National Affairs: Target: the G.O.P.

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When Adlai Stevenson showed up last week in Charlotte. N.C., newsmen noted his heavier tan and lighter humor (compared to his showing in Miami last month), but few other apparent changes. If not running for office, he was at least a man in motion. He was still glad-handing party pols and casting pearly wit before crowds (on his bothersome kidney stone: "A subversive element"). It was only in his major speech, wildly cheered by some 3,500 Carolina Democrats, that a bigger change showed.

In his Miami speech, Stevenson had set his sights on Ike; the Democratic tar get for '54, he indicated, was to be the President himself. In Charlotte last week, Ike was all but praised. Stevenson's target became the men around Ike and the G.O.P. itself. "When our President bestirs himself, ignores the expedient counsel of small-bore politicians and clears the high-pressure salesmen out of his house." said Stevenson, "I confidently predict that the American people will be enthusiastically and gratefully behind him. But I fear he will have to make his choice between uniting his party and uniting his nation . . . He cannot do both."

In his shift of emphasis. Stevenson has returned to the line of Democratic Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson, who believes that it is politically fruitless to attack Ike directly; that the best Democratic strategy is to praise Ike, attack "the men around him."