Yet ofttimes in his maddest mirthful
mood Strange pangs would flash along Childe
Harold's brow,
As if the memory of some daily feud
Or disappointed passion lurk'd below.
—Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Strange pangs flashed along the brow of Harold Stassen, onetime childe wonder of Republican politics. Long disappointed in his presidential passion, his daily feuds with such as Joe McCarthy grown pale and wan, Stassen, at 49, felt the need to fare forth in quest of new political ad ventures. Last week he fared forth. He urged that the G.O.P. dump Vice President Richard Nixon in favor of Massachusetts' Governor Christian A. Herter.
With President Eisenhower away in Panama, Harold Stassen called a news conference and, in gentle tones, read a prepared statement. He had, said Harold, received the results of private polls that showed Nixon running last to Herter's first among Republican vice-presidential possibilities (one of the others listed in the polling was Harold Stassen). The polls indicated that Nixon's name on the ticket would cost Ike about 6% of the vote this fall, said Stassen. He stoutly maintained that he was acting only as a private citizen, not in his capacity as the President's adviser on disarmament. Said Stassen: "I am deeply convinced that for the good of America and for the cause of peace no honorably avoidable handicap [i.e., Nixon] should be placed on President Eisenhower in this election."
The reaction to Stassen's announcement was intense: 20 Republican Congressmen signed a demand for his resignation as a
White House aide; later, 180 of the 202 G.O.P. Representatives pledged their support to Nixon. In Panama Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty snapped that Stassen could not have made his statement as "a member of the President's official family." Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall said flatly: "My own prediction is that the ticket will again be Eisenhower and Nixon."
Undying Loyalty. Harold Stassen had been a long time deciding what was "for the good of America and for the cause of peace." Shortly after President Eisenhower's heart attack last year—perhaps too shortly, considering the niceties—he saw to it that the word got to the Vice President that Harold Stassen would be a 100% Nixon-for-President man in 1956, got no answer at all. Again, after Ike announced that he would be available for renomination, Stassen sent Nixon his as surances of undying loyalty.