Hail to the Chief

One month after Dwight Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953, Pollster George Gallup's interviewers waded into the mainstreams of the nation to ask: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Eisenhower is handling his job as President?" Newcomer Eisenhower got a 68% vote of confidence. At intervals during Ike's first term Gallup rechecked. found the approval fluctuating between a low of 57% in November 1954, when there had been signs of economic recession and Democratic congressional campaigners were flailing the G.O.P., and a high of 79% in August 1955, after Ike went to Geneva and the warmth of the Summit conference.

Last week Gallup reported a fresh sounding. With the spirit of Geneva as cold as an icicle and the U.S. just emerging from the Hungarian and Suez crises, interviewers again deployed, just before Inauguration Day, with the same question. Voting approval this time: 79%, to push Ike's popularity back to the Summit-time high.* The chorus was surprisingly bipartisan: Republicans a loyal 95%, Democrats a remarkable 66%.

The ringing pre-inaugural endorsement of Ike by no means carries over to an endorsement of the Eisenhower doctrine for the Middle East, another Gallup poll indicated this week. Of those surveyed by Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion. 70% were for letting Ike use economic aid in the Middle East and 53% were for letting him send arms and other forms of military aid. But on the question of using U.S. troops to repel Russian attacks on the Middle East, the Eisenhower doctrine polled a slender 50%, with 34% opposed and 16% undecided.

*Harry Truman's high and low: 87% three months after he took office, 23% during the Korean war; Franklin Roosevelt's: 84% one month after Pearl Harbor, 52% following his 1938 attempted purge of congressional nonliberals. Term-spanning popularity averages: Eisenhower, 70%; Roosevelt, 63%; Truman, 46%.

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