Ike v. Dick

The rumbling that woke up the 1958 congressional election campaign last week was the sound of short-lived but sharp public argument between the President and Vice President of the U.S. The argument : Is the Administration's handling of foreign policy--and specifically the Quemoy-Matsu crisis--a proper topic for campaign debate? President Eisenhower, even though he agreed with G.O.P. leaders at the White House a fortnight before that foreign policy is one of the campaign's two top issues (the other: the economy), said flatly one day last week that "Foreign policy ought to be kept out of partisan debate."

Vice President Nixon, out campaigning in San Francisco, flatly disagreed. His points: 1) U.S. foreign policy is a proper topic for U.S. debate, and 2) the Eisenhower-Dulles record is the G.O.P.'s great asset and great hope to turn back the Democratic tide. Nixon's argument: "A policy of firmness when dealing with the Communists is a peace policy. A policy of weakness is a war policy. This Administration has kept the peace without surrender of principle or territory."

The political fact that underlay the rumbling was that the Vice President, on the campaign front, was in vigorous dissent from the President's kind of above-the-battle political leadership. "There has developed in recent years," said Nixon in Salt Lake City, "the unsound idea that hard-hitting debate on the issues which confront the country is somehow wrong and detrimental to the best interests of the nation. We need more of this kind of debate in this country, both in and out of political campaigns, rather than less."

Debate calendar: Saturday. The Democratic Advisory Council--including Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson--put out a razor-sharp statement that the U.S. ought to turn over the Quemoy-Matsu crisis to the U.N., ought to have a plebiscite in Formosa (no mention of the same thing for Red China), also slashed at "world-ambulating" Secretary of State Dulles for dragging the U.S. to "the brink of having to fight a nuclear war." The Advisory Council's added point (later opposed by Harry Truman): although there may be dangerous times when an opposition ought to keep quiet, the Quemoy-Matsu crisis "is not such a case."

Monday. Vice President Nixon, then in Chicago, cut back at the Democrats: "In a nutshell, the Acheson foreign policy resulted in war and the Eisenhower-Dulles policy resulted in peace. I challenge every Democratic candidate for the House and Senate to state unequivocally whether he favors a continuation of the Eisenhower foreign policy . . . military strength and diplomatic firmness . . . or a return to the Acheson policy . . . retreat and appeasement."

Tuesday. None other than Secretary of State Dulles, at his press conference, got up to criticize Dick Nixon. Said Dulles, "I do not think it wise that current aspects of foreign policy should be injected in the campaign." Dulles added specifically that Nixon's Chicago statement "might fit without the limits which I hope both sides would observe." Later Dulles phoned Nixon to explain that he had not meant to be critical, next day put out a confusing statement that Nixon was only replying to Democratic criticisms and "in those circumstances I fully concurred in the need for that answer."

Wednesday. First off at his press conference, President Eisenhower was taxed with Nixon's Chicago statement, admitted right away that "I haven't even read it." Then Ike spoke sharp sentences in which he seemed to turn his back on his own party's campaign. "I do subscribe to this theory: foreign policy ought to be kept out of partisan debate . . . I realize that when someone makes a charge another individual is going to reply. I deplore that. They have made the charges about me. I will not answer, do not expect to. So I believe in the long term America's best interests will be best served if we do not indulge in this kind of thing." The President added another above-the-battle point. A recent G.O.P. leaders' statement issued after a White House meeting held that Democrats' policies tended toward socialism (TIME, Oct. 20). This, said Ike, was "not my statement--it was theirs. I think politicians do love to make things very positive [laughter].''

At this point Nixon, by then campaigning in San Francisco, took the hard, split-second decision to speak out against the President's position. Said Nixon to a press conference: "The President said that he did not believe that when an attack is made on the foreign policy of the U.S. it should be answered. For the President of the U.S. this, I think, is a proper position. But I will say this also--that for us who have the responsibility of carrying the weight of this campaign, to stand by and to allow our policies to be attacked with impunity by our opponents without reply would lead to inevitable defeat . . . One of the reasons the Republican Party is in trouble today is because, over the past two years particularly, we have allowed people to criticize our policies and we have not stood up and answered effectively. That is a mistake. I don't intend to make that mistake in this campaign."

Thursday. There was consternation at the White House that spread through official Washington. Said one Administration hand: "Dick is so tired he must be punch-drunk." Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty got Nixon on the phone, agreed with Nixon that a statement of clarification ought to be put out. Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn dropped by at the White House to see the President. Then the President sent Nixon a wire noting that 1) although basic foreign policies ought to be bipartisan, 2) it was perfectly O.K. to reply to the Democrats on foreign policy's "operation." Said Ike: QUESTIONS AND CRITICISMS HAVE INVOLVED LEBANON . . . QUEMOY AND MATSU, ETC. THESE ACTIONS, WHEN CRITICIZED, SHOULD BE SUPPORTED BY OUR SIDE. NO ONE CAN DO THIS MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN YOU. ALL THE BEST TO YOU. D.D.E.

That had been Nixon's point all along. At week's end, Nixon headed eastward to talk Quemoy-Matsu in the mountain states, and the President got into the campaign by flying to Iowa, Kansas and Colorado (see Republicans). Meanwhile, the Democrats laid down a heavy attack upon Nixon, aided and abetted by such undeviating cartoonist friends as the Washington Post and Times Herald's Herbert Block (Herblock) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bill Mauldin (see cartoons). Harry Truman snapped that Nixon was elected to the Senate "by character assassination," and the Democratic Digest, in best McCarthy fashion, called Nixon "the White Collar McCarthy . . . who will resort to any vilification to win votes."

It was apparent that the Democrats knew a lively campaign issue when they heard it, however addicted the White House may have been to the naive political proposition that while foreign policy is an issue in the campaign, it should not be debated as such.

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