Give 'Em Heaven

Gathered for a "national strategy" meeting in Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel last week, some 800 U.S. Republican leaders spent most of their time milling around the lobby, airing local problems (how to interest young people in Pennsylvania's mossback G.O.P. organization), inspecting campaign gimmicks (ladies' hose with "I Like Ike" lettered across the ankles) and considering, with notable lack of enthusiasm, a limp national slogan ("Ring the bells and tell the people"). Then, as the last event on the two-day agenda, they heard the President of the U.S. open his campaign for re-election and set forth the 1956 Republican line. Ike's speech, the very antithesis of give-'em-hell, was a low-keyed, broad-based appeal to "All Americans--Republicans, Independents and sound-thinking Democrats." Said the President: "We welcome them all."

"People," said the President, "are made in the image of God. They are divinely endowed with aspirations and talents. Their political organizations must reflect this truth. Therefore, the Republican Party must be inspired by a concern for the rights of every citizen . . . Under God, we espouse the cause of freedom and justice and peace for all peoples. The peace we seek will be the product of understanding and agreement and law among nations."

Open Tentflaps. Ike's outline of Republican principles was calculated to appeal to almost everyone and to offend hardly anyone, so much so that it provoked Washington Post's left-wing Democratic Cartoonist Herblock into one of the season's sharpest needlings of G.O.P. generalities (see cut). Among Ike's points: P: "The ultimate values of mankind are spiritual. These values include liberty, human dignity, opportunity, and equal rights and justice." P: "More jobs and better jobs, a flourishing agriculture, happier living for every family, peace and plenty for all people -these call for a strong, growing, private-enterprise economy." P: "To stay free we must stay strong. Though we must recognize that peace cannot be gained by arms alone, yet we must gird ourselves with sufficient military strength to discourage resort to war and to protect our nation's vital interests; moreover, we must help to strengthen the collective defense of free nations."

The President threw wide-open the flaps of the G.O.P. tent. "No party," he said, "has a monopoly on brains or idealism or statesmanship. We--Republicans and Democrats alike--are motivated by the same loyalty to the flag, by the same devotion to freedom and human dignity, by the same high purposes for the nation's security and its people's welfare."

Credit for All. Ike's line was under scored the next night in Manhattan by Vice President Nixon, whose slashing Republican partisanship had previously won him undying Democratic enmity. Said the probable workhorse of the 1956 Republican campaign: "We know that in all fairness the credit for America's great prosperity must today be shared among Democrats and Republicans, labor leaders and business executives, farmers and city folk alike. Together they have brought about the changes that have made our economic system the model that it is today. In a real sense the achieving of the American dream has been the combined work of all Americans."

The 1956 line seemed as weak tea to the professional Republicans; they accepted it stolidly, but it gave them little opportunity for whooping and hollering. Give-'em-heaven was uplifting, but, as some Republicans muttered ruefully, give-'em-hell was a lot more fun.

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