THE PRESIDENCY: Without Excuses

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In the frenetic baseball season of 1957, any U.S. sports fan worth his fresh roasted peanuts could quickly size up the predicament Dwight Eisenhower faced last week. A good-hit, goodfield Administration team had slithered into a slump, had begun to lose the big ones—the school bill, civil rights, etc. In the grand tradition, criticism for the slump was being hung squarely around the shoulders of the manager. There were no suggestions that he be forthwith fired. But there were plenty of jeers and birdcalls from the stands and the boxes—"lame duck," "no brains," "lousy liar." When Ike met the press last week in the White House version of a clubhouse critique, newsmen quickly zeroed in on the defeats, the slurs, the possibility of change in line-up and tactics.

The President met questions with easy directness: "I would be the first to say that with the difficulty that many of the Administration proposals have run into, that somewhere along the line I have not done as well as might have been done." But, he continued, in a terse summation of his unchanging attitude towards Capitol Hill, "I never employ threats. I never try to hold up clubs of any kind. I just say, 'This is what I believe to be best for the United States,' and I try to convince people by the logic of my position. If that is wrong politically, well then I suppose you will just have to say I am wrong."

Degrees of Enthusiasm. Was he worried about the verbal pop bottles shattering around him? Replied Ike: "I refer you to the second term of President Washington, and you look to see what the papers said about him,* and when I compare the weak, inconsequential things they say about me compared to what they say about the man who I think is the greatest human the English-speaking race has produced, then I can be quite philosophical about it."

If the President's political philosophy excluded threats and clubs, it did not rule out "degrees of enthusiasm that I have for the re-election or election of certain people, even though they bear the name Republican ... so I have, I think, my own ways of expressing that degree of enthusiasm."

Separate Functions. What last week's critique added up to was clear: Dwight Eisenhower holds definite ideas on how he himself must play the great game of government and politics. Regardless of criticism and a lackluster record of congressional achievement this session, he would continue in his conviction that the ground rules specify separate functions for the branches, that the executive should not attempt to browbeat the legislative. And if his tactics, when the capital season ended, lost a pennant, he was unapologetically ready to shoulder the blame.

Last week the President also:

> Nominated, to succeed Charles Erwin Wilson as Secretary of Defense, Procter & Gamble President Neil Hosier McElroy of Cincinnati (see box).