President-Elect

At the edge of the driveway near his Key West holiday quarters, a smiling Dwight Eisenhower greeted Brazil's smiling President-elect Juscelino Kubitschek with a brisk handshake. After posing for press photographs with his visitor, the President ushered him inside for a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, necessarily hurried because Kubitschek was due in Washington at 1 p.m. to address the U.S. Congress.

Forgoing his gimpy English, the President-elect talked to Ike in Portuguese, translated by Brazil's Washington Ambassador Joao Carlos Muniz. After breakfast Kubitschek bade farewell to his host, and raced back to the Brazilian commercial airliner that had brought him from Rio. Stops ahead on his preinauguration tour: Washington, New York, London, Paris, Bonn, Brussels, The Hague, Rome, the Vatican, Madrid, Lisbon--all in 17 hectic days.

Attacks of Protocolic. For a while last week, it had seemed that this whole ambitious schedule would be bogged down in a swamp of protocol. Advised that foreign governments might balk at giving him the full red-carpet treatment before Brazil's slow-moving Electoral Tribunal officially declared him President-elect, Kubitschek first announced a postponement of the trip. Flurries of messages buzzed between Rio and Brazilian embassies abroad. From Paris, Rome, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon, Bonn and The Hague came assurances that Kubitschek would be treated as President-elect, certified or not. The U.S. State Department followed along. London almost got scratched from the itinerary until the Foreign Office found that an audience with Queen Elizabeth could be arranged after all. Having survived these mild attacks of protocolic, Kubitschek switched back to his original schedule and flew north with a party of 26 officials and newsmen.

At Washington, Kubitschek found Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Treasury Secretary George Humphrey waiting at the airport. Sped to the Capitol behind a motorcycle escort, the visitor, 80 minutes late, found the House adjourned and half the Senate absent. With a translator's help, he delivered a seven-minute speech to the Senate, drew five rounds of applause. The U.S. and Brazil, he said, "share the same ideals, the same sentiments, the same respect for the paramount dignity of man."

At a luncheon the following day, the toastmaster introduced Kubitschek as a man who had made good "in Horatio Alger style." The tag was entirely accurate. Brazil's President-elect, now a trim, well-groomed 54, was reared in poverty. He worked his way through medical school by working nights as a telegrapher, eventually became a fashionable surgeon, later gave up his profitable practice to enter politics. Elected governor of the Texas-sized state of Minas Gerais, he made his name as a builder, with a long list of roads, power plants and schools to his credit. Running for President, he promised to do the same for all of Brazil, won last October's election by a comfortable plurality in a four-man race.*

Soon after the election, Kubitschek announced his plans for a foreign tour before inauguration day (Jan. 31). Besides winning attention abroad for Brazil's crucial economic problems, he wanted to dispel the notion that he is a leftist with links of some sort to Brazil's illegal Communist Party. Kubitschek is actually a middle-roader, a founding member of the moderately conservative Social Democratic Party, but he accepted a leftish Labor Party leader as his vice-presidential running mate. On top of that, he failed to reject the Communist Party's bandwagon-climbing endorsement. Inevitably, opponents labeled him a left-winger as well. Said Kubitschek at a Washington press conference: "I am not in debt in any way to the Communists."

Doctor's Opinion. During his busy three days in Washington, Kubitschek lost no opportunity to press his case. He packed in two state dinners (hosts: Vice President Richard Nixon, Secretary Dulles) and a frantic round of handshaking and speechmaking. Everywhere he stressed the point that Brazil remains a staunch friend of the U.S., with both feet firmly in the camp of democracy. The U.S.'s "stimulating atmosphere of freedom and progress," he said, "could but strengthen, were it necessary, my profound democratic convictions and my confidence in the fortunes of the free world to which our two nations belong."

He made his biggest hit of all as speaker at a luncheon at the National Press Club, which has been called "the most cynical audience in the world." Said President-elect Kubitschek, to appreciative laughter and applause: "Yesterday I had the great pleasure of visiting President Eisenhower at Key West. I first met him in 1946, in Brazil, while I was a member of Congress. I can assure you that he does not look ten years older. He looks great. I say that in my capacity as a physician."

* The latest official count: 3,060,754 votes (36% of the total) for Kubitschek, to 2,591,148 for the runner-up.

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