THE NATION: Dry-Creek Time

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"Ike is running like a dry creek," warned the pro-Eisenhower Scripps-Howard newspapers one gloomy campaign day last August, but soon afterward came the flood tide that steadily carried Ike to victory in the election. In retrospect, the days of the dry creek defined Ike Eisenhower as a man who first sets his goals, then sits back disconcertingly until he has decided how to get there. Last week the Eisenhower Administration was in a similar dry-creek period, a painful interlude where the objectives were set but the Administration was getting nowhere. Items:

¶ As an instrument of foreign policy, the President had sent to Congress a resolution condemning Soviet enslavement of captive peoples. To please the Democrats and the State Department professionals, the resolution carefully avoided condemnation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements. But Republicans, including Ike, had condemned the treaties roundly all through the campaign. Now the resolution was shelved, perhaps for good, because Republicans who wanted to toughen it were placed in the awkward position of fighting the President while the Democrats supported him.

¶ Without sounding out congressional sentiment, the President nominated Charles ("Chip") Bohlen, a top-ranking Foreign Service careerist, to be U.S. Ambassador to Moscow. Bad timing and bad staff work on the Bohlen case forced Dulles and Eisenhower to make a major effort to get the Bohlen nomination through (see below).

¶ Many a diplomatic and economic policy decision is on dead center, waiting for a restatement of U.S. foreign policy and defense policy. This restatement, in turn, is waiting on Pentagon "fact finders." who were asked two months ago to prepare a statement of present and future U.S. military capabilities. General Omar Bradley and his military experts, who underwrote most of the Truman-Acheson foreign policy, have not produced these estimates. Early this month, Bradley made a speech which paid more attention to reasons for not changing policies in Korea than to reasons for winning the war.

This is typical of the resistance that Ike is meeting inside the Executive Branch of the Government. Congressional difficulties to date are largely a reflection of the failure of the "permanent establishment." civilian and military, to reflect and act on topside decisions.

As far as Ike's difficulties with Congress are concerned, he could easily go to the people and use his enormous prestige to blast his policies through. But before he takes such extreme measures, he probably could clear up a lot of his trouble with Congress by quietly and firmly stiffening his own Administration until the "permanent establishment" understands who's in charge. The mood of frustration in Washington last week, tightened by the prominence of McCarthy & Co., indicated that it was high time for Ike to get moving.