THE PRESIDENCY: What's a Republican?

Midway in a politics-spiked press conference last week, President Eisenhower caught a question that he must often have asked himself:. "What do you think are the real issues that are going to settle this election?" The President paused to gather thought, crossed his arms over his chest, then spelled out the fundamental issue: Eisenhower Republicanism.

The voters, said he. must choose between two theories on "the management of America's affairs at home." His own:

"The Lincolnian dictum of doing for people the things they can't do well themselves, but to avoid interference where people can do things for themselves." The Federal Government should support social security and unemployment insurance, foster health research, overcome emergency schoolroom shortages, keep the dollar sound. Beyond these duties is a barrier: "The partnership policy of which we speak is to give the maximum responsibility into the hands of local and state governments to run their own affairs."

By the Numbers. Against this G.O.P. approach is, in Ike's mind, a diametric Democratic view. "Instead of trying to release, to guide and to help the great and illimitable results you get from a free people doing these things, they want to guide and direct—and they are not concerned particularly with the sound dollar, because they talk about raising ... expenditures [and] cutting taxes . . . That means . . . deficit spending. And you cannot continue to spend on a deficit basis without hurting your dollar."

How was the campaign going, a newsman wanted to know. "The only thing I have got to go by is the crowds, their reception of me and their general attitude. And I must say, the receptions I have had are those that warm my heart ... I go just exactly as I did in '52, I try to lay out exactly what I believe, what I am for. what I am leading the Republican Party to support. And if that is what the American people want, I am delighted. But I abide by their decision ..."

Sharper Needles. Was it true that Adlai Stevenson, with his end-the-draft and stop-H-bomb-tests appeals, had beat the G.O.P. to a similar campaign punch? Said Ike: "You are telling me things about my Administration that I have never heard of. and I am quite sure no one has come up and suggested to me that we eliminate the draft . . . Now I tell you frankly I have said my last words on these subjects."

Toward the end of the conference, the political needles got sharper. Did Ike believe that some G.O.P. Senators (Wisconsin's McCarthy, Indiana's Jenner, Nevada's Malone) "fit in with your picture of the new Republican Party?" Replied Ike: "There are no national parties in the United States. There are 48 state parties . . . they are the ones that determine the people that belong to those parties. There is nothing I can do to say that someone is not a Republican. The most I can say is that in many things they do not agree with me. Therefore, in looking for help to get over a program, which is the sole purpose of political leadership, as I see it ... I can't look to them for help."

Last week the President also: