Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
T h e Shape o f , Things
The Pause That Refreshes
Along with everycine eke, we were intensely r e l i e d
to learnthatthe
Presidentscondition has been pro-nounced most satisfactory and that lie will soon be
able to leave the hospital. With the rest of the world,
we join in wishing him an early and complete recovery.
, All the same, the general reaction to the news of his
m a t recent illness provides another striking evidence
of the potency of the cult of Ike (see page 504) and
ofthe ruthlessness of those who fbster thecultthe
better to exploit it. In remarkable contrast to the way
in which the press handled the news of his heart attack
last September, this 1atest.blowto his health was almost
instantlytransformed intoan assurance oC good fortune and long life. Almost before the public knew that
the President had undergone surgery, unofficial White
.House spokesmen were Ieeding the press private but
firm assurances thathewould
r u n again.And
the
sponges had hardly been removed before his medical
advisors were telling us that he could stand lor reelectionandthat
his hfe expectancy had actually been
enhanced: (1) because the operation corrected a condition thatmight haveendangered his health; and (2)
because it proved that his heart is healed and strong.
This remarkable transformationof the bad news of
the aperation into the good news that all the President needed to be asfitas a fiddle was to spend two
hours on the operating table was made possible hy the
ardent cooperatlon ol press, ,radio and television. With
each illness of thePresident,
Mr.Hagerty
becomes,
more skilied in the art of reassuring the public. True,
t h e press did quote Dr. Burrill Crolln to the effect that
the disease oi ileitis recurs in about 30 to 35 per cent
of the cases, but this statement somehow got lost in the
jolly news that the market had rallied. T h e resohrceful
Mr. Nagerty(competentandclear)withan
assist
from MaJor e n e r a 1 Leonard Heaton (cool and clear)
managed to get the working press so absorbed in the
detads of the operation-always a fascinating subjectthat the larger Issue of the Presidents fitness was forgotten.Like
the -good Dr. White of Boston, Major
General Heaton is a clever man at a press conference;
he,even managed to sound less professional in his comments than the reporters did with their questions. T h e
press seemed more interested in ten inches of th6 Presidents intestine than in the future of t he Presidency.
The events of the last weekend shouldstimulate iuI
mest in T h e Nutiohs pre-convention Presidential p d erenceballot printed on the back cover ofthis issueAs indicated, ballots must be mailed before July 3 to
be counted. If the ballot is somewhat long, it is nevertheless easy to mark and the results should m w be Of
special intet-est.
T h e Awful TrwtL
T h e troublewithPresident
Eisenhowers statement
-at the National Citizens for Eisenhower rally i n Washington-that American prestige since the last world war
has never been as high as it is this dag, is not that
it is false but thatj unfortunately, it is probably true.
What a commentary this is on American leadership in
view of the low esteem in which we are currently regarded nearly everywhere in the world. If American
prestige is higher today than at any time since 1945,
it is only because we hale, to a degree, ceased rattling
bombs and, half-heartedly, started to wave the olive
branch, If this isthe explanation, it should be
relatively
easy for us to rise from even our present exalted posirion were we to launch a dramatic peace offensive.
On Shaking Hands
Now that the grotesquely over-billed Floridaand
California primaries are at an end, the years one preconvention political debate may be assessed. T h e only
issue on which the debaters did not see eye to eye was
civil rights and on this issue their differences were more
a matter of rhetoric and emphasis than of-principle.
A real clash on civil rights between rival candidates for
the Democratic nomination might,
this year, have carried at least an echo of agreathistoricdebate.
But
Kefauver-Stevenson, 1956, will hardly rank in the history texts with Lincoln-Douglas, 1858. T h e only way to
have debated the civil-rights issue would have been for
one of the debaters to take the position that the Dixiecrats should be ousted from the Democratic Party. But
since neither was preparedto take this position, the
debates failed to conceal the rivals basic agreement on
even the one issue that mattered. T h e debate thus became a personality contest or, moTe accurately, a grim
contestto see which candidate could shake the most
hands
<
End of a Dream
When Formosa andtheUnited
States wrecked an
eighteen-naticm U. N. package-membership deal last
December, providing the USSR with an opportunity to
stage aspectacular
rescue operationthatbrought
sixteen new nations into the organization, T h e Nutmn
(December 24, 1955) warned that the Chinese Nationalists had endangered their own membership. T h e inflexibility displayed by Taipeiand
Washington on
every questionrelated to China and Formosa is now
beginning to bear bitterfruit. Egypt has recognized
Peking, and a Cairo paper reports that the Afro-Asian
bloc plans to take up the matter of Chinas U. N. r e p
502
T h NATIQN
Federal
esponsibility
I n Education
B y Horace
M. KaIlen