Saint Ike and His Times
BY D. W. BROGAN
SWINBURNE said that Tennyson's Idylls of the King ought to have been called Norte d'Albert' and some such irreverent thought overcame me as I read Mr. Pusey's humble and pious description of a great and good man living in a world that he adorns and leads, despite the politics and knavish tricks of Democrats and of ill-disciplined Republicans like Senator McCarthy, and the oft-repelled assaults of the hosts of Midian in Moscow and Peking. This biography of St. Ike makes no concessions to the Cromwell school of por- traiture. Here are no warts, presumably because Mr. Pusey, having inspected the fair face of the Eisenhower administra- tion, can see none. For those who like their modern political commentary written according to the best models of Victorian royal hagiography, here* is just the thing. I suspect that whatever may be the case in America, the demand for such syrup is small in an England more used to the astringent methods of Mr. Godfrey Winn than to those of Mr. Pusey• Mr. Pusey is a respected newspaperman, author of a much- praised life of the late Chief Justice Hughes, which stated the case for that deservedly respected jurist as well as if he had written it himself. That Mr. Pusey, a Pulitzer prizeman, should write in this style is a symptom of that near-unanimity in praise of the Eisenhower administration that is the note of the American scene at the present moment—the note constantly sounded by the press, TV, radio, even the pulpit, with inherent dangers which Mr. Richard Rovere has recently stressed in these columns.
Because of this breeze wafted from Madison Avenue, it is refreshing to hear the voice of Mr. Stevenson.t It is a politician's voice. It is against sin. It pays due tribute to * EISENHOWER IHE PRESIDENT. By Merlo J. Pusey. (Macmillan, 215.) t WHAT 1 THINK. By Adlai E. Stevenson. (Hart-Davis, 18s.) American religiosity. But in what different tones! There is no throbbing appeal to remember the spiritual; nothing so embarrassing as that private Eisenhower prayer, quoted by Mr. Pusey, which shows God as a power proVided for in the Constitution of the United States, and presumably conscious of the separation of powers. There is none of that monopolisa- tion of rightness, that pharisaical assumption of superior virtue that mars not only such professional moralists as Mr. Dulles, but Mr. Eisenhower himself. It is, indeed, a tribute, and a great tribute, to Mr. Eisenhower that the genuine warmth and good will that he has and shows penetrates the incense-laden clouds of his official surroundings and can be felt at Geneva as well as in Colorado or Georgia or even Washington.
It would be easy to pick holes in Mr. Pusey's historiography. The origins of the crusade to put General Eisenhower in the White House were less purely holy than is suggested here. EisenhowerYe shall probably never know when it. dawned on General s that it was his duty to save the United States from (a) Mr. Tillman, (b) Mr. Taft, if only because it is unlikely that Mr. Eisenhower knows. Like Cromwell, General Eisenhower went tar because he did not, know where he was going. No parallel could be more absurd than Mr. ?usey's between the polite pleadings that were Mr. Eisenhower's version of congressional leadership in his first years (when Congress was Republican) and the peremptory, school- mastery, highly successful ramming through of a programme that marked the same period of Woodrow Wilson's. In order to lead the Republican Party, what toads Mr. Eisenhower has swallowed ! His deletion of his tribute to the patriotism of General Marshall, his chief and patron, attacked by Senator McCarthy, was possibly a political necessity. But it does not fit the picture of the 4erray parfit gentil knight.' It fits the Picture of a man used to winning and ready to accept the necessities of gamesmanship, even the betrayal, by silence, of a friend (a kind of gamesmanship impossible to that rough- house player, Harry Truman). Such tactics are not to be con- demned too harshly, but they leave a bad taste in' the mouth. Mr. Stevenson, himself not a victim of it (he was not in federal office), notes with acidity 'the long campaign waged in this country in late years by some Republican partisans to discredit the intelligence, the honesty, even the loyalty of Democratic leaders in ordei to capture or keep public office.' , This campaign, which many members of the administration have shared in, which the President has never effectually rebuked or ended, has had many bad consequences. One is an increase in the doubts and fears of the American people of the belief that all politics, all national policy, is a good deal of a racket. Many an American soldier arrived in Korea already brainwashed and ready for the Chinese variety of ad. man. (They're quite as good as Madison Avenue's best.) It was a Republican tactic to announce long lists of persons separated' from the federal service and convey that these were security risks introduced into the heart of the citadel by the Democrats. These figures were inflated by all sorts of devices, but they were used. Mr. Eisenhower used them. He also appointed to the board controlling the security system ex-Senator Cain, of Washington. Mr. Cain (to the astonishment of friends and enemies) has proved a bold, courageous and steady critic of the injustices of the system. He has given names and facts; he has forced retreats (in bad order; this team doesn't retreat gracefully or lose gracefully. Golf, I am told, isn't like Cricket in its effects on the character). It is asserted, without Contradiction, that Mr. Cain has in vain tried to 'get an audience with Mr. Eisenhower (who, after all, appointed him) and that the only time they have met was on the golf-course. (Courtiers of the age of Louis XIV used to hang around the ffil-de-Ikruf or the alleys of Versailles; now it is golf greens that count.) All he got was a wave of the hand and a distant 'Hallo, Harry.' This, of course, is one of the results of that staff system so much admired by Mr. Pusey. The President can be as cut off from reality as a monarch of ancient lineage. Mr. Cain's appointment ends in a few months; he has no private means. It is a firm guess that he will not get to see the President and that he will not be reappointed.
To turn from this wax figure, this bad academy portrait, all medals, no warts, to Mr. Stevenson's speeches, is to move into a world of wit, irony, self-judgement, sense of the limitations that the modern world imposes on the power even of the United States. Yet, barring accidents, it is Mr. Eisenhower, not Mr. Stevenson, who will be the next President of the United States, and probably a good one. He has learned a lot. Mr. Dulles is now doing not a bad job in the Acheson tradition; alas! not in the Acheson manner. Mr. Wilson may, may learn. Mr. Weeks is keeping silent. Mrs. Hobby is gone. Mr. Benson is a courageous, if slightly unctuous, man, and so on. It is only the tone, the omissions, the evasions, the innocence of Mr. Pusey that provoke in my breast such unkind reflections on an administration that I think a good deal more of than do most eggheads.
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