Nation: Love Ticket: David and Julie

In a year of wee-hour skull sessions, G.O.P. strategists could hardly have cooked up such a promotional coup. The idea would have seemed too stagy or cloyingly obvious: the candidate's perky, pretty 20-year-old daughter Julie becoming engaged to the 20-year-old grandson of Dwight Eisenhower on the very eve of the presidential primary race. They would then campaign hand-in-hand toward November victory and a White House wedding.

As it happened, Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower came up with that script on their own. They fell in love during a year-long courtship at Smith and...