Circles on the New Calendar

Even before the calendar flipped over to the 1960s, the nation's datebook for the New Year was packed with heavy appointments. After leaving Paris, President Eisenhower touched down in Madrid and Casablanca, where, as before, people by the hundreds of thousands welcomed him with remarkable affection and thunderous cheers. Home at last from his unprecedented 22,000-mile eleven-nation tour, he got a fond greeting from Mamie and from hundreds of Washingtonians carrying sputtering sparklers. But his work had only begun: Congress convenes next week; his State of the Union Message is due before the end of the month. Beyond that lie his budget message and his promised fight to preserve the budget balance. He must soon decide whether to extend the U.S. ban on nuclear testing, which expires at year's end. And Jan. 26 is the day the Taft-Hartley injunction expires in the marathon steel strike (see The Economy), with both sides still at a stubborn standoff.

Circled on Ike's calendar are even bigger international days: Japan's Premier Nobusuke Kishi arrives in late January; France's President Charles de Gaulle is due in early April. Then comes the Paris summit meeting with Khrushchev, after that Ike's own trip to the Soviet Union (probably in June). He has plans to tour Latin America and perhaps the Far East later in the year--all told enough to keep Ike hopping to the end of his term.

But the President will be only an onlooker at the biggest political dates of the year: the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in July and the Republican convention in Chicago two weeks later.

New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller swung the door wide on 1960 last week by announcing his withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination (see Republicans), and in so doing cleared the path for Vice President Nixon. The half dozen rivals for the Democratic nomination at last had something in common: a lusty will to make Nixon their favorite target, and the Democratic prize probably would go to the man who could prove that he might beat him. The biggest day on the 1960 schedule would come in November when the U.S. would go to the polls to choose the President who would lead the U.S. into the fabulous promise of the early sixties.

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