Salt & Pepper

Terrier-tempered Sherman Adams was MAD, New Hampshire fashion. For weeks Republican Congressmen who dislike him (except in moments of panic) had been dropping into his White House office to moan about the kicks in the teeth they were getting from high-stepping Democrats. In addition, along with other White House aides, Adams had been doing a slow burn of his own over such Democratic slants as Harry Truman's remark that Eisenhower was a good general when he had someone else (i.e., Harry Truman) to tell him what to do (TIME, Jan. 20). Thus, when Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn asked Adams to deliver a fund-raising speech in Minneapolis, the President's Chief of Staff sharpened his pencil and began scribbling. Result: along with Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater, who swiped at the Democrats in Detroit, he got more newspaper space than the President of the U.S. or the rest of the 44 Republican speakers combined.

Said Adams to a delighted audience of 1,300 Minnesota Republicans in Minneapolis' Leamington Hotel: Democrats "ought to know better than to keep on politicking with national defense. As a matter of fact, they ought to be called strictly to account by the American people for using this subject as party glue. I'll say simply this: we Republicans greet the opposition on this battlefield with as much anticipation as on any other they can conjure up."

More for Peanuts. "In such a contest we have abundant ammunition. We do not need to bring up the military catastrophe of Pearl Harbor nor the scientific catastrophe of losing our atomic secrets. Nor do we need to dwell on policies that led to the Red invasion of Korea, nor the plight of our defenses when the invasion began, nor the handcuffs put upon our conduct of that war. We need not even refer to the tragic loss of China, nor the surrender of positions of freedom throughout the world. We can also ignore at the moment the wasteful and crippling defense planning between World War II and the following war [Korea] they couldn't end.

"From World War II until 1953, our country's long-range ballistic missile program was as dead as the proverbial dodo. Meanwhile, the Soviets were going full speed ahead. In those eight critical postwar years, our government spent only $3.5 million on these weapons. That, my friends, averages out to about $437,000 a year. In only two years of the same period the previous Administration spent $50 million for peanuts. That's 60 times more for peanuts than for long-range missiles."

Why are the Democrats in this campaign jabbing hardest at defense as an issue? Said Adams: "The opposition gyrates, orates and berates in their frenzy to find a remedy to heal up their sores caused by the continuing combat between the Northern and Southern wings. I concede they have their hands full trying to corral implacably opposed Democrats under one political roof. Their political lasso, evidently, is a headlong attack in the area of their most dismal performance."

Assessments for Politics. In Detroit's Masonic Temple Arizona's Goldwater addressed 1,010 Republicans on "the political blight that has come upon the state of Michigan," i.e., control of the Michigan Democratic Party by United Auto Workers' Boss Walter Reuther. "Underneath the Democrat label here in Michigan there is something new, and something dangerous--born of conspiracy and violence, sired by socialists and nurtured by the general treasury of the U.A.W.-C.I.O. This is the pattern of political conquest. This is the pattern of men whose conscienceless use of violence and money to achieve political power belies the soothing, well-worded statements in favor of democratic processes which they produce, at regular intervals, for public consumption.

"I am here tonight because I do not want to see this socialist-labor thing spread to the rest of the country, and the place to cure it, at this point, is here in Michigan. Here in Michigan you are in the front-line trenches. We from the rest of the country are looking to you. For what happens here, can happen to the whole country."

"Mentally Unbalanced." Reaction to the salt-and-pepper twins was swift and violent. The U.A.W.'s Walter Reuther called Goldwater "this country's . . . number one peddler of class hatred ... a reactionary ... a stooge for big business . . . mentally unbalanced and needs a psychiatrist." Michigan's Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams hustled to the rostrum to defend Reuther. (Mused a pleased Michigan Republican: "The people are getting the idea that every time Reuther takes an Alka-Seltzer, Soapy burps.")

For Sherman Adams, reaction was even more acute. Snapped the Republican New York Herald Tribune: "The President was on the right road--the high road. Adams was on the muddy one--the low road." Tut-tutted Pundit Walter Lippmann: "In the position he occupies and with the immunity which he claims, Mr. Adams should not make speeches at all." Growled House Speaker Sam Rayburn: "I see that the Republicans just about obliterated the Democratic Party . . . Does the White House think it can pass its program without Democratic votes?" But mingled with criticism there was plenty of praise, especially from the Republican pros. In one day Meade Alcorn got 18 pro-Adams telephone calls from national committeemen and state chairmen. And Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Richard M. Simpson, ordinarily a lukewarm supporter of Sherman Adams, was suddenly on fire. Said he: "It was the best speech of them all. We would like to use Adams any time we could get him."

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