National Affairs: Words from an Angry Man

Dwight Eisenhower knew that the question would be asked, and he knew exactly what he was going to say. At the presidential press conference, the New York Herald Tribune's Roscoe Drummond did the asking: What was the President's reaction to the speech made by Vermont's Senator Flanders (see col. 2). As President Eisenhower answered, the words boiled over each other; he slashed the air with his right hand; he struck his desk with the edge of his left hand. His words were temperate, but his anger was clear and deep.

"The Republican Party is now the party of responsibility, so charged by the people of the U.S. in the elective process," said the President. "And when Senator Flanders points up the danger of us engaging in internecine warfare, and magnifying certain items of procedure and right and personal aggrandizement . . . to the point that we are endangering the program of action . . . then he is doing a service . . . Now I am not going to be in a position of endorsing every word he said or how he said it . . . All I saw of it was a little bit . . . on television last evening . . . But I do say that . . . splitting apart when you are in positions of responsibility and going in three or four different directions at once is . . . serious."

Later in the conference, the President expressed the firm opinion that overemphasis of negative, corrective and punitive activities is very wrong. Asked another reporter: Did the selection of Vice President Nixon to reply to Adlai Stevenson mean McCarthy would not speak for the Republican Party in 1954? Ike shrugged, pointed out that McCarthy can claim to represent whomever he wants—but in this case, the voice of the Republican Party is that of Richard Nixon.