The Peace Issue

In rudely announcing that he could not or would not negotiate with the U.S. until a new President is elected, Nikita Khrushchev waded right into U.S. politics. His humiliation of President Eisenhower was something that no American could tolerate, and Washington's first instinctive, shocked reaction was to unite behind the President. Like good coxswains, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson did what they could to get the Democrats to pull together with the Administration. Mister Sam clamped an iron rule of silence on one-minute opening speeches, traditional sounding board in the House, and in the Senate Johnson led the rally to Ike.

While there still seemed a prospect of continuing the summit, Adlai Stevenson and Arkansas' Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined Johnson and Rayburn in signing a cable to Ike, urging him to "convey to Premier Khrushchev the view of the opposition party in your country that he reconsider his suggestion for a postponement of the summit conference until after the national elections in this country." All this was both good patriotism and good politics. But before the week was out, even before the President returned to Washington (to be greeted by Mister Sam and a phalanx of Democratic loyalists among the 2,000 airport welcomers), politics became its more natural self.

"Confusing Zigzags." Adlai Stevenson started it. In a Washington interview, he angrily blamed the summit crisis on Administration bungling of the U-2 affair. Desperately, Johnson tried to keep the party peace ("This is definitely a time for America to unite"), but a partisan murmuration had already begun. Leading the rebel yell was Johnson's own majority whip, Montana's Mike Mansfield, who predicted a congressional investigation. "At the proper time," Mansfield promised, "we shall find out what lies beneath the confusing zigzags of official pronouncements of the past fortnight."

Politicians knew the issue had thorny possibilities, and grasped the nettle gingerly. But the kind of arguments they would use were already being made by the pundits. In an odd dispatch that almost achieved a "plague on both your houses" equality between Khrushchev's and Eisenhower's performances, the New York Times's Washington Bureau Chief James Reston called the summit "a serious defeat for the President and his whole system of delegating presidential power to subordinates at critical moments in the history of the nation." Added Columnist Walter Lippmann: "The damage to our prestige would be irreparable if we all rallied around the President and pretended to think that there was nothing seriously wrong ... It is the dissenters and the critics and the opposition who can restore the world's respect for American competence." Then Adlai Stevenson went all out.

Vital Negotiations. "We handed Khrushchev the crowbar and sledge hammer to wreck this meeting," said he, in an angry speech in Chicago. "Without our series of blunders, Mr. Khrushchev would not have the pretext for making his impossible demand and his wild charges." Stevenson suggested that the Democrats could best negotiate with the Russians. "The Administration has acutely embarrassed our allies and endangered our bases," said he. "They have helped make successful negotiations with the Russians--negotiations that are vital to our survival--impossible so long as they are in power. We cannot sweep this whole sorry mess under the rug in the name of national unity."

From Lewiston, Idaho came an answering echo from gallivanting Jack Kennedy, who had not been saying much about foreign affairs lately. "Our leadership appears palsied," he said, "and sympathy, not respect, is the reluctant sentiment we elicit from our allies--sympathy for the President as a man of good will, but dismay at the shocking lack in presidential directive as displayed in the U-2 incident. The maintenance of peace and the security of Berlin should not hang on the constant possibility of engine failure."

These were the first bugle notes of a cacophony that would be heard all summer. Until the summit collapse, the Republicans seemed in good control of the peace and prosperity issues. They may still be when all the dust settles. Where stood the peace issue now? Pondering the situation, G.O.P. National Chairman Thruston Morton could only shake his head: "It hasn't jelled. It hasn't jelled."

Unfavorable Accents. The New York Times's veteran Arthur Krock, admitting that "this is only dope, but American politicians are incurably addicted to its use," passed on this consensus of Washington politicians:

"The new critical aspects of the world situation have raised the Democratic convention stocks of Johnson and Stevenson. They also have given Senator Symington a better opportunity to exploit his pioneer criticisms of the Eisenhower military defense programs. They tend to accent unfavorably Senator Kennedy's youth and administrative inexperience. Nixon will be hurt in the campaign by his obligatory defense of Executive handling of the U-2 episode, but Khrushchev's attacks will make his nomination even more certain and help his electoral prospect."

As politicians grappled with the new situation, Richard Nixon was reported by his press secretary to be "greatly shocked" by the Stevenson speech. The Republican National Committee charged that Stevenson had fallen "like a ton of bricks for the Khrushchev line." Franklin Roosevelt's onetime campaign manager, Jim Farley, 71, angrily accused Stevenson of trying "to sledge hammer and crowbar another disastrous nomination for himself as the apostle of appeasement."

Nikita Khrushchev himself had undoubtedly not made his own last contribution to the U.S. campaign, and the warier political experts were not placing any final bets yet.

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