The View from the Top

MANDATE FOR CHANGE by Dwight D. Eisenhower. 650 pages. Doubleday. $6.95.

Far faster than most history makers manage it, the 34th President of the U.S. has produced his documented recollections of the men and events that are still well-remembered headlines to all but junior readers. Dwight Eisenhower's account of his first term in office (1953-56) is fat, flat and informal. Eisenhower is no Churchill. There is neither the thunder of oratory nor the sweep of history here. Instead, there is the sense of an earnest man trying to do his best. Admirers will find in its unadorned prose the reassuring image of the President who tried to put himself above politics. Critics will find in it the exasperating ability to slide away from crucial controversy.

Out in the Sun. The first suggestion that he might be thought of as a candidate for the presidency came to the general from Newspaper Correspondent Virgil Pinkley in 1943, just after the Allies had finally succeeded in overrunning Sicily and landing in Italy. Ike was incredulous. "To say that I was astonished by Pinkley's suggestion is far from an exaggeration; my instant reaction was that he was something of a humorist. 'Virgil,' I said, 'you've been standing out in the sun too long.' "

When he actually found himself campaigning nine years later, Ike says he tried to avoid Republican embarrassment over the noisy Senator Joseph McCarthy by asking that his campaign train bypass Wisconsin. Ike felt an added personal embarrassment: high among McCarthy's list of "traitors" was Ike's old boss and longtime friend, General George C. Marshall. But the campaign managers routed him into the state anyway and sat him on a platform with McCarthy himself. Why did Ike drop from his speech a tribute to Marshall? The professional politicians pointed out that he had already defended Marshall at a news conference and that the repetition "could be interpreted only as a 'chip-on-the-shoulder' attitude. By thus arousing new public clamor, I could be inadvertently embarrassing General Marshall."

Eisenhower reports that he had no knowledge of the phone call Thomas E. Dewey made to Vice-Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon before Nixon's famed "Checkers" broadcast defending the "secret fund" raised for him by California businessmen. Dewey urged that Nixon resign, and Ike admits that "the young Senator" feared that Dewey was speaking for him.

A high point in the campaign was Ike's pledge to visit Korea immediately if he was elected--a suggestion often credited to Journalist Emmet John Hughes, then a speechwriter on his staff, later author of a book bitterly attacking Eisenhower and his policies. Author Eisenhower, however, mentions Hughes not at all in this connection. Several groups were batting the idea around at the time, says Ike, and he gives most of the credit to Adviser C. D. Jackson. Hughes he later dismisses as "a writer with a talent for phrase-making." Ike takes due note of his own famed talent for non-phrase-making, but feels that by "focusing on ideas rather than on phrasing, I was able to avoid causing the nation a serious setback through anything I said in many hours, over eight years, of intensive questioning."

One Drink, No More. Eisenhower springs one of the book's few surprises in reporting his first reactions to the news that the U.S. intended to drop the atom bomb on Japan. He thought it was a mistake on the ground that Japan was already defeated and "that our country should avoid shocking world opinion." Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told him of the plans on a visit to Ike's headquarters in 1945. "During his recitation of the relevant facts," writes Ike, "I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings . . . The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions."

Another revelation: while he was still in Europe as commander of SHAPE, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden "expressed the hope that [if I should be elected] I might appoint someone other than Dulles" as U.S. Secretary of State. "I made no reply," he writes, "except to say that I knew of no other American so well qualified as Foster to take over the duties of that particular office."

He describes in detail the events leading up to his heart attack in Denver in September 1955. "My choice for luncheon was probably not too wise. It consisted of a huge hamburger sandwich generously garnished with slices of Bermuda onion and accompanied by a pot of coffee." Planning to retire right after dinner, he refused a predinner drink. "At least one doctor of repute later told me that if I had then taken the proffered drink, I might not have experienced the heart attack. He believes that older persons--sixty and above--should take one drink, no more, each evening, because of the tendency of that amount of alcohol to dilate the arteries and aid circulation."

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