Making of a State Paper

Of all U.S. state papers, none is more formally conceived or more intricately worked over than the State of the Union message to Congress. In 1955 at least 600 Government officials were consulted during the five months in which President Eisenhower's message was prepared. It was still incomplete the night before its delivery. The chronology:

Aug. 5. Ike summoned his Cabinet to the White House to outline the message he meant to deliver. It would be brief, he said, with an outside limit of 25 minutes' reading time; it would sum up the accomplishments of his Administration to date, and hammer home the need for completing his program. Cabinet members and department heads were instructed to submit by Oct. 15 their lists of achievements and specific requests for new legislation. The man who would coordinate everything: Kevin McCann, 51. president-on-leave of Ohio's Defiance College, Ike's biographer (Man from Abilene), and currently White House Assistant for Speeches and Reports.

Oct. 15. Out of the U.S. bureaucracy came a book-size pile of research. McCann read it all, occasionally marking a paragraph or a thought he considered worthy of inclusion.

Oct. 24. McCann headed west to visit the President, recuperating from his heart attack in Denver's Fitzsimons Army Hospital. Settling back in his plane seat, McCann began to scratch out in pen and ink the first, 400-word outline of the State of the Union message. He put down five subject headings: 1) "World Responsibility," which later grew to "The Discharge of Our World Responsibility"; 2) "National Security," which became "The Constant Improvement of our National Security"; 3) "Fiscal Integrity"; 4) "Our Production Plant," for which the President substituted "To Foster a Strong Economy"; 5) "Human Resources," which became "The Response to Human Concerns." McCann checked his outline with Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams and Economic Assistant Gabriel Hauge, and then set out, in a barren cubicle at the U.S. Air Force base in Denver, to write the first draft of the message. The result: a triple-spaced sheaf of typescript that ran to precisely 30 minutes' reading time.

Oct. 27. McCann read this draft to the President in his hospital room. Ike interrupted at almost every paragraph to make changes. His secretary, Mrs. Ann Whitman, took a shorthand transcription of his ideas. Next day, with only Mrs. Whitman present, Ike spent 90 more minutes revising and rewriting the second half of the speech. McCann flew back to Washington, D.C.

Oct. 29-Nov. 1. Over the weekend, McCann studied the Whitman transcript and turned out a second draft, or "Revise No. 1," which he sent off to the President at Denver. McCann then thankfully took off with his wife for a seven-day vacation on the sunny island of Tobago "to wash the whole thing out of my mind." As it turned out, he had done only about two-thirds of his job.