They saw Ike, and they liked what they saw.
They liked him because he turned out to be an amazingly good campaigner: he could shake a man's hand and say the gracious word graciously; he could catch a delegate's name and remember it 24 hours later; and he could shoulder gently through a harassing crowd and never get harassed. They liked him for his strong, vigorous manner of speech, for his quiet control when schedules collapsed or plans were drenched with rain, and for an over riding, innate kindliness and modesty.
But most of all, they liked him in a way they could scarcely explain. They liked Ike because, when they saw him and heard him talk, he made them proud of themselves and all the half-forgotten best that was in them and in the nation.
Back Door. It was a crashing conquest for the man who flew westward out of Washington one afternoon last week, a known soldier but an unknown candidate.
He landed at Kansas City, Kans., and spent a quiet, secluded night on the 14th floor of the new Town House, waking up at 4 a.m. and worrying about his first cam paign speech. At 7:30 a.m. Ike, Mamie, newsmen and the campaign brass climbed aboard a Santa Fe streamliner bound for the little (pop. 6,000) town of Abilene, where the U.S. would watch Ike make his political debut.
The first omens were discouraging. When the train stopped at Emporia for a crew change, Ike's green campaign managers suddenly realized that it was time for the candidate to make a back-platform appearance. Then, to their horror, they discovered that the duck-tailed streamliner had no back platform. Ike spent the first few minutes waving and grinning through the windows at the crowd. A porter struggled with a small door at the rear of the car and finally got it open. Ike stepped to the door and was just reaching down to shake an upstretched hand as the engineer started up, leaving half the reporters and photographers behind. A trainman flagged down the train half a block away. Said Ike, grinning ruefully: "I darn near fell out the door."
First Platform. The train was still honking its way across the flat, green wheatland when the crowds began to drift into an open field beside the tracks in Abilene. At 12:30 p.m. the humming Diesel nosed its way past the band and the bunting, stopped so its last car was even with a roped-off boardwalk. The Kansans cheered and crowded close as the ruddy, bareheaded man in the grey doublebreasted suit climbed down the steps, beamed, waved and shook hands around. Then, with Mamie on his right, Ike made his way through the clamor and the handshakes to his first political platform.