The Problems Ahead

Short of a hot war, or imminent danger of one, illness could hardly have struck the President of the U.S. at a worse time.

Along with the endless daily flow of documents and visitors and decisions, plus weekly policy sessions of the Cabinet and the National Security Council, the year end brings to the presidency a heavy seasonal load: 1) drawing up the Administration's legislative program for the congressional session ahead, 2) preparing the massive federal budget for the coming fiscal year, 3) drafting January's State of the Union, budget and economic messages, and 4) briefing congressional leaders in advance on the Administration's planned requests for legislation and appropriations. In December 1957, with Sputnik still orbiting, and the U.S. economy showing signs of droop, the President faces a crushing array of special major problems.

The Stamp of Finality. With an unprecedented meeting of NATO chiefs of government scheduled to start in Paris in mid-December (see FOREIGN NEWS), Administration officials were busy last week refining U.S. proposals for closer NATO cooperation in armaments, scientific research and development. Since outlines of the Administration's approach were set before Ike's illness, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles & Co. can work U.S. plans for the meeting into nearly finished form without consulting the President. But the stamp of finality must be put upon the plans by the President himself. And after the advance paper work is done, no one else can speak for the U.S. at Paris with quite the same authority and prestige as the President.

Grim evidence of Russian progress in military technology put special urgency into pending defense decisions. Items:

P:How much more to spend for defense in the coming fiscal year.

P:How to hurry production of IRBMs (see below).

P:How to speed up ICBM and satellite research programs.

P:How to meet the needs for dispersal of Strategic Air Command bases and improvement of the nation's radar-warning networks.

P:What to do about proposals for fallout-shelter programs (TIME, Dec. 2).

P:How to help states, cities and school districts cope with the lag in high school science education.

The Unique Office. The new budget looms as an awesome problem. The 1958 budget was, even before Sputniks, the biggest ($71.8 billion) in the nation's peacetime history, and it stirred a protesting clamor (if very little real budget cutting) on Capitol Hill. Now the Administration faces a need to add at least an extra billion or two for defense. That prospect is all the more complex because 1) the national debt is already scraping the legal debt ceiling ($275 billion), and 2) the 1957 recession will almost certainly shrink the Government's predicted tax returns, will also probably warm up tax-cut sentiments. To arrive at a balanced budget for fiscal 1959, the Administration will somehow have to chop nondefense spending in the face of undiminished public demand for federal services and subsidies; to meet the demand for services as well as the need for defense spending, it may well have to go to an unbalanced budget.

On top of these specific problems, which can come to final decision only on the President's desk, there are broad areas of policy and planning that call for close and carefully planned presidential leadership. In the nation's first Sputnik uneasiness, the President planned a series of five TV talks to tell the people where the U.S. stood and what it had to do. When illness hit, Ike had made only two of the speeches. The third, an appeal for support of the Administration's foreign aid program, was delivered in part by Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell, subbing for the ailing President. But the appeal, delivered well but secondhand, got snowed under in the blizzard of news about Ike's illness. In speechmaking as in policymaking, members of the President's team can take over some of his tasks, but there is only one man with the title and office, the power and prestige of President of the U.S.

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