Operation Ike

In the opinion polls in midsummer 1951, Ike Eisenhower is the popular choice for President of the U.S. But it takes politicians to get him the nomination, and political conventions (with good reason) pay little attention to the polls. This week a small, adroit group of Republicans is quietly planning the intricate maneuvers designed to win the nomination for Ike at the G.O.P. convention next July.

It is no simple campaign. The No. 1 Republican power is Ohio's Senator Robert Taft, and politicians like to be seen only in the company of the winner. Every politician knows that the only good rebellion is a successful one. However much he yearns for an early seat on a bandwagon, his horror is to be caught on a bandwagon that never rolls.

First Move. The prime mover in the Eisenhower forces, hearty Harry Darby, wealthy onetime (1950) U.S. Senator and Republican national committeeman since 1940 from Ike's home state of Kansas, made his first move almost three months ago. Then top Republican politicians--governors, state chairmen, national committeemen--met in Tulsa to select a convention time & place. With Pennsylvania Congressman Hugh Scott Jr., who was Dewey's national chairman in 1948, Darby picked about 80 key Republicans and set to work on them, sounding them out on a stop-Taft movement and incidentally talking up Ike. In their conversations, they heard fears that if Taft is elected President, the party will be wholly captured by a new "Ohio gang" of hard-shelled regulars with a bent toward isolationism.

After three days of soundings, Darby decided that there was plenty of potential Ike support among the professionals. For the next month, Darby in Kansas City and Scott in Washington spent hours each day on the long-distance telephone. Scott conferred several times a week with Pennsylvania's Senator Jim Duff. Every time they talked up Ike, the politicians asked suspiciously about Tom Dewey. Was he trying to use Ike as a stalking horse? Where did Dewey really stand?

No Second Choice. Duff and Darby decided to go to Dewey and get the word. They arranged to meet him, and Darby started East by plane, but was grounded in Chicago. Duff went up to meet Dewey alone. Jim Duff came away convinced that Dewey meant what he had said--literally. He was not a presidential candidate himself and he was for only one candidate: Ike. He had no second choice.

Ike men had also been talking to Harold Stassen. Stassen, too, was alarmed by the possibility of Taft as a candidate. About the middle of June, Stassen had a private talk with Tom Dewey. He told Dewey that he was going to back Ike to the hilt. Milton Eisenhower, president of Penn State and, in the professionals' view, an authoritative spokesman for brother Ike, had said that the general would not allow the use of his name in primaries as long as he was in uniform. To get around this ban, Stassen proposed that he enter his own name in crucial primaries with the public promise to switch his delegates to Ike. Dewey approved.

Next Stassen called 20 faithful supporters to a meeting at the Clarksboro (NJ.) home of Amos J. Peaslee, the affluent lawyer who was Stassen's Eastern money-raiser in 1948. Stassen told them his plan. He admitted that he still dreamed of being President, but he knew that his chances in 1952 would be poor. The Stassen men went away Ike men.

Message -from Ike. In late June, a vital message came to the Eisenhower planners from France. A liberal Republican junketer had had a long talk with Ike. Ike told him, he said, that if there was to be an Eisenhower movement, he knew Harry Darby and trusted him. That was taken as an official blessing for the Darby strategy. Ike also indicated that he was thinking of returning from SHAPE around the "turn of the year." He realized, said the messenger, that if he was to be a candidate, he would have to make some overt act to identify himself as a Republican soon after he returned--either by a statement or by joining some G.O.P. organization.

Darby was elated. Early this month, he set up an informal Washington headquarters in the office of Kansas' Senator Frank Carlson. Of the 46 Republican Senators, 23 wanted to see him. To each he explained what Dewey and Stassen had committed themselves to. To each he put one question: "If you were a candidate for office next year, whom would you want to head the ticket?" The answer was overwhelmingly Ike.

Darby left the Senators with one last warning: don't rush things. He did not want the Eisenhower boom to crest too early. Wait until fall, he told them.

The Organization. The Ike strategists settled down to sweat out the summer, let the organization shake itself down. Darby is general manager, with the Middle and Far West his special concern. Jim Duff is chief of staff, concentrating on the East and South. Kansas' Congressman Cliff Hope is House liaison man for the Middle and Far West, Hugh Scott for the East and South.

Dewey, by his own agreement and choice, will stay in the background. He will be responsible for New York, and New York only. Ike supporters suspected that he timed his trip to the Far East deliberately to keep out of the way. He could afford to let Eisenhower be elected to two terms, serving in a key job himself (say Secretary of State--see below) and be only 58 when the second Eisenhower term is up.

Other potential Ike men can already be spotted. In Massachusetts, both Senators Lodge and Saltonstall are ready; so is Congressman Christian Herter. There is Nebraska's Governor Val Peterson, Arkansas' State Chairman Orso Cobb. In Texas, there is Jack Porter, oilman-turned-politician, who was the G.O.P.'s candidate for the Senate in 1948. In Los Angeles, a group of Stassen supporters headed by Lawyer David Saunders are talking Ike, but a California politician explained: "We're lying in the weeds, waiting for the right opportunity to spring. The politicians' hands are tied by the fact that Earl Warren is still in the running. It's too soon to stick our necks out."

The Money. No one in the Eisenhower camp is worrying about money. None is needed at the moment. But the big money is said to be there for the asking from such men as International Business Machines' T. J. ("Think") Watson and Manhattan's Banker Winthrop Aldrich. Eisenhower's past visits to Texas have brought out some of the biggest of Texas' Big Rich. Houston's Hugh Roy Cullen, oilman and a partner of Jack Porter, is an avowed Ike man. Said a San Francisco money-raiser: "By fall, the Eisenhower movement will be sweeping the country. It'll have the same tinges of enthusiasm as the Willkie boom and there won't be any trouble getting money for it."

In the meantime, the messages pound into Darby's Kansas City headquarters: "We're ready. What do we do?" The invariable answer: "Hold on until you get the word."

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