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"I Don't Suppose It Matters." Ike Eisenhower must win more delegates to win the nomination, and Ike knows it. On the way from Kansas City to Abilene, Ike doggedly went through the train to shake hands with his boosters and some 50 Midwestern delegates who were aboard. For the most part, these were already technically his delegates, but the openhanded, hearty, Eisenhower charm turned many into glowing enthusiasts. When
Ike came to Mr. and Mrs. John Hayes of Hutchinson, Kans., he said, to their delight: "I don't suppose it matters to you, but it matters to me. I played baseball in Hutchinson on May 15, 1909."
He was even better when he stood in the corner of the living room in Charlie Case's house in Abilene and shook hands down the long, long line. To an Abilene man who had been in the homecoming parade Ike said: "Say, you did a swell job!" To a young man introduced as a veteran, Ike gave the big grip and shouted above the din: "You look like a damn soldier." To an lowan delegate who wanted to know if he was a me-too candidate, Ike was blunt: "If they say I'm me-tooing just because I want to keep the good things that have been done in the last 20 years while I'm throwing out the bad things—if that's me-too, why they can go to hell."
Mamie, with a cool eye for business, was a great help. When Ike was getting ready to start out on one of his handshaking tours Mamie told him: "Tell the girls—I mean the ladies—to come on back here and I'll talk to them." A man from Missouri rode up to the sixth floor of the Sunflower to report proudly that Missouri probably would go 22 for Ike and four for Taft. Said Mamie: "What's the matter with those four? Let's work on them."
Ike and Mamie both felt like seasoned campaigners when they flew into New York for their second major political welcome. Tom Dewey greeted them at the airport and drove them across Manhattan in his limousine to Ike's New York residence, the president's house at Columbia University.
On Sunday the Eisenhowers slipped off to the ii a.m. service at the interdenominational Riverside Church, stopped after the sermon to chat with the minister, Dr. Robert J. McCracken. Ten minutes after they got back home, Pennsylvania's Governor John Fine arrived for lunch and a political conference (see below) which lasted nearly four hours. After that the delegate parade was on: by the end of the week, when he makes his Detroit speech, Ike will have shaken the hands of some 500 delegates from 18 states.
The Real Measure. Some of Ike's managers wildly claimed that, their candidate had picked up 50 Taft delegates in Abilene alone. Such claims were wishful thinking, of which there is a lot in the Eisenhower camp. But in his short first week, Ike had certainly struck a spark in his own followers. Ikemen, who had hoped—before Abilene—that they might win, now fanned across the U.S., convinced that they must.
But the real measure of Ike's first days in politics stretched beyond handshakes, delegate counts and party workers. By laying down the values and convictions of his own faith, Ike Eisenhower had already done much to lift the 1952 political campaign toward his own high level of character. For that, win or lose, the U.S. could be grateful.