WHEREVER the President went, with his leathery grin, his vigorous talk, he was met by friendly people. "Well hi ... Why, hello there . . . Yes thanks, I'm feeling fine." He kept up a constant chatter as he waved to big crowds in city streets and small crowds at country crossroads, changing pace to drop his upraised hands and bow gently from the waist to a group of nuns, or stopping solemnly to salute the colors of a high-school band. Nowhere was there a hail-the-conquering-hero quality to the welcome; everywhere the setting was warm, relaxed, assured, befitting the national mood that the President, more than anyone else, has created. "I am often asked," he said in Pittsburgh, "what is the difference between this country now and in 1952? . . . It is this . . . We are just happier. We are just a happier nation."
By last week the magic kinship between Ike and the campaign crowds was hardly news, for the story could only be reported in round numbers, and the numbers rolled on from Peoria to Pittsburgh, from St. Paul to Portland. They rolled on just as they had in other years when the kinship was military, the numbers were millions, and the place names were London, Bizerte, Palermo, Salerno, Normandy and Bastogne. Probably no man in public life today has touched so many people in so many different ways as Dwight David Eisenhower. Yet, strangely, it is the sum total of Dwight Eisenhower's 66 years that is still news in election year 1956, for in his role of President-Candidate he is so completely absorbed and absorbing that the thousands who see and cheer him tend to forget that he ever really played any other.
The Boy in Wild Bill's Town
Whatever Ike is and whatever Ike may yet become derives from his boyhood in the Abilene, Kans, of the 1890s. Ike and his brothers were taught to be mindful of their parents and their Bibles ("there was nothing sad about their religion"). The youngsters played tag on the barn roof and dared one another to lean over the edge, fished lazily for catfish in Mud Creek and the Smoky Hill River, fanned imaginary six-shooters in the style of Abilene's old Marshal Wild Bill Hickok, who had journeyed away to his death in Deadwood not 30 years before. One October evening after school Ike nobly bore the honor of Abilene's South Side through a classic two-hour fistfight against Wesley Merrifield, champion of the more prosperous North Side. The fight ended in a draw. "Ike," gasped Wes, "I can't lick you." "Well, Wes," said Ike grimly, "I haven't licked you."