As the White House correspondents had it figured, Harold Stassen's 9:45 a.m. appointment with Dwight Eisenhower could only mean that Childe Harold needed a job. It was more than two years since he was flattened in the wreck of his "Dump Nixon" movement at the Republican National Convention. It was nine months since he had turned State Department hair grey as the President's special aide on disarmament and finally had been shown to the gate. Then last May, running for G.O.P. nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania, he was flattened again by Pretzel Manufacturer Arthur McGonigle. But when Stassen's visit lasted almost an hour, reporters were puzzled, hardly knew what to ask when he came out.
In the White House lobby Honest Harold soon got to what was on his mind: dump Dick Nixon. "There are a number of men," said he, "who could lead our Republican Party to victory in 1960—Ambassador Lodge, Governor Rockefeller, Secretary [of the Treasury] Bob Anderson and Secretary [of the Interior] Fred Sea-ton." "Can't you think of one other?" a reporter asked. Stassen glowered at him, said nothing. "What about Nixon?" asked another. Replied Harold deadpan: "I think that this election of 1958 speaks for itself in that regard. I will be doing what I can to keep the way open for these four men." Would he start up an organization? "That," said Stassen, "will unfold with time."
What did unfold as Stassen headed back to Pennsylvania was fury among the Administration's Nixon loyalists. Actually, said a presidential aide, the long Ike-Harold talk had been about such political generalities as how to develop youthful new candidates. Snapped Labor Secretary Jim Mitchell, New Jersey liberal and possible Nixon 1960 running mate: "It is my conviction that Richard M. Nixon ought to be and will be the next President of the U.S." Said Attorney General Bill Rogers: "Did Stassen ask for time to second the Vice President's nomination?"—which was the way Harold scrambled out of the wreck at San Francisco in 1956.
But Harold Stassen, 51, indestructible and thick-skinned, got on a TV panel show back in Pennsylvania and hit Dump Nixon harder than ever before. He proclaimed that 1) Nixon was "the principal architect of defeat" in 1958; 2) Nelson Rockefeller, suddenly alone among Stassen's four alternatives, was "the man the Republican Party should nominate in 1960 in order to win"; 3) Pennsylvania's 70-odd-vote delegation to the G.O.P. convention in 1960 should be led either by Senator-elect Hugh Scott or by Harold Edward Stassen. As for the President of the U.S., who had chatted politics longer with Stassen than with most, he stayed above the political battle, said nothing.