The Leadership Issue

Did the President know that some Republicans seemed resigned to a "bad drubbing" in next month's congressional elections? asked a reporter at the presidential news conference last week. Replied Dwight Eisenhower: "I have heard these reports about apathy and about sitting on hands and complacency." To the President, such an attitude was "incomprehensible" in view of the record built up by his Administration since 1952. Said he: "I think the record of those six years is remarkably good." But what Ike missed was that it is not so much the Administration record as it is his own leadership, his ability to dramatize the record, that is a key issue--perhaps the only real issue --in Election Year 1958.

Many a pollster, pundit and politician who has been probing the U.S. body politic has found a pervading uneasiness in the 1958 campaign about the President's personal leadership, about whether or not "Ike is really in charge." Even while agreeing that Ike still stands high in popular affection, Syndicated Pollster Sam Lubell wrote last week that doubts about Ike's leadership may well be the make-or-break factor of the campaign (TIME, Oct. 6). "This leadership thing is the main trouble we're having with money and everything else," adds a Republican congressional candidate. "I can't even get anyone to come to a finance meeting. Party workers are all sitting on their fannies."

Says California's Republican Representative Joe Holt: "For some reason, people don't think Ike's running things. They don't think he knows what's going on. I tell the people I only wish they knew the President as I know him. And I wish he showed to the public the fight and fire he displays and the leadership I know he exercises back in Washington."

"Doing" Something. In fact, during 1958 the President has exercised strong leadership of rare quality. He fought hard, long and successfully to push the three essentials of his program--defense reorganization, foreign aid, and reciprocal trade--through a reluctant Congress. He stood staunchly behind the attempts of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson to bring sanity into the farm-subsidy program when many a Republican Congressman was yelping for Benson's scalp. After the revolution in Iraq last July, it took President Eisenhower only twelve hours to have U.S. Marines landing in Lebanon --and not even from Democratic liberals has there been any criticism that his stand on Quemoy is too weak.

Most important of all in terms of long-range U.S. domestic welfare, Dwight Eisenhower, among all the politicians in Washington, refused to panic when recession came. Time and again Democratic doom-criers, editorialists and some timorous Republicans demanded that he "do" something. He was in fact doing quite a bit: by fighting effectively against irresponsible tax cuts and wild pump-priming, he was proving that a sound free-enterprise economy could right itself without massive Government interference. He also was holding down the inflation that would have been the inevitable result of a big Government spending spree.

Telling 'Em. More than any President in decades, President Eisenhower has proved his administrative abilities in the gigantic task of pulling together and streamlining the fantastic complexities of U.S. Government, has proved his constitutional sensibilities by refusing to interfere with the rights and duties of Congress. Yet his effort to be "President of all the people," his refusal to stoop to political partisanship, to indulge in personal attacks, to cry out in alarm, to dramatize himself as the nation's savior, has partly been to blame for doubts about his "leadership." Working mostly within the confines of his White House office and of the staff system to which he is dedicated, he has failed to translate and dramatize his achievements in a personal style. He has failed to follow one great dictum of vaudevillians and successful politicians: "Tell 'em what you're going to do. Do it. Then tell 'em about what you've done."

Last week, recognizing a Republican emergency, the President scheduled a White House luncheon with G.O.P. leaders to discuss the party situation. To his previously announced October campaign trip to Chicago and California, he added a major speech at the annual corn-picking contest at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, indicated that other appearances would be added. In these speeches Ike would have an opportunity to explain the record of which he is proud. He would also have an opportunity to convince U.S. voters of the personal leadership that has made that record possible.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.