional politicians, in general, urged Ike to take the second course. If he had followed their advice and backed Nixon completely from the start, there is no doubt that Ike would have choked off much of the anti-Nixon clamor simply by removing the element of dramatic suspense from the case. But if Ike had done that, it would have sounded like an echo of the Truman "loyalty," the complacent quality in the Administration that has caused what men of both parties recognize as "the mess in Washington." Ike was neither impetuous nor smug about the Nixon crisis. He admitted a real possibility that Nixon might be wrong, but he waited for Nixon's public defense and he was not afraid of the people.

"Loyalty" (in the Truman sense) is the glue on the flypaper. It touches far more in the campaign than the corruption issue. The people are reacting strongly to the phrase "the mess in Washington" but reporters say that this does not mean merely mink coats and tax scandals. Voters who talk about "the mess in Washington" have in mind the entanglement with fellow travelers as well as the entanglement with five-percenters; they have in mind the Korean war stalemate as well as the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Blind "loyalty" to wrong men and wrong policies is as conspicuous in foreign policy as in the corruption area. "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss" has a lot in common with the "loyalty" of the Pendergast machine, and produces results far more damaging.

The art of leadership consists largely of the balance of loyalties, the weighing of facts, the finding of the problem's heart. Eisenhower in the military and diplomatic field has been demonstrating that quality for years. In the Nixon crisis he showed that he could transfer it to the political field, that leadership is not an occupational technique by an attribute of personal character.

Some of Ike's advisers think that the Republicans have won another corruption argument with the Democrats and want to continue by concentrating on Stevenson's fund and similar interesting but decidedly secondary matters. What the Nixon ordeal did was much more; by spotlighting Ike's ability to make successful decisions, it opened Ike's path toward what ought to be the center of the campaign: the question of whether Eisenhower or Stevenson is better equipped, by training and character, to remove the Communist pressure before it mounts into World War III.

In the three-room suite on the fifth floor of Los Angeles' Ambassador hotel, the tension grew with each turn of the second hand. At 6:30 that Tuesday night, Dick Nixon was to face the television cameras to explain to the nation why he had drawn on an $18,000 private fund to pay some of his political expenses as a U.S. Senator. Telephone calls poured into the hotel from G.O.P. bigwigs across the nation: some told him to fight, others told him that for the good of the party he must resign. Three hours before his broadcast Nixon sent his advisers away and ordered his telephone cut off. "I don't want to talk to anybody," he snapped as he closed his door.

The fact that weighed most heavily on Dick Nixon was that he was a man on trial, and strictly on his own. At stake were the campaign chances of the Republican Party, and his own political future. He had expected that Ike Eisenhower would make it clear to the nation that he was 100% behind Nixon. Ike had not done so. It was up to Nixon to clear himself with the people by presenting facts & figures. Until he did, Ike would not give him complete vindication.

Just before 6:30 Nixon sat down behind a desk in an NBC television studio in Hollywood, a sheaf of papers at his elbow. He had no written script, and the television crews were so uncertain of his plans that they warmed up two extra cameras in case he should walk out of range of the primary camera. Nixon's wife Pat sat in an armchair a few feet from the desk. When the announcer cued Nixon to start talking, not even Pat knew precisely what Nixon was going to say.

The Accounting. "My fellow Americans," said Nixon, as his earnest face loomed up on the nation's TV screens, "I come before you tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned." His voice was level and he showed no sign of the strain.

Was it "morally wrong" for him to have drawn on the $18,000 fund for political expenses? No, said Nixon, since the 76 contributors asked no special favors, expected none and got none. The fund was not really secret at all. And "not one cent of the $18,000, or any other money of that type, ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the U.S."

Nixon's voice took on a compelling note of seriousness as he launched his bold counterstroke: "And so now, what I am going to do--incidentally, this is unprecedented in the history of American politics--I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audience a complete financial history, everything I've earned, everything I've spent, everything I owe, and I want you to know the facts."

Most of his early life was spent in his family's grocery store in East Whittier, he said. "The only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys and we all worked in the store.

"I worked my way through college and to a great extent through law school. And then, in 1940, probably the best thing that ever happened to me happened. I married Pat, who is sitting over here." The TV camera followed Nixon's cue, turned for the first time to Pat, sitting in profile with her eyes on her husband. "I practiced law," said Nixon as the camera picked him up again, "and she continued to teach school."

Package from Texas. Then, while he served with the Navy in the South Pacific, his wife worked as a stenographer, he said. Their joint savings at the end of the war were "just a little less than $10,000." Since then, he and Pat have inherited about $4,500; he has drawn $1,600 from cases which were in his law firm before he went into politics (but not a cent from subsequent legal business). He has made an average of $1,500 a year "from nonpolitical speaking engagements and lectures." And he has had his salary as a Representative and Senator ($12,500).

"What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you because it is so little...We've got a house in Washington which cost $41,000 and on which we owe $20,000. We have a house in Whittier, Calif. which cost $13,000, and on which we owe $10,000. My folks are living there at the present time. I have just $4,000 in life insurance, plus my G.I. policy, which I've never been able to convert and which will run out in two years...I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car. We have our furniture. We have no stocks and bonds of any type. We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect in any business. I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington...I owe $3,500 to my parents...and then I have a $500 loan...on my life insurance."

Nixon had one postscript to his accounting. "One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me too--we did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from the Union Station, in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us...It was a little cocker spaniel dog...and our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know the kids...love the dog, and...regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it."

Let Them Decide. When Nixon had finished with his accounting he noted, by a swift glance at the clock, that he had used only a scant half of his allotted half-hour. So smoothly that his audience could detect no change of pace, he went into one of his back-platform attacks on the Administration. He got up from his chair and walked out in front of the desk. Then he gave the whole speech a heightened meaning when he announced that he was submitting his case to the Republican National Committee. "Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt...whatever their decision is I will abide by it...But...regardless of what happens, I'm going to continue this fight. I'm going to campaign up & down America until we drive the crooks and the Communists...out of Washington. And remember, folks, Eisenhower is a great man, believe me. He's a great man..." There in mid-sentence Nixon's time expired and the technicians cut him short. It was one more unintentional point of high drama in a dramatic half-hour, for the rest of Nixon's sentence was not half so important as the effect of his dissolving from the nation's TV screens in the midst of an appeal for Ike Eisenhower.

"I Couldn't Do It." When the red camera light blinked off, Nixon mumbled an apology for going over his time. Then he turned his face away and broke into sobs. "I couldn't do it," he said. "It wasn't any good." Studio technicians bore down on him to assure him that he was wrong; some of the TV camera crew were weeping too. Mumbled Nixon, who rarely drinks: "Let's get out of here and get a fast one. I need it."

Next morning, dog-tired, he knew he had made one of the most dramatically successful speeches in the history of U.S. politics. Toward the end of his speech he had asked his listeners to send their opinions on his case to the Republican National Committee, and people were responding as they had never responded before to a political speech. By week's end the national committee estimated that it had heard from some 2,000,000 people by telegram, letter or telephone. Some editorialists and a handful of columnists (including Walter Lippmann, Max Lerner and Westbrook Pegler) scoffed at Nixon's performance. And some professional television critics tried unconvincingly to measure him off in all the cliches of the cliche-ridden Manhattan television and advertising world. (Wrote the New York World-Telegram and Sun's Harriet Van Horne: "Senator Nixon was using what admen call the `sincere' approach.") But most newspaper editorial opinion flip-flopped thunderously to Nixon's defense.

Actually, the speech was cut to fit the charge it answered. The attack on Nixon's fund as picked up by the New York Post derived most of its power from the assumption that some of the mud would stick and thus disqualify Nixon (and, through the doctrine of guilt by association, Eisenhower) from continuing a moral crusade against corruption & Communism. The specific legal and moral case against Nixon was so foggy and so vague that Nixon would have made the mistake of his life if he had tried to answer with specific legal or ethical arguments. What he had to dispose of was not a charge that he had violated a specific ethical principle; he had to deal with the "Caesar's wife" argument, the vague but very widespread suspicion that he was somehow not an honest man. When he finished dealing with the attack, he had established himself as a man of integrity and courage. In 30 minutes, by the exposure of his personality, he had changed from a liability to his party to a shining asset.

"We've Only Begun." One man who felt the courage in the speech was Ike Eisenhower--perhaps the one man whom Nixon had uppermost in his mind during the broadcast. Soon after he was off the air Nixon got Ike's telegram of congratulations. There was still no blanket vindication, but Ike suggested a meeting with Nixon in Wheeling, W. Va. Said Nixon happily, as he hopped off for Wheeling from Stapleton airport in Denver: "I'm going to Wheeling to meet the man there who will be the next President of the United States...I can tell you we've just begun to fight."

The Acquittal

Fifteen thousand people jammed Cleveland's Public Auditorium to hear Ike Eisenhower on the night of Dick Nixon's radio & television speech. Here too, emotions were wound tight, for Ike was deep in Taft country and, with Taft's help, had been charming the suspicious and captivating the hostile at whistle stops all along the way. Ike stayed out of sight while the Cleveland audience listened transfixed to the voice of Dick Nixon, piped into the auditorium's public-address system. When Nixon finished, the audience came to its feet cheering the empty rostrum. The band burst into the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the crowd chanted, "We want Nixon!"

Ohio's Congressman George Bender, Bob Taft's braying cheerleader of last June's Republican Convention, took over as master of ceremonies. He introduced Ohio's Senator John Bricker, then went down the list to introduce every big- and little-wig in sight. He called for a voice vote on Nixon, got a roar of ayes and a few scattered noes. Then he called for another a got a floor-quaking, indisputable aye. He called for singing and bellowed his way through the band's repertoire. By this time the atmosphere was electric: the crowd sensed that Bender was playing for time, and that some big change of plans--probably the Nixon speech--was detaining Ike Eisenhower.

The Next Corner. Ike and Mamie watched Nixon on television in the auditorium manager's office upstairs. By the time Nixon's telecast ended, Mamie was dabbing at her eyes and Ike was jumping with fight. He strode into an adjoining room with four members of his staff, threw aside his prepared speech on inflation and began scribbling notes for a new speech. At 10:30 p.m., to Bender's enormous relief, Ike came into the auditorium. ("Here we go boys," he said over his shoulder. "You never know what's around the next corner.") The crowd roared its welcome.

"Tonight," said Ike, "I saw an example of courage. I have seen many brave men in tough situations. I have never seen any come through in better fashion than Senator Nixon did tonight." He recalled a dramatic parallel. "In [my World War II] command, I had a singularly brave and skillful leader. He was my lifelong friend. We were intimate. He committed an error. It was a definite error; there was no question about it. I believed that the work of that man was too great to sacrifice...He has gone before the highest judge of all, but...certainly George Patton justified my faith."

Gradually, as Ike went on, it came to his audience that he was once again the commander, still reserving decision on Nixon until he could talk with him face to face. He was sending Nixon a telegram, said Ike "...To complete the formulation of...[my] personal decision, I feel the need of talking to you, and would be most appreciative if you could fly to see me at once. Tomorrow night I shall be at Wheeling, West Virginia...Whatever personal admiration and affection I have for you (and they are very great) are undiminished." When Ike was through talking, he ducked his head and walked, grim-faced and square- jawed, from the rostrum. Bob Taft jumped up and shook his hand. The crowd streamed out; it was obviously shaken and affected by a great emotional experience.

Two in a Booth. As the Eisenhower train jogged from station to station across Ohio and West Virginia toward Wheeling, Ike's feelings about Nixon became plainer at every stop. "He's going to come in at Wheeling tonight," Ike said at Kenova, W. Va., "and he and I are going to have a talk. He will come in swinging and he will go out swinging, by golly. You know that." At Portsmouth, Ohio, the commander demonstrated the communication frailties of a campaign train. He hopped off the train and squeezed into a telephone booth with Chief Strategist Sherman Adams while they put through a call to work out details of the Wheeling meeting.

That night, 45 minutes behind schedule, Nixon's plane touched down in the chilly starlight at Wheeling at 9:57 p.m. When the door opened, Pat Nixon and the staff left the plane, but Nixon lagged behind to put on his coat. Ike Eisenhower, who had been waiting at the airport for almost an hour, hesitated for a moment outside the plane, then bounded up the steps into the cabin. Nixon was startled. "Why, general, you shouldn't have come out here," he stammered. "Dick," said Ike, "you're my boy." Ike had his arm around Nixon's shoulder as they came down the steps in a flare of flashbulbs.

The two candidates talked alone in the back seat of a big Chrysler sedan as the motorcade sped down from the mountain-top airport, raced through Wheeling and drew up at the Wheeling Island football stadium. There, a crowd of 8,000 had been shivering for hours.

Higher Than Before. Eisenhower read through his prepared speech (on the strength of Republican unity) before he came to the end and went on to what the audience, Dick Nixon and the rest of the U.S. wanted to hear. Finally, in a hoarse voice, Ike began to ad-lib: "Ladies and gentlemen, my colleague in this political campaign has been subject to a very unfair and vicious attack. So far as I am concerned, he has not only vindicated himself, but I feel that he has acted as a man of courage and honor and, so far as I am concerned, stands higher than ever before." The crowd went wild.

Nixon sat unsmiling on the platform, his eyes fixed on the back of Ike's head, until Ike said: "And now I give you Dick Nixon." For 15 minutes, Nixon rambled through an excited speech on Candidate Eisenhower, while Ike watched with a fatherly smile. After Nixon finished, he turned slowly toward his seat, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, then began to weep and buried his head on the shoulder of California's senior Senator, Bill Knowland.

The crowd started to go home, and suddenly everything was over. Ike and Nixon drove to the Wheeling railroad station and walked slowly through the empty waiting room to a Pullman marked "official." Nobody followed. Everybody was too exhausted.