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¶ Republicans must have attractive, youthful candidates; the only way to get good candidates is for the Eisenhower Republicans to capture control of state G.O.P. machines all down the line.
¶ The time to get going for 1956 is right now.
Lines of Force. Eisenhower came to the White House full of humility and with a profound respect for the presidency as an institution. He tried hard to live up to what the institution demanded of him; he was intensely aware of the constitutional line between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue; he set up an exemplary staff system to bring the far-flung empire of the Federal Government under administrative control; he professed his faith in the Republican philosophy, but considered it his duty to operate on a plane above partisan struggle.
Ike has since learned that the presidency is something like a magnetic pole. It cannot be neutral; it either attracts or repels, and its lines of force are influential through all of Government.
If the White House does not send out lines of force, the various segments of the American system—Congress, party, bureaucracy—swing like so many wandering compass needles to their own petty interests. In short, he discovered that the President cannot be "above politics." The change shows itself in countless ways. A few months ago he chafed at the restraints and demands on his personal freedom, but now he accepts the restraints as a matter of course because he likes his job. In his personal reading he used to choose western stories for relaxation; he still likes them, but has become engrossed in The Federalist papers and in Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. Currently, he is reading Pundit Sam Lubell's The Future of American Politics. Ike once made his decisions on the basis of quick written summaries and oral briefings; now he is reading more and more long reports to catch the nuances, often scribbles long notes and suggestions in the margin. In the early days he disliked press conferences; now, sure of what he wants to get across, he has carried the presidential press conference to new bounds of influence by opening it to television coverage.
Soothed Nerves. Essentially, Dwight Eisenhower is no plunger, and he believed that there were other aspects to his job that had to be settled before he got around to politics. He spent months learning to know and understand the members of his Administration staff, now feels that it is the finest staff ever installed in the White House. He knows his official family as few Presidents in history have known theirs; he listens carefully to all the members of his enlarged Cabinet, has learned that he can lean most heavily on Secretary of State Dulles, Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey, Secretary of Agriculture Benson, Attorney General Brownell and Presidential Assistant Joe Dodge (TIME, Jan. 24).
Eisenhower believes that his team stopped the drift toward more welfare statism, and that it achieved this without dividing the nation and disrupting the economy. He placed a long, coordinated program before Congress, notable for a more rational defense budget than the U.S. had seen for many a day.