Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Yet ofttimes in his maddest mirthful

mood Strange pangs would flash along Childe

Harold's brow,

As if the memory of some daily feud

Or disappointed passion lurk'd below.

--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Strange pangs flashed along the brow of Harold Stassen, onetime childe wonder of Republican politics. Long disappointed in his presidential passion, his daily feuds with such as Joe McCarthy grown pale and wan, Stassen, at 49, felt the need to fare forth in quest of new political ad ventures. Last week he fared forth. He urged that the G.O.P. dump Vice President Richard Nixon in favor of Massachusetts' Governor Christian A. Herter.

With President Eisenhower away in Panama, Harold Stassen called a news conference and, in gentle tones, read a prepared statement. He had, said Harold, received the results of private polls that showed Nixon running last to Herter's first among Republican vice-presidential possibilities (one of the others listed in the polling was Harold Stassen). The polls indicated that Nixon's name on the ticket would cost Ike about 6% of the vote this fall, said Stassen. He stoutly maintained that he was acting only as a private citizen, not in his capacity as the President's adviser on disarmament. Said Stassen: "I am deeply convinced that for the good of America and for the cause of peace no honorably avoidable handicap [i.e., Nixon] should be placed on President Eisenhower in this election."

The reaction to Stassen's announcement was intense: 20 Republican Congressmen signed a demand for his resignation as a

White House aide; later, 180 of the 202 G.O.P. Representatives pledged their support to Nixon. In Panama Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty snapped that Stassen could not have made his statement as "a member of the President's official family." Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall said flatly: "My own prediction is that the ticket will again be Eisenhower and Nixon."

Undying Loyalty. Harold Stassen had been a long time deciding what was "for the good of America and for the cause of peace." Shortly after President Eisenhower's heart attack last year--perhaps too shortly, considering the niceties--he saw to it that the word got to the Vice President that Harold Stassen would be a 100% Nixon-for-President man in 1956, got no answer at all. Again, after Ike announced that he would be available for renomination, Stassen sent Nixon his as surances of undying loyalty.

After Ike's intestinal operation, Harold Stassen had some second mental rum blings, ordered his private popularity poll of vice-presidential candidates. Armed with the poll's statistics, Stassen told President Eisenhower of his decision to support Herter. In a 15-minute confer ence Stassen got neither a yes nor a no from Ike, in keeping with Eisenhower's view that the Vice President should be nominated at the convention, not in the White House. Both before and after his conversation with Ike, Stassen talked by telephone to Herter. Stassen was neither encouraged nor rebuffed; high-minded Chris Herter held to his intention of do ing whatever his party and his President wanted him to do. Having carried out his inconclusive reconnaissance. Stassen called his press conference and leaped into headlines.

Next morning Stassen and other top Republicans gathered at Washington's National Airport to welcome the President back from Panama. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and White House Aide Jerry Persons walked out of their way to avoid him. Massachusetts' Senator Lev Saltonstall bumped into Stassen, reacted as though he had come nose to nose with a spoiled cod. Thirty feet away, Dick Nixon seemed oblivious to Stassen's presence. Only at the very end of the airport interlude did Stassen walk over to Nixon and say, "Good morning." The two shook hands briefly, while news photographers clicked away.

Although Ike had scrupulously avoided heading Stassen off, he was angered because he thought Stassen had gone too far in hurling darts at another member of the Eisenhower team. At the airport he went out of his way to wring Nixon's hand and engage him in private conversation. Moving down the line, he came to Stassen, shook hands routinely, uttered a brief "hello." Bubbled Harold, "Congratulations, Mr. President, you did a wonderful job . . ." His lips were still wagging when the President moved on.

The Booby Trap. That afternoon, Childe Harold's anti-Nixon campaign blew up right in his face. He had walked into his own political booby trap. Long before Stassen brought his dump-Nixon move into the open, Nixon and Chairman Len Hall had learned what was up. Nixon himself called Herter to ask that Herter place Nixon in nomination at the Republican convention. Herter did not give an immediate answer. But after Stassen's first public statement. Herter was again asked to nominate Nixon. This time he agreed. In an instant Stassen became a manager without a candidate.

But Harold Stassen is not easily embarrassed, and he is an expert at prolonging a story that keeps his name in print. Throughout the week he piled on new copy, calling on the President to express his attitude in unmistakable terms, accusing Len Hall of trying to ram through Nixon's nomination, arranging for still another vice-presidential poll. This weekend, on Face the Nation. Stassen said he was "foreclosing any consideration" for President or Vice President in order to bring about an "open" 1956 convention. "Forever?" asked a reporter. Said Harold Stassen: "Yes."

To the Promised Land. If anything, Stassen succeeded only in solidifying Republican support behind Dick Nixon. But his action, crackled the Emporia (Kans.) Gazette, had come "in time to do the utmost political damage to the party which has tied the feed bag onto Mr. Stassen's big mouth."

Why had Harold Stassen crawled out on such a limb? Most Republicans took him at his word when he said he was not attempting to win the vice-presidential nomination for himself. Their judgment as to his motives: having failed in his tries at the presidential nomination in 1948 and 1952, and despite his foreclosure this week. Stassen wants another shot in 1960. And to take over the Eisenhower wing of the party, he must first get Nixon out of the way. Clearly, the tireless Childe Harold was setting out on a new pilgrimage toward his promised land.

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