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Private Test. Shortly after the attack, the President underwent exhaustive clinical tests ("all over my head electrodes were held in place by small mudballs"). The results were reassuring, but he continued to agonize over the possibility that he might not be fully capable of expressing himself or making decisions. So Ike devised his own "simple, logical test to see whether I was physically and mentally capable of serving as President"; he decided to attend a "presumably strenuous" NATO conference in Paris in December, 1957. "If I felt the results to be less than satisfactory, then I would resign," he recalls. All went well, and he even made a speech.
Thereafter, he says, "no question of the kind again occurred to me." Nonetheless, Eisenhower never fully overcame his speech difficulty, confesses that "even today I occasionally reverse syllables in a long word, and at times am compelled to speak slowly and cautiously if I am to enunciate clearly." In every other respect, however, Ike today seems as chipper as ever. This week, in appreciation of his present vigor and past feats, Republicans will gather to salute the former President at banquet tables from Alaska to Connecticut. The occasion: Dwight Eisenhower's 75th birthday.