The Presidency: Amid Affairs of State

• Share

On a typical morning last week, the President at: 9:30 a.m. Pinned American Automobile Association gold medals on seven boys and one girl, aged 11 to 15, who as members of school safety patrols had saved schoolmates or other persons from possible death or injury. He was "very proud" of them, the President said. 10 a.m. Met with 80 or so members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and their wives in the White House Rose Garden, managed to chuckle at 92 cartoons featuring John F. Kennedy, jokingly told the cartoonists that he is really "much thinner" and much less hairy-headed than they had depicted him. 10:30 a.m. Delivered, at Arlington Cemetery, a speech extolling Ignace Jan Paderewski, the great Polish pianist and patriot who died in the U.S. in 1941. Occasion: the dedication of a plaque marking Paderewski's crypt. Paderewski was buried at Arlington, said the President, with the understanding that "when Poland would one day be free again, he would be returned to his native country. That day has not yet come, but I believe that in this land of the free, Paderewski rests easily." 11:30 a.m. Made a speech, this time in the Departmental Auditorium, lauding the work of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. That afternoon the President defended his tax-cut and budget policies in a luncheon speech to the trustees of the Committee for Economic Development, an association of high-level businessmen and educators. In a question-and-answer session afterward, he said that "it would be a mistake" to save money by slowing down U.S. space programs, predicted the Russians would make "spectacular efforts" in space "in the coming months." On other days last week, the President: > Named retired Navy Captain William Robert Anderson, 41, the man who in 1958 skippered the nuclear submarine Nautilus on man's first voyage under the polar icecap, to head up the not-yet-existent National Service Corps, sometimes referred to as the domestic Peace Corps. Until such time as Congress passes the President's National Service Corps bill, Anderson—no kin to Admiral George Anderson, who was fired as CNO the same day—will serve as a "presidential consultant" on the project. > Telephoned greetings to Harry Truman on his 79th birthday. > Told his midweek press conference that he was "not hopeful" about the prospects for a nuclear test ban agreement with Russia. > Let it be known that he had rented his new seven-bedroom ranch house on Rattlesnake Mountain for the summer to A. Dana Hodgdon, a Washington broker, for a reported $1,000 a month. > Appointed his sometime Harvard classmate, Benjamin A. Smith II, to be chairman of the U.S. delegation at next month's North Pacific Fisheries Conference (U.S., Canada, Japan). Smith was the friend whom Kennedy picked to hold his old Senate seat in 1961-62 until Teddy was ready to run for it.