The poison pen pals of the U.S., who began smearing Ike Eisenhower more or less covertly before the New Hampshire primary, were hard at work last week on an around-the-clock, coast-to-coast basis. In Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago and New York, the smudgy little dodgers, the slick pamphlets and the "confidential" newsletters oozed a campaign of character assassination such as the U.S. has not seen since the 1928 campaign against Alfred E. Smith.
In sum, their messages are incoherent, self-canceling and wildly contradictory. But their common purpose is the big smear. With...