The rumbling that woke up the 1958 congressional election campaign last week was the sound of short-lived but sharp public argument between the President and Vice President of the U.S. The argument : Is the Administration's handling of foreign policy—and specifically the Quemoy-Matsu crisis—a proper topic for campaign debate? President Eisenhower, even though he agreed with G.O.P. leaders at the White House a fortnight before that foreign policy is one of the campaign's two top issues (the other: the economy), said flatly one day last week that "Foreign policy ought to be kept out of partisan debate."
Vice President Nixon, out campaigning in San Francisco, flatly disagreed. His points: 1) U.S. foreign policy is a proper topic for U.S. debate, and 2) the Eisenhower-Dulles record is the G.O.P.'s great asset and great hope to turn back the Democratic tide. Nixon's argument: "A policy of firmness when dealing with the Communists is a peace policy. A policy of weakness is a war policy. This Administration has kept the peace without surrender of principle or territory."
The political fact that underlay the rumbling was that the Vice President, on the campaign front, was in vigorous dissent from the President's kind of above-the-battle political leadership. "There has developed in recent years," said Nixon in Salt Lake City, "the unsound idea that hard-hitting debate on the issues which confront the country is somehow wrong and detrimental to the best interests of the nation. We need more of this kind of debate in this country, both in and out of political campaigns, rather than less."
Debate calendar: Saturday. The Democratic Advisory Council—including Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson—put out a razor-sharp statement that the U.S. ought to turn over the Quemoy-Matsu crisis to the U.N., ought to have a plebiscite in Formosa (no mention of the same thing for Red China), also slashed at "world-ambulating" Secretary of State Dulles for dragging the U.S. to "the brink of having to fight a nuclear war." The Advisory Council's added point (later opposed by Harry Truman): although there may be dangerous times when an opposition ought to keep quiet, the Quemoy-Matsu crisis "is not such a case."
Monday. Vice President Nixon, then in Chicago, cut back at the Democrats: "In a nutshell, the Acheson foreign policy resulted in war and the Eisenhower-Dulles policy resulted in peace. I challenge every Democratic candidate for the House and Senate to state unequivocally whether he favors a continuation of the Eisenhower foreign policy . . . military strength and diplomatic firmness . . . or a return to the Acheson policy . . . retreat and appeasement."