Orderly Transfer

Among the thousands of congratulatory messages received by Dwight Eisenhower on the morning of his election was a telegram from the man he was soon to succeed. Wired Harry Truman: "Congratulations on your overwhelming victory. The 1954 budget must be presented to Congress before January 18 . . . You should have a representative meet with the Director of the Budget immediately." Then came a typical Truman slur: "The Independence will be at your disposal if you still desire to go to Korea."

Ike's first reaction to the implication that his promise to go to Korea was only a campaign trick was unprintable, but his telegraphed answer was a calm statement that he would try to make arrangements quickly to have a personal representative meet with the Director of the Budget. Ike added: "Any suitable transport plane that one of the services could make available will be satisfactory for my planned trip to Korea."

Then, with Mamie, daughter-in-law Barbara and his three grandchildren, Ike took off for Georgia and the Augusta National Golf Club. At the Augusta Club, brainchild of an old Eisenhower friend, Golf Champion Bobby Jones, the Eisenhowers had previously spent quiet family vacations. This time, too, "golf and no visitors" was the planned order of the day.

Ike had barely got to bed in the Jones cottage on the edge of the golf course, when he was rolled out by another telegram from Harry Truman. The President, anxious that there be "an orderly transfer of the business of the Executive Branch of the Government," invited Ike to come to the White House "to discuss the problems of this transition period . . ." Next day Eisenhower accepted Truman's invitation, but proposed that the meeting should not be held until the week beginning Nov. 17, "because I obviously require a reasonable time for conversations and conferences leading up to the designation of important assistants . . ."

Before Ike's wire arrived, Harry Truman, consumed with a devotion to presidential business which he had not displayed during the campaign, sent off an Air Force colonel-courier with a "top secret" message, part of which urged Ike to take quick action in choosing representatives to the Bureau of the Budget and the State and Defense Departments.

Though the state of U.S. affairs clearly required liaison between the outgoing and incoming Administrations, many an Eisenhower supporter was inclined to regard the Truman proposals with skepticism. Franklin Roosevelt's refusal to engage in joint planning with Herbert Hoover in the last interregnum between two U.S. Administrations has long been considered smart politics, since it tied Hoover's hands and permitted Roosevelt, after his inauguration, to give the impression that he alone had brought order out of chaos.

Unless Ike followed Roosevelt's example, argued some Republicans, he might be trapped into implied approval of Democratic policies. During the campaign Truman had given Ike quite a lesson in the technique of shifting responsibility, by trying to make it appear that Ike was to blame for the Korean war. To allay fears that Truman would spring another trap, Ike's press secretary issued a statement emphasizing that Eisenhower would possess "no authority of any kind" until his inauguration, and that the chief function of his representatives would be to obtain information.

At week's end Ike had managed to get in a few rounds of golf (see below), but that "no visitors" rule had gone by the board, and Republican politicos were already beginning to roll into Augusta to confer with the general. These conferences, together with plans for the White House meeting and the Korea trip which is to follow it, promised to make Ike's vacation more taxing than the average American's work week.

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