THE PRESIDENCY: The Youngest Brother

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¶ A veteran Washington hand, Milton is a member of the President's keystone Advisory Committee on Government Reorganization. Even before Russia's Sputnik spun into the sky last October, Milton and Ike were deep in talks leading toward the Pentagon reorganization that passed into law this summer.

Who's Who & Why. By any standard, Milton Eisenhower is well qualified for his role. Eisenhower, Milton Stover, takes up 52 lines of Who's Who, compared to 19 for Eisenhower, Dwight David. President in his time of three schools—Kansas State College, Pennsylvania State and Johns Hopkins Universities—he has also served five Presidents of the U.S.: as Agriculture Department careerman under Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, as wartime troubleshooter for F.D.R., as labor-dispute fact finder and Government reorganizer for Harry Truman, and as Ike's most trusted, trustworthy helper.

Yet despite his credentials, Milton's place in the Eisenhower Administration has been noisily misunderstood. Milton, cried Wisconsin's Joe McCarthy, was "the real President of the U.S." Even Edgar Eisenhower, eldest of the four surviving Eisenhower brothers, has accused Milton of dragging Dwight down the primrose path of overliberalism.*

Such charges miss the mark by miles, entailing basic mistakes about Milton Eisenhower as a man and about his relationship with Ike. Shy, extremely sensitive to criticism, Milton is no man to wear his private character on his public sleeve. The man behind the maroon cover of Who's Who is no heavy-footed bureaucrat ; he plays his part in the Government with the same soft touch that he uses on the pedals of the Hammond organ in his Johns Hopkins residence—in stocking feet. Far from being a doctrinaire ax grinder, he bends over backward to present objective views to Ike. Indeed, he is most reluctant of all to give advice on the subject he knows best and feels most strongly about: agriculture.

Having suffered through the woolly-headed schemes of the New Deal Agriculture Department (he twice submitted his resignation to Henry Wallace, twice got talked out of leaving), Milton Eisenhower agrees with Republican Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson's stand against high, rigid, surplus-producing farm subsidies, has defended Benson against his critics. But not in the White House. "This," he has told the President, "is one thing on which I have definite opinions and strong views. I shouldn't be talking about the job of your Agriculture Secretary."

It is in such striving for objectivity that Milton Eisenhower is most valuable to his brother. "The President," he says, "has vast machinery to get evidence on public problems. But in this lonely job it is good for him to have someone who is a good listener and a sympathetic friend who can serve as a sounding board." By mutual consent, his role as friend and sounding board is not a matter for tabloid parade. "We have an understanding," President Eisenhower has told friends, "that we will keep each other's confidences."