THE PRESIDENCY: Backward Step

If there was one lesson that U.S. negotiators should have brought home from the unexpected successes of the NATO conference in Paris, it was that the future health of NATO depends on the vigor of the U.S. response to the Soviet Union's military and diplomatic challenges. One night last week President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles took to network television to report to the nation on the NATO conference. Their report showed neither vigor nor urgency, was poorly conceived, indifferently staged and dully performed.

The program was cast in a mold of informality, with Ike and Dulles discussing the Paris sessions, but it actually showed the President of the U.S. as master of ceremonies for the Secretary of State's featured role. Ike spoke briefly at the beginning and end of the program, reading from a rough text which he had written out during the afternoon. Said he of the NATO meeting: "There was one basic purpose implicit in every discussion and debate of the conference. That was the pursuit of a just peace. Not once during the week did I hear any slightest hint of saber-rattling or of aggressive intent. Of course, all of us were concerned with developing the necessary spiritual, economic and military strength of our defensive alliance."

Two-Sided Proposition. Then, while Dulles took over for 20 minutes the President sat in wan profile, self-consciously fiddling with his glasses or staring in painful attentiveness over Dulles' shoulder.

Dulles spoke informally from notes, but without achieving the desired effect of spontaneity. His major points: 1) although the U.S. is more than willing to go along with its NATO allies in talking disarmament with Russia, it still insists on the points of principle and procedure that would make U.S.-Russian disarmament a two-sided proposition; 2) the U.S., in its determination to match and surpass the Soviets in the missile race, can not afford to neglect such equally important phases of the cold war as foreign aid and liberalized foreign trade. The decisions of the NATO conference, said Dulles, add up "to quite a lot, assuming, of course, that they are carried out with vigor."

"Tired, Aging Men." Such steadfast Republicans as Senate Minority Leader William Knowland and New Jersey's H. Alexander Smith defended the Eisenhower-Dulles report as "informative" and "positive," but from the Republican-Portland Oregonian came a bitter criticism of "the spectacle of two tired, aging men talking about the gravely compromised half-measures which bind and separate America from its European allies." Among Democrats, Montana's Mike Mansfield wished the report "had spelled out the sacrifices the people will be required to make in the years ahead." Harry S. Truman, holidaying in Manhattan, snapped during an early-morning walk that he was "just about as thoroughly bored with Mr. Dulles as the President was." Truman also said that the television report had been "fixed up by BBDO"—which he defined as "bunko, bull, deceit and obfuscation." *