To Be or Not

THE PRESIDENCY To Be or Not Dwight D. Eisenhower was at a pinnacle of his popularity. A Gallup poll, the first to be taken since the Geneva Conference at the Summit, showed that nearly eight out of ten Americans--more than ever before--approved of the way the President was doing his job. The news brought joy to Republican hearts and an inevitable renewal of the big question: Will Ike run again in 1956? The rumors, speculations, and informed guesses buzzed through sweltering Washington last week. In the midst of them, Ike was uncomfortably enigmatic--a role he thoroughly dislikes. The truth was that the President did not know the answer himself.

One morning a delegation of twelve top Republicans from Ohio came to call at the White House. As is usual these days, they came bearing a resolution praising the President's leadership and urging him to run again. Ike thanked the Ohioans and then showed them some of his treasures, e.g., a Hepplewhite table he had used at SHAEF (gift of an anonymous admirer). Later he let them in on some musings about his future.

No one, he said, could foresee what the situation would be a year hence. If a person were so clairvoyant, he might be able to give the answer right now. Of course, he had been a member nearly all his life of an organization in which the word duty was extremely important.

Before any of his guests could wink a confident eye, Ike expressed some doubts that lay heavily on his mind. He is a man, the President said, who likes to see younger men brought to the forefront and given an opportunity in the top jobs, so that their vitality and ideas can be employed in solving the nation's problems. Then there was another consideration. No President in history, Ike said, had reached his 70th birthday in the White House. The presidency was a grueling job, he said; it worked a certain physical erosion on a man.-- Ike's remarks left the Ohioans completely bewildered.

"He's got to run," said Senator George Bender. "I have faith in God and Dwight Eisenhower." Blurted a reporter: "In that order?" Replied Bender: "Yes." At his press conference next day. President Eisenhower gave the reporters another inkling of his problem. "What I intended to imply [to the Ohioans] he said, "[is] that if I now were such an infallible prophet that I could understand all about the world situation, the domestic situation and my own situation, including the way I felt, and possibly with the health and everything else, as of that moment, then there would be no great excuse for deferring the decision. "I have not that gift of prophecy." Last week the President also: P: Praised the record of the Democratic 84th Congress in the field of foreign affairs ("I for one am deeply grateful"), but sharply criticized its score on domestic legislation. Ike reread his list of "must" bills, which he had first read to the reporters last June (TIME, July 11). Of the 13 items on the list, he said. Congress had enacted only four, "and some of those, in my opinion, with provisions that were not wise." Of the remaining nine, he said, four unpassed bills were "absolutely vital": school construction, the health bill, the highway program and the water-resources bill. He planned, said Ike, to push these measures very emphatically as soon as Congress reconvenes. P:Administered the oath of office to Harold E. Stassen as United States Deputy Representative on the United Nations Disarmament Commission. It was Stassen's fourth oath-taking since the Eisenhower Administration took office (Mutual Security Administrator, F.O.A. Administrator, Special Assistant to the President for disarmament): "It seems I am always swearing you in," commented the President after the ceremony. "Do we ever swear in anybody else?" P:Went off to his Gettysburg farm for a five-day stay and a heavy load of work: 309 unsigned bills, left by the departing Congress. Next week he will fly to his annual vacation in Denver.

*Andrew Jackson turned 70 just twelve days after he left the White House. James Buchanan was 51 days short of his 70th birthday when his term expired. If Ike serves a full second term, he will hold the record for presidential longevity: 70 years and 98 days. The oldest President, William Henry Harrison, died of pneumonia at 68, one month after his inauguration. In a study of presidential life spans, Statistician Louis Dublin discovered that Presidents inaugurated before 1850 outlived their life expectation by 2.9 years. Those inaugurated between 1850 and 1900 failed to reach their expectation of life by 2.9 years, on the average.

In the hectic 2Oth century, the shortfall between the actual death of the Presidents and their life expectancy has averaged eight years.

(The outstanding exception, Herbert Hoover, celebrates his 81st birthday this week.) Says Dublin: "There is no conclusive evidence that the increasing burden of office is taking a greater toll from our Chief Executives"

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