A Letter From The Publisher, Nov. 24, 1975

Our national political correspondent, Robert Ajemian, got his first up-close look at the special tensions and frustrations of presidential campaigning when he covered Dwight Eisenhower's drive for the White House in 1952. He recalls one occasion when an exhausted Ike roundly chewed out some of his aides on a Manhattan street after fumbling an important speech because of a glitch in a TelePrompTer machine. Having witnessed similar episodes in other campaigns—as correspondent, political editor and later assistant managing editor at LIFE, Ajemian confesses: "I admire politicians enormously. They are the best of the survivalists. They get battered and second-guessed and in...

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