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That had been Nixon's point all along. At week's end, Nixon headed eastward to talk Quemoy-Matsu in the mountain states, and the President got into the campaign by flying to Iowa, Kansas and Colorado (see Republicans). Meanwhile, the Democrats laid down a heavy attack upon Nixon, aided and abetted by such undeviating cartoonist friends as the Washington Post and Times Herald's Herbert Block (Herblock) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bill Mauldin (see cartoons). Harry Truman snapped that Nixon was elected to the Senate "by character assassination," and the Democratic Digest, in best McCarthy fashion, called Nixon "the White Collar McCarthy . . . who will resort to any vilification to win votes."
It was apparent that the Democrats knew a lively campaign issue when they heard it, however addicted the White House may have been to the naive political proposition that while foreign policy is an issue in the campaign, it should not be debated as such.