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h34568: 1««The Eisenhower Years
[The 1952 presidential election pitted genial Republican General
Dwight Eisenhower, NATO's European Supreme Commander who promised
to "go to Korea" to help end the stalemate there, against eloquent
Democratic ex-Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson. The chief
issues were moral ones -- the need for new leadership, for a clean
government, for a clear anti-Communist stance at home and abroad.
That was why the revelation that the G.O.P. vice presidential
candidate, Senator Richard Nixon, had apparently benefited
illegally from a special "millionaires" fund came as such a
shock.]
(September 29, 1952)
The story hit the Eisenhower campaign train as it made its way
across the Midwest on Thursday evening. Correspondents got the
first news of the Nixon fund when they picked up local newspapers
in Nebraska. Almost instantly the words "Nixon" and "millionaires
club" zipped through the train. Ike's advisers decided that Ike
should preface his forthcoming evening speech -- on corruption in
government -- with Dick Nixon's formal statement.
It was a unique moment in U.S. political history when the G.O.P.
presidential candidate came to the microphones in Kansas City's
Municipal Auditorium and, in a clear, calm voice, read off the vice
presidential candidate's explanation of his conduct. Said Nixon,
through Ike: "Because of continued misrepresentation concerning
disbursement of a fund which was collected and expended for
legitimate political purposes, I have asked the trustee of this
fund, Dana Smith of Pasadena, to make a full report to the public
of this matter..." When Ike finished reading, he added: "Knowing
Dick Nixon as I do, I believe that when the facts are known to all
of us, they will show that Dick Nixon would not compromise with
what is right. Both he and I believe in a single standard of
morality in public life."
Meanwhile, Eisenhower's campaign train was still in turmoil.
Later on the day that Smith produced his details, Eisenhower
himself talked with reporters on his campaign train about the Nixon
case. Ike posed for pictures driving an angry fist into his palm.
His conversation was not for quotation, but the papers soon
blossomed out with stories that Ike would not run on the same
ticket with Nixon unless Nixon came out of his trouble "clean as
a hound's tooth." The tabloid New York Mirror reflected the
indirect statements in a more direct headline; EXPLAIN
OR QUIT, IKE TO NIXON.
(October 6, 1952)
"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 to this time to give to this
television and radio audience a complete financial history,
everything I owe, and I want you to know the facts."
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.
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.
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 we 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."
(November 10, 1952)
Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency of the U.S. in a ballot-box
revolution. The size of the vote was impressive in itself, 55% of
the popular vote, 38 states (with Kentucky, Missouri and Louisiana
still in doubt 18 hours after the count began) and at least 429 of
the 531 electoral votes.
More impressive than the number of votes was the revolutionary
quality that appeared when the details of the balloting were set
side-by-side with the issues of the campaign and the state of the
nation in which the campaign was waged.
It was fought and won on transcendent issues of morality: 1)
clean government, 2) government for all the people and not for
special groups, and 3) government that would express in foreign and
domestic policy the moral beliefs that lie at the root of U.S. life
and greatness.
(March 8, 1954)
At the first sound of gunfire, most Congressmen thought that it
was a prank -- a string of firecrackers or a cap pistol. The shots
pinged everywhere. Two hit the ceiling, nicking off fist-sized
chunks of plaster. Another bored a one-inch hole in the Republican
legislative table, stinging the face of Republican Whip Leslie
Arends with splinters, showering bits of wood on three California
Congressmen who were piled up underneath the table. Other members
dropped to the floor. Shouted Representative Benjamin James of
Pennsylvania: "My God, this is real!"
Big Ben Jensen of Iowa was standing directly under the Ladies'
Gallery when the shooting began. He staggered, hit by a bullet that
was intended for Martin. Jensen gasped "They got me," and tottered
through a door into the Speaker's Lobby. There he fell on his back
in a widening pool of blood. Michigan's Alvin Bentley was standing
by his seat in the third row when a bullet ripped into his chest.
He slumped to his seat, then toppled over unconscious in the well
of the House.
Cliff Davis of Tennessee was hit by a bullet that passed through
his leg. Another slug landed in the hip of Maryland's George
Fallon. A third pierced the thigh of Alabama's Kenneth Roberts.
On the gallery floor, Foreign Affairs Committee Clerk Boyd
Crawford heard the shots crack out, raced into the corridor just
in time to see the first gunman emerge from the gallery, gun in
hand. Crawford, an amateur marksman, lunged for the pistol, jammed
his finger into the trigger guard, and with the aid of a bystander
knocked the man to the tiled floor. A page boy and three
Congressmen, assisted by a crowd of outraged spectators, subdued
and disarmed the other two.
The three hustled off to jail were Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel
Miranda and Andres Figueroa Cordero -- all members of the terrorist
Nationalist party of Puerto Rico, the same group that made the
attempt to storm Blair House and assassinate Harry Truman in 1950.
A fourth member of the gang was picked up at a bus terminal. The
four had left New York that morning, buying one-way railroad
tickets in the expectation that they would lose their lives. In the
woman's handbag, police found a penciled suicide note. "Before God,
and the world," it said, "my blood claims for the independence of
Puerto Rico. My life I give for the freedom of my country. This is
a cry for victory in our struggle for independence..." On the back
of the note was scrawled: "I take responsible for all."
[In 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in a
glare of publicity not endured by predecessors, like Franklin D.
Roosevelt, when they were in poor health. Eight months later, when
the President seemed fully recovered and well on his way to re-
election, he suffered an attack of ileitis, an intestinal
obstruction, that necessitated surgery. But not even that was to
stop him from winning a second term by a landslide.]
(November 12, 1956)
The Eisenhower avalanche was awesome in its force and fury. It
crushed Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the entire Northeast, swept
across Midwestern farmlands with a setback only in Missouri,
shattered Democratic presidential hopes on the Pacific Coast and
burst through traditional Democratic barriers in the South -- where
Ike carried Texas, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and, unbelievably, Louisiana. It tore city after city -
- from Jersey City to Chicago to Montgomery -- from the Democratic
grasp. I cut across nearly all racial, religious, ethnic and
economic lines. It gave Dwight Eisenhower a victory surging toward
the 10 million plurality mark, with about 58% of the U.S. vote and
victories in 41 states. The immensity of the Eisenhower triumph
made it inconceivable that he would not carry other Republicans
with him. But millions of U.S. voters split their tickets in an
astonishing personal tribute to the President. More than 15 hours
after the polls closed, his party was still in a struggle for
control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives -- a
fact that made shaky even Ike's own claim that is was a victory
for "modern Republicanism."
[A year later, the President was stricken again. Once again, he
made a remarkably swift recovery.
Vice President Nixon had long played the role of good-will
ambassador for his chief of state, making a round-the-world trip
in 1953 and visits to the Caribbean in 1955, the Far and Middle
East in 1956 and Africa in 1957. In 1958, Nixon undertook another
foray, an eight-nation tour of South America. This time, in many
places the good will was terrifyingly absent. The animosity he met
in Peru, where he was stoned at a Lima university, was Communist-
orchestrated. But the real threat came in Venezuela.]
(May 26, 1958)
Over the rigid shoulders of a line of Venezuelan soldiers at
Maiquetia Airport, streams of spittle arced through humid sunlight,
splattered on the neatly pressed grey suit of the Vice President
of the U.S. and on the red wool suit of his wife. But worse was in
store: less than an hour later Dick and Pat Nixon brushed close to
injury and possibly death in violence-torn streets of Caracas, last
stop on their eight-nation visit to South America.
The spitting began as the Nixons walked along the troop-lined red
carpet toward their limousines. The band made a futile attempt to
quiet the crowd by playing the Venezuelan national anthem; Pat
Nixon shamed a hooting, teen-aged girl into silence by reaching
over the guards' bayonets to take her hand. As the Nixon got into
separate cars for the ten-mile superhighway trip up the coastal
range to the capital, demonstrators tried to blind the drivers by
draping banners over the windshields. Only when the mob was left
behind did the Nixons take handkerchiefs to wipe the saliva from
their faces and clothes. In the thick traffic of the working-class
suburb of Catia, the caravan slowed to a crawl, then halted.
Several hundred rioters came running. They ripped the U.S. and
Venezuelan flags from Nixon's car, pounded the doors with clubs,
pipes, brass artillery-shell cases. Grapefruit-sized stones smashed
against the safety glass until slivers began flying through the
inside of the car. A shower of glass struck Nixon, one piece
lodging in his temple near his right eye (it was easily removed).
One U.S. Secret Service man threw himself across he back window of
Nixon's car to protect it from stones and clubs. Others pulled at
a stubborn student lying under the car's front wheels. The howling
mob tried to overturn the car.
After twelve minutes' bitter combat, the limousine bucked ahead,
bound for the tomb of Simon Bolivar, where Nixon was scheduled to
lay a wreath. A block from the tomb the car suddenly veered off
into side street. Glancing through a shattered side window, Nixon
could see a mob of 3,000 rioters, mostly high school students,
waiting for him.
(Days later, policemen found 400 Molotov cocktails cached in the
basement of a nearby house.) The limousine sped off to the safety
of the U.S. embassy residence.
[One of the few scandals to besmirch the Eisenhower years broke
in 1958, when the President chose to defend the conduct of his
chief of staff, Sherman Adams, who had accepted gifts from a
wheeler-dealer businessman. The President thus appeared to condone
an exception to his long-held principle that any White House staff
member accused of improper conduct should be dismissed. The case
dragged on for four months.]
(September 29, 1958)
Privately, bitterly, Dwight Eisenhower described it as "the most
hurtful, the hardest, the most heartbreaking decision" of his 5 1/2
years in office. The decision: to ask for the resignation of hard-
bitten little Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President, next to
Ike the most powerful man in the Administration, and the only
person of whom Dwight Eisenhower had ever said, "I need him."
The Sherman Adams verdict was one of the most dramatic
behind-the-scenes stories in recent U.S. political history. In a
sense, as TIME's Washington Bureau Chief John Steele reported this
week, it had been inevitable ever since last June when a House
investigating subcommittee revealed that Adams had accepted a
vicuna coat, $12,000 in hotel bills and other gifts from Boston
Textile Wheeler-Dealer Bernard Goldfine. In turn, Adams had
interceded for Goldfine with Federal regulatory agencies. President
Eisenhower's original decision to stand behind Adams imposed an
intolerable double standard of Administration ethics.
Last August 20, Vice President Richard Nixon called on President
Eisenhower with a painful message: nearly all G.O.P., Senate and
House nominees insisted that Adams' continued presence in the White
House was ruining them politically. A day or so later, Republican
National Chairman Meade Alcorn added something to the Nixon
message; major Republican financial contributors were snapping shut
their wallets until after "the Adams mess" was cleaned up.
Shaken by Nixon and Alcorn, the President ordered Alcorn to make
a top-secret survey of Republican sentiment at a forthcoming
national committee meeting in Chicago. Alcorn's finding: a near-
unanimous opinion that Adams must go.
[In 1958, Alaska was admitted to the union as the 49th state,
setting the precedent of incorporating territory not geographically
contiguous with the other 48 states. Having done it once, the U.S.
did it again nine months later, making Hawaii state No. 50.]
(July 14, 1958)
It was time for the Senate vote that could add a 49th star to the
U.S. flag. Interior Secretary Fred Seaton, getting word that
diehard opposition, mostly Southern, had gasped its last, rushed
from a steak dinner to Capitol Hill. Alaska's Governor Mike
Stepovich excused himself to his dinner hosts, sped to the Capitol.
The Senate roll was called, and the U.S. Senate last week voted 64
(31 Democrats, 33 Republicans) to 20 to admit Alaska to the Union.
Barring only the foregone conclusions of a presidential signature
and an Alaska referendum next month, the U.S. had its first new
state since Arizona entered on Feb. 14, 1912.
(March 23, 1959)
The U.S. House of Representatives was approaching a final vote
on the Hawaii statehood bill, passed overwhelmingly (76-15) by the
Senate the day before. Now, after 59 years of territorial status,
40 of them spent waiting impatiently for statehood, Hawaii was on
its way. For ears congressional opposition had been overpowering,
for the pivotal Southern bloc of Democrats never relished the idea
of a new state whose population and character were so seemingly
alien -- and so Republican to boot.
Swiftly the vote came to the floor -- a rousing 3232-89 -- and
swiftly the word sped to the two Hawaiian officials holding the
phones. "Sound the sirens!" yelled Governor Quinn to his listener.
"Close the schools and get going!" Delegate Burns hollered the same
news into his phone, and instantly the palace in Honolulu was
rocking with cheers.
As the sirens screamed, offices, schools, industrial plants began
to disgorge jubilant hordes of people. Confetti swirled down from
Honolulu's office buildings, and a flight of Air Force jets swept
low across the city in a deafening salute.
The first shock subsided shortly, but by evening, Hawaii was
ablaze with celebrators. Hula dancers undulated delightedly in
front of the Iolani Palace and city hall, high-schoolers chimed in
with raucous rock `n' roll. Street dancers jiggled to the beat of
Dixieland jazz, the blare almost dissolving the dulcet sounds of
the famed Royal Hawaiian Band playing in front of the sedate old
Moana Hotel. Crowds ranged aimlessly, up and down the avenues, soon
made way for swarms of horn-honking autos nudging bumper-to-bumper
through the streets. Bonfires crackled, corks popped, girls kissed
strangers, and strangers joyously greeted each other with "Hello,
citizen!"
[Vice President Nixon, representing the U.S. at a trade fair in
Moscow, scored a diplomatic and public relations triumph in his
running impromptu debate with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, more
than making up for the South American humiliations of the year
before.]
(August 3, 1959)
Shortly before noon, Nixon and Khrushchev turned up at the U.S.
exhibition in Sokolniki Park, posed for pictures with the
gold-colored dome of the central building gleaming in the
background, then set off on a tour of the exhibits. They paused to
test new TV equipment that enabled them to speak in front of a TV
camera and then, right afterwards, to see themselves on a TV screen
and hear a tape playback of their voices.
Nixon, who had not yet quite caught on to the Khrushchev doctrine
of any debate, anywhere, tried politely to turn the conversation
to the color TV. But Khrushchev would not be turned.
"In another seven years," he boasted, "we will be on the same
level as America." Russians standing near by broke into applause
as he added that the Soviet achievement was worth bragging about.
Nixon, getting into the Khrushchev spirit replied that there should
be "far more communication and exchange in this area that we speak
of. We should hear you more on our television, and you should hear
us more on yours." He added that Khrushchev "should not be afraid
of ideas."
Khrushchev: We are telling you not to be afraid of ideas. We have no
reason to be afraid.
Nixon: Well, let's have more exchange of them, then.
Then the conversation drifted to kitchen equipment and exploded
into a cold-war debate that newsmen dubbed the "kitchen conference"
and the "Sokolniki summit."
Looking over the ranch house's sleek, gadget-stocked kitchen,
Khrushchev showed, as he did dozens of times at the exhibition,
that braggy defensiveness that seems to come over Soviet officials
when they confront the U.S. standard of living.
Khrushchev: You Americans think that the Russian people will be
astonished to see these things. The fact is that all our new houses
have this kind of equipment.
Nixon: We do not claim to astonish the Russian people. We hope
to show our diversity and our right to choose. We do not want to
have decisions made at the top by one government official that all
houses should be built the same way.
Khrushchev made some remarks about washing machines, but Nixon
pursued the debate: "Is it not far better to be talking about
washing machines than machines of war, like rockets? Isn't this the
kind of competition you want?"
Khrushchev (loudly): Yes, this is the kind of competition we
want. But your generals say they are so powerful they can destroy
us. We can also show you something so that you will know the
Russian spirit.
Nixon: You are strong and we are strong. In some ways you are
stronger, but in other ways we might be stronger. We are both so
strong, not only in weapons but also in will and spirit, that neither
should ever put the other in a position where he faces in effect an
ultimatum.
Tense and wide-eyed, the scores of officials, security guards and
newsmen who were touring the exhibition with Nixon and Khrushchev
clustered around the debaters. "I hope the Prime Minister has
understood all the implications of what I said," Nixon went on,
with an oblique reference to Berlin. "What I mean is that the
moment we place either one of these powerful nations, through an
ultimatum, in a position where it has no choice but to accept
dictation or fight, then you are playing with the most destructive
force in the world."
Khrushchev (flushed, wagging a finger near Nixon's face): We too are
giants. If you want to threaten, we will answer threat with threat.
Nixon: We never engage in threats.
Khrushchev: You wanted indirectly to threaten me. But we have
means at our disposal that can have very bad consequences.
Nixon: We have too.
Khrushchev (in a friendlier tone): We want peace with all other
nations, especially America.
Nixon: We also want peace.
[Khrushchev in turn, during his U.S. tour, scored his own
propaganda points, many of them negative but made in a colorful
style that revealed the human side of the Communist leader. It was
the first ever of a top Soviet official to the citadel of his
system's capitalist archenemy.]
(September 29, 1959)
"Nikita Sergevich, I salute you on American soil," said the
U.S.S.R.'s Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov at Andrews Air Force Base,
Md. last week -- and there he was. There on American soil was
Nikita Khrushchev, short, bald and portly, wearing a black suit,
Homburg and three small medals, bowing down the receiving line,
accepting a 21-gun salute, parading past a guard of honor. There
on his one hand stood his pleasant, shy wife Nina Petrovna, his
daughters Julia, 38, and Rada, 29, his studious-looking son Sergei,
24, and a retinue of 63 officials and bureaucrats. There on his
other hand stood President Eisenhower. "Permit me at this moment
to thank Mr. Eisenhower for the invitation," Khrushchev said
graciously, responding to the President's coolly proper speech of
greeting. "The Soviet people want to live in friendship with the
American people."
Thus began what was, from Washington to Manhattan to Los Angeles
to San Francisco, not so much a move to reduce world tension as a
historic, and tireless one-man campaign to cajole, flatter,
wheedle, shame, threaten and defy the U.S. into changing its way
of looking at the world. Khrushchev defined it most bluntly in
Washington: "There are only two nations which are powerful -- the
Soviet Union and the U.S. You people must accept the
facts of life. You must recognize that we are here to stay."
Khrushchev's argument: the U.S. must accept that fact and concede
a "status quo" or "thaw" or "peace." It must close down its
worldwide deterrent bases and disarm. It should reap the golden
harvest of trade with Communist nations. It should leave to a
furious peacetime competition the settlement of the classic feud
between Communism and capitalism. Ultimately, he declared cockily,
Communism would win anyway...
Khrushchev was out at 7:47 a.m. to lead his party aboard the
train to Manhattan. There, on a brisk, clear day among the
skyscrapers, the tour began to lose its jovial bounciness. As a
safety precaution, he got the official greeting in the dirty,
cavernous incoming baggage room at Pennsylvania Station. For the
next 45 hours, his hosts seemed to spend most of their energy
trying to protect him from harm. Time and again Khrushchev's
motorcade of black, closed-top Cadillacs ran between silent crowds
at a 35 m.p.h. clip. His route was patrolled -- sidewalks, roofs,
windows, gratings, manhole covers -- by 3,300 blue-uniformed police
and plain-clothesmen. Here and there, Ukrainian and Hungarian
pickets waved placards -- WELCOME MURDERER, and GO TO THE MOON,
LEAVE NEW YORK FOR US -- but the police had even ordered the
pickets not to carry placard poles...
Just before 1 p.m. Khrushchev's motorcade rolled up to the 20th
Century-Fox studio commissary ("Cafe de Paris" in Beverly Hills.
In mid-meal Mrs. Khrushchev passed up a note to her husband
informing him that there had been a change in schedule for that
afternoon: the Khrushchevs were not going to be driven to
Disneyland, as they had requested, because the city police could
not guarantee their safety. Disneyland is in another county. The
city police had added that nobody agreed with them more than
Khrushchev's own security detail. Nikita Khrushchev, ruler of 200
million people, addressed himself to the Disneyland issue, his
voice beginning to shake, but only slightly. "We have come to this
town where lives the cream of American art," said he. "And just
imagine, I, a Premier, a Soviet representative, when I came here
to this city, I was given a plan, a program of what I was to be
shown and whom I was to meet here." Khrushchev's face turned
darker, he began to shake his head, clench his fists, pound the
table, as the audience looked on in amazement. "But just now," he
said, "I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked: `Why
not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not
know.' And just listen, just listen to what I was told, to what
reason I was told. We, which means the American authorities, cannot
guarantee your security if you go there."
(October 5, 1959)
At Camp David, the last round of talks got under way. Again the
President laid down to Khrushchev his basic requirement of good
faith: Khrushchev must make it plain that Western rights to remain
in West Berlin will not be impaired, and he must remove all
threats. Khrushchev at last conceded. The details: 1) Eisenhower
and Khrushchev would agree in a formal communique to reopen
negotiations on the future of Berlin and Germany; 2) Eisenhower
would say publicly this week that Khrushchev had withdrawn all cut-
off dates and time limits on Western rights in West Berlin; 3) at
the same time, Khrushchev would issue a confirmatory statement in
Moscow.