POLITICAL NOTES: Clues

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It was not what he said, so much as the way he said it. In Rome last week, Dwight Eisenhower made no remarks about any plans for the presidency. But when his big Constellation took off from Ciampino Airport, after a 48-hour visit to the NATO conference (see FOREIGN NEWS), he left every political observer in the city convinced that a candidate's button was firmly pinned on his blouse beneath his five-star insigne.

In his speech to NATO, he sometimes sounded—as he certainly had a right to—like a man talking to an audience on the other side of the Atlantic. There was an increased use of rolling, majestic phrases and correspondents pounced on the sudden prominence of the first-person singular. (Sample: "I have never sought the role of a philosopher; most certainly I have never had any reputation as such. But I submit that any man . . .") Commented Paris' Le Monde: "His first [speech] as candidate for the presidency."

Later, Ike conducted a brisk ten-minute press conference with a politician's mixture of folksy intimacy and celestial self-assurance. As in his NATO speech, he epitomized his goal in Europe with a resonant quote from the Bible: "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace" (Luke 11:21). This was an apt quote for a man whose mission it is to arm and protect Europe against Communism. It is also a sentence appropriate to a man who would lead the U.S.