National Affairs: Atomics to Billboards

• Share

(2 of 2)

Fixed Responsibility. Twice reporters popped out straight into Ike's mitt on domestic questions. Scripps-Howard Newsman Andrew Tully tried to find out if Ike would support Indiana's recalcitrant Republican Senator Bill Jenner in his 1958 re-election campaign. Snapped Ike: "Well, aren't you asking a question way ahead of time? The primaries are not over yet."* Another time, he showed how he viewed the supposed temerity of eleven members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, when they sent him a personal letter recommending the reappointment of Commissioner Thomas Murray to a new term. "It is my responsibility," he said crisply, "to appoint people in the Executive Department." Asked for his opinion on the growing rumbling created by the outdoor-advertising lobbyists who are fighting for the right to erect billboards along the future federal highway system. Ike sighed: "Like everybody else, I would rather see something more beautiful than a signboard. But I don't believe the Federal Government can just pass [antibillboard] laws willy-nilly . . . and have them obeyed in every state, merely because we are buying ... a 300-foot right of way . . . While I am against these billboards that mar our scenery, I don't know what I can do about it."