AMERICAN VIEW
Halfway with Eisenhower
By RICHARD ROVERE New York OW does President Eisenhower now stand with public opinion ? According to the polls and to politicians of both parties, his popularity is undiminished. Here and there, one is told, there are people who voted for him and now regret it, but the number is small and perhaps is equalled by those who didn't vote for him but now—possibly because they have been lately impressed by revelations of Pemocratic iniquity—wish that they had. Anyway, most of the experts think he could be re-elected today by substantially the same margin, six million votes, he had in 1952. In the Congressional campaigns now getting under way, just about everyone is passing himself off as an Eisenhower candidate. Republicans argue that the President needs a Republican majority in order to put his programme across. Democrats argue that the Republicans only pay lip service to the Eisenhower programme and that the real way to get it enacted is to vote for Democrats. It is a fact that the Democrats in Congress have given the President more support than the Republicans have. It is partly for this reason, but even more because of the rise in unemployment and the decline in farm Prices, that most people at the moment expect the Democrats to win control of Congress this fall. No one, though, expects their Victory to be overwhelming. Only an overwhelming victory could be interpreted as evidence of loss of standing by the President.
.Must the fact, assuming it to be one, that Mr. Eisenhower Still has a majority behind him be taken to mean that people m general are pleased with his performance thus far ? I think not. One gets the impression that disappointment is wide- spread but that disaffection is rare. This accords with the general American attitude toward politics. Most people would think it unjust and unsporting to withdraw their support of a President who has not yet reached the middle of his first term. Whatever their misgivings, they would point out that these are difficult times, that the Presidency is a trying job, that Rome wasn't built in a day. Beyond that, they would point out that the unfortunate incumbent had little preparation for his job. that he took office after twenty years of Democratic power, and that, whether or not he seems to be living up to expecta- tions', he should not be written off this early in the game. It is obvious that large numbers of those who supported Eisenhower in 1952 found merit in the Republican argument that there was a mess in Washington' and that a change of party was needed to clean it up. It can hardly have escaped the notice of those same voters that there is still a mess in Washington, and some, I am sure, would be ready to say that it looks to be a worse mess than before. But most of them, I am confident, would say that at this stage the President should be given the benefit of every doubt and that he should not be sternly judged until 1954. And I daresay that if he is a candidate to succeed himself in 1954 there will be many to say that he should not be judged on the basis of one term alone.
So much for the question of whether Eisenhower still has the country behind him. The polls say he does and there is no reason to question them. It can be pretty safely assumed, though, that there have been some sharp changes in the character of his support and in the quality of feeling about him.
In 1952, people were drawn to Eisenhower because he had an engaging, reassuring personality and because he was a symbol of success in great undertakings. He was not a politician, and that is one reason why he was wanted in politics. He had in him, many people seemed to believe, the makings of a statesman; he could be disinterested, large- visioned, fair-minded. I do not know whether many actually thought of-him as a Great Man. I never- knew anyone who did, and I have the feeling that comparatively few people thought of him that way. But millions, certainly, felt that he came about as close to being a Great Man as any American of this period.
The Eisenhower of this popular image has been dealt some cruel blows in the period since the last election. At bottom, surely, the man is as capable and decent and agreeable as he ever was. But his personal attractiveness is not today the quality that projects, and his capability, which is in another line of work, is wholly lost sight of. The impression no one can now avoid having is that of a distressed, flustered, greatly put-upon man. There was a certain crispness, about the General. The President is a blur. He may hold as large and generous and courageous a view of life as anyone ever felt he did, but it cannot be possible now for anyone to convince himself that the President's view of life or of American public affairs is an important factor in meeting the problems that confront us. No one, that is, can tell himself today that General Eisenhower, because his heart is pure, will lift up the rest of Washington and give the country a truly non-political administration. It must be apparent to even the most ill- informed of men that Washington today fairly wallows in politics and that the President's own party and cabinet are rent by factional strife as bitter and destructive as anything known under the Democrats. It may be that the public will forgive him this. It may feel, as indeed it should, that he bears little personal responsibility for it. But the fact cannot be blinked that he is not able to change the situation very much.
Where once, then, General Eisenhower was the repository of hopes, President Eisenhower is today the beneficiary of sympathy. This change in the quality of feeling does not show up in the public-opinion polls, and it may be that it will never show up in election returns. Disaffection changes votes; disenchantment doesn't necessarily do so.
There is a special sort of disenchantment, however, that is pretty certain to have political consequences later on. In the middle and top reaches of the Republican Party, there are men whose support of General Eisenhower was never warm and who accepted him only because someone had told them he could win. Their personal liking was for Senator Taft or someone else more or less of the Taft persuasion. At the present time, a fair number of these people are disenchanted almost to the point of disgust. They hold against the President his pursuit of most of the Truman-Roosevelt foreign policy, his endorsement of some aspects of Democratic domestic policy, and the fact that he has now and then given offence to Senator McCarthy. Some of them are saying that they are through with him for good. The Republican leader in the Dutchess County village where I live, for example, tells me that he will do nothing to help the party if Eisenhower is the candidate in 1956. 'I don't make the same mistake twice if I can help it,' he says. Talk of this sort is more likely to be heard in mid-term than at election time, when it is common for party workers to swallow their pride and put aside their personal feelings in order to serve what is for them the larger interest. Nevertheless. the Eisenhower administration oes have to concern itself with a-tendency toward indifference and hostility among the .so-called Old Guard Republican leaders (at the higher levels, the Old Guard greatly out- numbers the New Guard) throughout the country. It is at least conceivable that if these people, or a considerable group of them, sat on their hands in 1956, the Republicans would lose the Presidency even though they had roughly the same volume of support as in 1952.
At all events, it can be reported that the President has been a disappointment to two groups of people : those who expected him to elevate the moral tone of American politics and those who hoped that he might become a second Herbert Hoover. It is too early to say whether this disappointment will have measurable political consequences. It should be borne in mind, though, that a six-million majority is a pretty formidable one and that, other things being equal, it would take not a small but a massive shift of opinion to overcdme it. Now, in September 1954, it would be prudent to wager that President Eisenhower, if he chooses to run again, would win.
A few weeks ago, though, the prudent investor might well have put his money on the proposition that the President would not choose to run again. His friends and colleagues described him as a deeply resentful man, one who regretted having been talked into the Presidency and who wished only to finish up his term as best he could and get out. He had, it was said, found the job more wearing than he had anticipated; he was bored by much of it and greatly distressed at his inability to put an end to factionalism in his party. His manner at Press conferences seemed to confirm this impression. It is generally easy to tell when a man is unhappy in his work and the President looked for all the world like such a man.
It could probably have been foreseen that his attitude would change in time. Most Presidents—except those, like Franklin Roosevelt, who take a true and natural joy in the exercise of power—dislike the job at first, and most Presidents coma sooner or later to like it. Harry Truman was miserable during his first two years in office and jaunty during his last five. Within the last month, President Eisenhower has been showing signs of jauntiness. His manner at Press conferences has undergone notable changes. He seems much less resentful of the whole affair, and this has led, happily, to an improve- ment in his syntax. He talks more confidently now and hence more directly. His visitors are almost unanimous in the view that be is beginning at last to enjoy himself and to take some pleasure in the tasks that formerly he found so vexing. It is doubtful if he will ever delight in the hard, thankless job as Harry Truman did, since it seems unlikely that he could ever come to have the same interest in the basic stuff of politics—the men, the issues, the strategies—that men have who have given a lifetime to it. But he does seem at last to be acquiring the feeling of per-Sonal engagement that has been missing up to now in his administration. Today it would be entirely reasonable to assume that he will want vindication in 1956. And that if he wants ii, he will get it.
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