Eisenhower (35 page)

The members of the administration, meanwhile, returned to the White House and sorted out their duties. The National Security Council met on Thursday and the cabinet on Friday, as scheduled, with Nixon presiding from his own chair, leaving Ike’s seat vacant. Adams, meanwhile, decamped for Denver, taking his place at the president’s side. Hagerty was so grateful to see Adams arrive that he kissed him, undoubtedly shocking the dour Adams.

Woodrow Wilson’s incapacitation offered the only guidance American leaders had for grappling with the inability of a sitting president to fulfill the duties of his office, and Wilson’s was a frightening primer in mismanagement. But Eisenhower’s cabinet was blessed by both ability and luck. Luck that Ike’s illness struck at a calm moment in domestic and international affairs: Congress was in recess; it was an off year politically; the glow of Geneva helped insure a tranquil summer abroad. And ability forged by two years of common effort and by Ike’s selection of his top deputies. An informal committee assumed temporary control of the government: Adams served as the personal conduit to the president; Dulles took charge of international relations; Brownell supervised domestic and constitutional questions; and Nixon, assiduously deferential, coordinated the cabinet and directed the administration.

Nixon and Eisenhower in 1955 were closely associated but had never been friends. Barely acquainted when they were united on the Republican ticket in 1952, they found their early association strained by the Checkers debacle. Eisenhower recognized the younger man’s talents and deep intelligence, but Ike also patronized his vice president, who seemed too young and too political to be trusted entirely. Eisenhower’s contradictory impressions of Nixon—as capable but limited, intelligent but ambitious—persisted through their early years together but were abruptly challenged in the weeks after Eisenhower’s heart attack.

Nixon calibrated leadership and modesty through those tense weeks, taking command but not power, deferring to Ike’s position even when Ike was confined to an oxygen tent or barely allowed to sit up. Eisenhower recognized the sturdy job that Nixon was performing, and he appreciated it, though, as ever, he viewed Nixon as a capable understudy, not a peer. “He is a darn good young man,” Eisenhower told Adams. He believed the country still regarded Nixon as “a bit immature,” and though Eisenhower himself did not, he understood why others, including Adams, perceived a lack of readiness. “He has not quite reached a maturity of intellect,” Adams said.

To the immense relief of an anxious world, Eisenhower recovered. Just a few days after the episode, he announced to Snyder: “If I didn’t think you knew what you were doing, I would suspect you of having the wrong patient in bed.” He was ordered not to work from the day of his heart attack until October 1, but on that afternoon Adams spent twenty minutes with him, catching him up on official business. From then on, Adams was a regular visitor, at first for short conversations, then for more serious matters. Ike signed appointments, reviewed classified material, approved promotions, named an ambassador, drafted a letter to Bulganin. Nixon came with Adams on October 9, Dulles spent half an hour with Ike on October 11.

On October 14, the president celebrated his birthday in the hospital, by then chafing at the restrictions imposed by his doctors and eager to handle an increased load; he grumbled about being tended to by too many physicians and was irritated by what he perceived as conflicting medical advice. Eleven days later, Eisenhower took his first unaided steps and was allowed to meet with reporters on the hospital rooftop. For the occasion, he dressed in a gift the press corps had presented him soon after he was hospitalized: a set of red pajamas with gold stars on the collar tabs and the words “Much Better, Thanks” embroidered over the breast pocket. Through those weeks, Ike’s spirits also were raised by the thousands who wrote to wish him well. Mamie wore out her hand responding, grateful to have a way to contribute. Some admirers mailed records, which Ike happily played on a phonograph in his room.

Five weeks after the heart attack, Robert Cutler visited. He met Mamie at her parents’ house, spent an hour talking and drinking old-fashioneds, then headed to the hospital. Mamie was tense and scared, “speaking rapidly and decisively, sometimes with tears.” Cutler held her hand and comforted her. At the hospital over the next few days, Cutler assessed Eisenhower’s condition and left reassured. It was strange to see Ike, so enduringly vital, forced to sit still and quiet, but he was, Cutler thought, “a wonderful patient.”

Eisenhower’s chief cardiologist, the internationally renowned Paul Dudley White, predicted that Ike would be able to leave the hospital between November 5 and November 12, and on November 11 he did. Eisenhower might have left even sooner, but he waited that long so that he would not be taken from Fitzsimons in a wheelchair. He wanted to be able to walk up the stairs to the airplane. Finally, he bade an emotional farewell to the medical staff before flying on to Washington. Thousands waited for him at National Airport and along the route from there to the White House. Ike did his best to stay calm, but he was jumpy and cross. Although he had asked for an open car to wave to crowds, a limousine was substituted at the last minute because the day was brisk. As a result, he squirmed back and forth to acknowledge well-wishers on either side of the car. “I was tired and annoyed by this inconvenience,” he complained decades later in his memoirs.

Ike stopped briefly at the White House, where his staff monitored him closely. “Every one of us took a deep breath,” Adams recalled. Ike and Mamie then proceeded on to Gettysburg to complete his convalescence, with Mamie zealously attempting to protect their home from being converted into an office, a mission in which she enlisted the help of the Gang (Robinson told Snyder he feared that possibility “more than any other possible development”). A local Catholic girls’ school turned out to welcome the Eisenhowers home, and they arrived in time to mark Mamie’s birthday, November 14. After the events of recent weeks, Mamie felt strongly that they should bless their home, and Ike invited the Reverend Edward Elson, the minister at the National Presbyterian Church, which the Eisenhowers had selected upon arriving in the city, to perform the ceremony. Elson bestowed that blessing in the home’s living room, asking that “it may henceforth be a place of health and healing, a haven of tranquility, an abode of love, and a sanctuary of worship. Bless all who call it home, and all the loved ones and friends who are encompassed by it in abiding love and devotion to Thee.”

Mamie pulled herself together after the heart attack, but Ike still suffered. He was, like many heart-attack survivors, morose and ill-tempered, and he fretted over his ability to recover sufficiently to resume shouldering the burdens of his office. Adams was reassured by his alertness, though he noted that Ike had lost weight and color.

Eisenhower shared his misgivings with Swede Hazlett, himself a victim of a heart attack. Ike described his rest and exercise regimen in some detail—a brief rest before lunch, daily swims and walks, eating slowly—and then allowed himself a moment of annoyance with his doctors. “I am to avoid all situations that tend to bring about such reactions as irritation, frustration, anxiety, fear and, above all anger,” Ike wrote. “When doctors give me such instructions, I say to them, ‘Just what do you think the Presidency is?’ ”

Though the fall of 1955 was a tranquil time in international affairs, there were rising confrontations at home, at first subtle and then increasingly intense. The
Brown
decision in 1954 had done more than place the Supreme Court’s stamp of disapproval on segregation in public schools; it had supplied moral impetus to the growing demand for civil rights in all walks of life. If, as the Court ruled in
Brown
, “separate but equal” had no place in education, then what about restrooms or restaurants, beaches, golf courses, or buses?

On December 1, 1955, a Montgomery Fair department store worker, Rosa Parks, posed that question to the nation’s conscience by refusing to yield her bus seat to a white passenger. J. F. Blake, the bus driver, ordered her and three other black passengers to move to the back; no one moved. He got up from his seat and ordered them again: “You better make it light on yourself and let me have those seats.” This time, three of the passengers moved to the back, but Parks still refused. Blake warned her that he had the power to enforce segregation laws himself. Parks replied that he could do what he had to. She was not getting up. Blake arrested Parks.

After a short but harrowing stay in the Montgomery, Alabama, jail—no place for a black woman in 1955—Rosa Parks defied her family’s objections and agreed to serve as a test case for the segregation of Montgomery buses. That was Thursday night. On Monday morning, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

While Parks and her neighbors launched their crusade, Ike was still regaining his strength. He shuttled from his Gettysburg home to Camp David and back in early December, presiding over the National Security Council and eventually the cabinet. He entertained close friends and family, though his commitments were kept to a minimum. George Allen dropped in often, Ellis Slater came early in December, Dr. Snyder stayed close by. Slowly, Ike built up his workday.

Eisenhower’s heart attack reframed for him the essential question of those weeks, one that he had pondered almost since he became president: Should he run again? The question had been on his mind for months. As early as February 1955, he volunteered to Len Hall that the GOP should search for a host city for its convention other than Chicago, where Eisenhower argued that the “reactionary fringe” would coalesce around that city’s notorious newspaper. Now, with election year at hand, Ike had no choice but to focus on his own candidacy.

Oddly, the heart attack did not discourage him from seeking a second term; indeed, it caused him to consider the question in a new light. Eisenhower now was less inclined to think of whether he wanted to serve a second term and more prone to debating whether he could. As his health improved, he began to debate the idea more seriously. Just a few months earlier, prior to his heart attack, he had often seemed drawn to retirement. Now he worried that no one was well suited to succeed him. The possible Democratic candidates struck Eisenhower as astonishingly unworthy, and he was frustrated that Republican contenders had not developed during his term. He wondered whether New York’s Tom Dewey might at last be acceptable, but Jim Hagerty warned him that a Dewey candidacy would badly split the party. All the other possibilities also posed problems for Ike: Cabot Lodge needed steadying; Bob Anderson was little known outside Washington (not to mention a former Democrat); Sherman Adams and Herb Brownell lacked a political base; Milton Eisenhower had Ike’s thorough approval, but the prospect of one brother succeeding another was too dynastic to fly. Earl Warren was renowned because of
Brown
, but Eisenhower disapproved of Warren stepping off the Court to pursue the presidency and felt Warren better suited to the Court in any event.

Nixon, the most obvious choice, still presented a question for Ike and his advisers. As Adams faintly put it: “On the whole, he felt that Nixon had made good progress.” Although Eisenhower admired Nixon and considered him a capable vice president by late 1955, he remained convinced that Nixon was unelectable. He searched for a way to ease Nixon off the ticket, weighed the possibility of placing him in the cabinet, and definitely doubted his viability as a candidate for president in his own right.

Ike was growing stronger, tugged as always by his sense of duty. Now another December quietly drew to a close, and after Christmas at the White House, Ike and Mamie flew to Florida to mark the New Year. Ike golfed and walked the beaches. He, along with Mamie and the Snyders—sometimes joined by Milton Eisenhower, Hagerty, or others—ended each evening with a movie. They watched
Wichita
on December 29 and
Angels in the Outfield
(Ike’s favorite movie) on December 30, and ended the year with
Tall Man Riding
on New Year’s Eve. The president retired just after 10:00 p.m.

11

Crisis and Revival

A
s Eisenhower turned from pondering whether he desired four more years in office to asking whether he was up to it, his family and friends meditated on his stamina. Mamie, once determined to see her husband retire after the first term, now wondered how he would respond to being forced out by illness. She was afraid, as he put it, that “idleness would be fatal for my temperament.” On the other hand, Sherman Adams wondered: “After a close brush with death, would Eisenhower have the courage to face four more years of punishing physical strain in the White House?” Put that way, the question nearly answered itself.

Nearly, but not quite. In early January, while still in Key West, Eisenhower prepared for his annual address to Congress, an exercise that gave him reason to review his record and potential legacy. He took justifiable pride in his achievements. The nation was at peace. Taxes had been reduced. Standards of living were rising. The federal budget, after years of deficits, was balanced. There was, to be sure, work to do—some areas of the country lagged in prosperity, farmers were struggling, the Soviet leaders were forever fomenting trouble—but progress was evident.

Against that backdrop, Eisenhower returned to “the full duties of the presidency” on January 9 and quietly convened his closest confidants and advisers to discuss his future. The gathering was to be kept quiet. Initially scheduled for January 11, it was called off when reporters got wind of it—Hagerty blamed Nixon for the leak—then rescheduled for Friday, January 13. Because Ike did not want anyone to know who was attending, he even took the extra precaution of preparing the place cards himself. Meticulously, he chose the seats for the men whom he most trusted with a matter of such grave personal and political consequence: John Foster Dulles; George Humphrey; Herb Brownell; Arthur Summerfield; Len Hall; Sherman Adams; Jim Hagerty; Howard Pyle, Ike’s deputy assistant for intergovernmental relations; Tom Stephens, his special counsel and appointments secretary; Henry Cabot Lodge; Jerry Persons; and, of course, Milton Eisenhower. Before they talked, they dined. Mamie joined them for dinner, then excused herself, and the men took their places around a table in the president’s second-floor sitting room.