Answer in View

When and how will the nation get the answer? Last week Dwight Eisenhower set time and place for the news about his second-term decision. Probable time of his announcement: before March 1. Probable place: a White House press conference (supplemented by "a larger explanation"--presumably on TV and radio).

For the rest, the President's news conference continued history's frankest discussion of the thought processes leading up to an important decision of state. Probed a reporter: "I am curious as to whether . . . you have given thought to the possible impact of [your] announcement on the stock market." Said Ike:

"I have never said anything that was more hopeful than any doctor said. I have, on the contrary, tried to be a little bit on the, let's say, cautionary side rather than on the optimistic [side] in the hope that . . . there would not be that kind of a shock."

"For Goodness Sake." Reporters pressed in hard to find if they could catch any new thinking about a possible heir apparent in case Ike does not run. Had he thought of what New York's ex-Governor Tom Dewey might do in the campaign? Said Ike: "I have not--this is the first time I have thought of it." His brother Milton? "If he has any political ambition, it is unknown to me." Had he meant to oppose Chief Justice Earl Warren as a possible candidate in a press conference two weeks before (TIME, Feb. 6). "Oppose? For goodness sake. I appointed him as Chief Justice . . . There are many ways in which he could be a candidate. And if he were, he would have no opposition from me."

To a question about how he was standing up to the presidential work load, he answered: "At times un questionably I ... feel more tired than I think I would have in the past, but that may be also just advancing years. The doctors certainly say that my physical reactions, the clinical record, is splendid today." It was toward the end of his conference that Ike seemed to contribute the most fascinating (and baffling) clue of the day. Said he: "I have my own ideas of what is a proper sphere of activity for the President of the United States. One of them ... is that he doesn't go out barnstorming for himself under any conditions, and even had I stood for the presidency again, and never experienced this heart attack. I would never have gone out barnstorming for myself."

Joint Conclusion. Ike did make it clear that his final decision would be based primarily on his own evaluation of his ability to carry the burdens of the presidency, not alone on medical reports. "A doctor's sole care," he told his press conference, "is with his patient. He doesn't have to think about the things I do in trying to solve this problem." Nonetheless, at week's end Dwight Eisenhower drove out to the Walter Reed Army Hospital, and for more than an hour submitted to a battery of tests--blood chemistry, fluoroscope, X ray and electrocardiogram. (Newsmen dutifully noted that he was grim-faced as he entered the hospital, smiling as he emerged.) This week, armed with the joint conclusions of Presidential Physician Howard Snyder and three cardiac experts (including Heart Specialist Paul Dudley White), the President was scheduled to slip off with Mamie for a week's vacation at Treasury Secretary George Humphrey's Georgia plantation. Soon after his return to Washington, he is expected to answer the question that has dominated U.S. politics ever since his heart attack.

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