REPUBLICANS: The Heart Is So Full

There is no way that the President of the U.S. and the American people can conduct a dialogue on the political subject uppermost in the minds of both. Dwight Eisenhower knows this. "I could devoutly wish," he said last week, "that there were some method by which the American people could, under the circumstances, point out the path of my true duty. But it appears that this is a question that first I alone must answer."

The President was speaking over a closed-circuit television network-to more than 70,000 men and women in 53 cities. They had paid some $5,000,000, at up to $100 a plate, to attend Salute-To-Ike dinners (planned before his heart attack) honoring his completion of three years in office.

Party orators were out in corps force; they included nearly all the Cabinet, many of the White House staffers, more than a score of Republican governors, Senators and Representatives. The motif was partisan right down to the "First Lady Salad" in Spokane and the "Fresh Asparagus Spears Nixon" in Cleveland. There were the inevitable bloopers: in New York's dingy Madison Square Garden a television screen went blank just as the President began speaking, came brightly back just as he finished. There was evidence of ward-level tricksters at work: the Los Angeles dinner committee, dominated by Nixon supporters, invited California's Governor Goodwin J. Knight to appear only after making certain that Knight had already accepted an invitation from San Francisco. Sniggered a committee member: "When 'Goodie' found out that the San Francisco dinner wasn't going to be on television and the Los Angeles one was, he almost busted a gut."

But despite such flaws, the Salute-To-Ike dinners were an occasion for high emotions. In Flint, Mich. an audience of 635 alternated between wild cheers and near sobs. In Chicago Vice President Richard Nixon wept silently in the darkened amphitheater while Ike, speaking from Washington, expressed his thanks for the tributes that had been paid him. And Dwight Eisenhower's own eyes glistened with tears as he sat in the ballroom of Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel and watched the television scenes flashing from city to city, with speaker after speaker talking directly to the President, thanking him, blessing him and wishing him well.

The Great Picture. The President and Mrs. Eisenhower stepped into the Sheraton-Park's ballroom at 9:55 p.m., Ike in a dinner jacket with white carnation, Mamie radiant in a lavender cocktail dress, wearing a single strand of pearls and earrings with the word "Ike" printed on each. Ike raised both arms in familiar salute to the crowd, then went with Mamie to a table, where they sat sipping ice water and watching the movie-sized television screen. As the TV program began, a single spotlight centered on the Eisenhowers, forcing the President to shield his eyes with his right hand.