In the four years since Farouk had fled Cairo, taking his priceless collection of pornography with him, Egypt had become the stronghold of a military clique. Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged in June 1956 as the leader of the junta. John Foster Dulles believed he had Nasser’s number, and he decided to teach him a lesson. The upshot was a minor war and, ironically, a tremendous boost for President Eisenhower in his campaign for reelection.
As a neutral in the cold war, Nasser was naturally anathema to Dulles. The United States had been trying to coax Egypt into the western camp. With that in view, Washington had told Cairo the previous winter that it would loan the Egyptians 56 million dollars for their three-mile Aswan High Dam on the Nile. But Nasser was ungrateful. He recognized Red China, tried to break up the Baghdad Pact, announced plans to visit Moscow, and traded 200 million dollars’ worth of cotton for Czechoslovakian guns. Thereupon Dulles, on July 19, publicly canceled the American loan. Foreign service officers on the State Department’s Middle Eastern desk had warned that Nasser might seize the Suez Canal in retaliation. He did. He cried, “I look at Americans and say: may you choke to death on your fury!” He said, “We shall build the high dam as we desire. The annual income of the Suez Canal is 100 million dollars. Why not take it ourselves?” Then: “We shall rely on our own strength, our own muscle, our own funds. And it will be run by Egyptians! Egyptians! Egyptians!”
The full weight of this blow fell not upon the United States, but on Britain and France. At the urging of anticolonialists in Washington, the British had withdrawn the last of their troops from Suez in June. Now Nasser had cut Anglo-French industry off from its chief source of petroleum. Of the 1.5 million barrels of oil that passed through the canal each day, 1.2 million went to western Europe. Suez provided two-thirds of the fuel the continent needed for heat and production, and the other third came overland through pipes that could easily be sabotaged by the Arabs. Therefore this was a real crisis for London and Paris. It would have taxed the gifts of a Disraeli, and the householder at 10 Downing Street was no Disraeli. He was Sir Anthony Eden, once Churchill’s great foreign secretary and now worn to a shadow. The office of prime minister was simply too much for him. Struggling along with less than five hours sleep a night, he became addicted to amphetamines. Years later medical scientists discovered that amphetamines could rob a sensible man of his good judgment, and that was what happened to Eden in 1956.
Blaming Dulles for their plight, Eden and Guy Mollet, the French premier, turned their backs on Washington. They decided to tackle the problem in their own way—or, to be precise, in the way advocated by David Ben-Gurion. To the Israeli premier, this seemed a perfect time to settle accounts with the hated Egyptians. Russia was preoccupied by a developing crisis in Hungary, the United States was in the middle of a national election, and the British and the French, furious at Nasser, were spoiling for a fight. Ben-Gurion reminded them that under certain circumstances an Anglo-French expeditionary force could act in the Middle East under a cloak of legitimacy. The Tripartite Declaration of 1950 provided that Britain and France could reoccupy the Suez Canal if war erupted between Israel and Egypt. Ben-Gurion said he would be delighted to provide that excuse, and Eden and Mollet endorsed the plan.
***
In the last week of October the CIA received troubling reports. Israel was mobilizing. More than 100,000 Israeli troops were poised along their border with Egypt, and Israeli tanks were in position for a lunge westward. Whitehall and the Quai d’Orsay had lapsed into a studied silence. To Washington the very correctness of their behavior was puzzling. They were like men building up an alibi. It was hard to believe that they could be plotting with Jerusalem, though. Eisenhower, who was in Walter Reed for a physical checkup on Sunday, October 28, rejected the idea. Drafting notes to Ben-Gurion between trips up and down hospital corridors for tests, Ike said wryly, “Israel and barium make quite a combination.”
The Israelis struck the next day. At 3 P.M. Washington time teletypes chattered out the first bulletin: Israeli forces were crossing into Egyptian territory. Eden and Mollet now had their justification. They went through the motions of sending ultimatums to Jerusalem and Cairo demanding that both sides lay down their arms. In the House of Commons Eden said, “We have asked the Egyptian government to agree that Anglo-French forces should move temporarily into key positions.” If the request was ignored, he said, British and French troops would intervene in Suez “in whatever strength may be necessary.”
Eisenhower had left the hospital to campaign in the South. Now he rushed back to Washington. At 7 P.M. that Monday, as dusk began to gather in the capital, his limousine entered the southwest gate of the White House grounds. After conferring with Adams, Radford, Persons, and the Dulles brothers, he authorized a statement from Hagerty: “At the meeting the President recalled that the United States, under this and prior administrations, had pledged itself to assist the victim of any aggression in the Middle East. We shall honor our pledge.”
On Wednesday British bombers based in Cyprus attacked Egyptian airfields. Ike said, “I just don’t know what got into those people. It’s the damnedest business I ever saw supposedly intelligent people get themselves into.” But: “We cannot subscribe to one law for the weak, another for those allied with us.” In a Wednesday telecast he told the American people just that. The British and the French, who held Dulles responsible for the whole mess, were furious. Eden let it be known that he would reject any U.N. cease-fire proposal. On Saturday Dulles, exhausted and distraught, collapsed; an ulcer had penetrated his abdominal wall; he was taken to Walter Reed for two and a half hours of surgery. The world seemed very near war that weekend. On Sunday the White House learned that British and French troops were boarding transports at Cyprus for an invasion of Suez. Early Monday British paratroopers began landing on the north end of the canal. That evening Bulganin warned Eden, Mollet, and Ben-Gurion that unless they withdrew immediately they would become targets for Red missiles loaded with nuclear warheads. At the same time Bulganin proposed to Eisenhower that the United States and the Soviet Union form an alliance to stop the invasion. Ike was indignant. To an aide he said, “Those British—they’re still my right arm!” He told Bulganin that Russo-American intervention was “unthinkable” and accused the Soviet premier of trying to divert attention from Hungary, where the Red Army “at this very moment is brutally repressing the human rights of the Hungarian people.”
This was more than cold war rhetoric. Ike was right: the Russians were also guilty of atrocities that week. Afterward the Communists would remember Suez while the West remembered Hungary; in fact the two were equally ugly. On Wednesday, the day of the first RAF raids on the canal zone, anti-Soviet rioters in Budapest had made Imre Nagy premier of Hungary. By Saturday the entire country had risen. Nagy denounced the Warsaw Pact, which made Hungary a Soviet satellite. Russian troops withdrew from Budapest and then regrouped to crush the revolt. The streets were carpeted with the bodies of Budapest’s martyrs, Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty took refuge in the besieged American embassy, and the Hungarian delegation to the United Nations begged the U.N. to intervene. Lodge introduced a measure which would do that. The Russians vetoed it. Eisenhower spent twenty million dollars in Mutual Security funds on food and medicine for Hungary. He ordered that 21,500 Hungarian refugees be admitted to the United States and told his staff to see to it that the administration found homes and jobs for them, and he sent protests to Bulganin. The Soviet premier coldly replied that Russia and Hungary would settle their differences without outside help.
On the morning of Tuesday, November 6, 1956, French infantry seized the cast side of the canal, Russian troops captured Nagy, the U.N. General Assembly condemned Soviet aggression, and 61,616,938 Americans went to the polls. War was on everyone’s mind, and the country’s most famous general was on the ballot. The conclusion that the voters put the two together is inescapable. Perhaps they were right to do so. Certainly Ike retained his poise throughout that terrible
week. Adams was with the President in his oval office when Eden phoned. Eisenhower said heartily, “Well, Anthony, how are you?”
It was a question, Adams dryly observed, which, “it seemed to me at the time, would have required a long and involved answer.”
***
Afterward there is a certain inevitability to political landslides, and this one was no exception. Eisenhower would have been reelected if Nasser had kept his hands off Suez and Hungary had remained servile. No Democratic candidate could have driven him from office, and to those who enjoy hindsight it may seem surprising that a man as intelligent as Adlai Stevenson didn’t realize that. Gallup figures showed that the President retained the confidence of better than seven out of every ten Americans. In his first term he had accomplished much that had seemed unattainable four years earlier. The Korean War had been ended, and without a depression. McCarthy had been routed. The Bricker amendment was a dead issue. Knowland stood isolated in the Senate. The Republican party was now committed to the United Nations, and except for Styles Bridges no Republican with a safe seat was advocating the invasion of China or a preventive war against Russia. Furthermore, Ike’s management of domestic problems suggested that he was a wiser politician than he appeared to be. His federal highway program was outspending the WPA. Inflation had been checked. Labor was getting a larger share of the national income. Social security had been extended. The administration had built a sound antitrust program, and its soil bank, by appeasing farmers, had robbed the Democrats of a major issue.
The President had still other assets, less tangible but very real, which could be redeemed at the polls. His personality was gilt-edged political capital. Joseph Alsop wrote that “Eisenhower’s greatest single contribution has been bringing us back to a sense of the true American style—setting the style, in fact, by his own example and in the most trying circumstances,” and Richard H. Rovere concluded that “when Eisenhower has spoken for the nation, he has… in general appeared before the world as a not unworthy successor to those few American presidents whom the world has known and respected.”
This account is, of course, incomplete. If those had been the only issues, the Democrats would not have battled so hard for the nomination. To them the administration seemed highly pregnable. The GOP was more than ever the party of big business. The schism between liberal Republicans and the Old Guard continued to be unsightly. Dulles’s performance abroad had been less than brilliant, as the mess in the Middle East demonstrated. Apart from these, there were three overriding major points at issue: the President’s health, Vice President Nixon, and the eloquence and charm of the Democratic nominee.
Hopes for Dwight Eisenhower’s longevity were at best precarious. If reelected he would be seventy before he left office. Only a year ago he had suffered a massive heart attack, and he himself had observed that the Presidency was the most demanding job in the world. Moreover, there was worry about more than his heart. Less than ten weeks before the national conventions he was stricken with another ailment, taken from the White House in an ambulance, and subjected to a two-hour ordeal on the operating table.
At first the Denver scenario seemed to be repeating itself. In the small hours of June 9 Dr. Snyder was awakened in his Connecticut Avenue apartment by an anxious Mamie Eisenhower. The President was tossing and turning. He complained of stomach pains. What should she do? Milk of magnesia was ineffective, and Snyder hurried to the Executive Mansion. After breakfast Hagerty issued a brief statement: “The President has an upset stomach and headache. Dr. Snyder has been with him since early this morning. There is nothing wrong with his heart.” But that was far from reassuring. The Denver crisis had also begun with a “digestive upset.” A second statement was more specific: “The President has had an attack of ileitis (inflammation of the lower portion of the small intestine).” As a “precaution” he was entering Walter Reed Hospital.
It was a wretched day for Hagerty. He kept telling reporters that ileitis wasn’t serious while appearances indicated that it was. The ambulance left the Mansion behind a screen of motorcycles with screaming sirens. Paul Dudley White appeared. (“They wanted me on hand in case anything needed to be done,” he said.) Another specialist was stopped by state policemen in South Carolina and hurried aboard a jet trainer for a supersonic trip to Walter Reed, where a dozen surgeons were examining the lower part of the President’s digestive system. Surgery was necessary—without it the condition could lead to gangrene of the bowel—but Hagerty had been right, there was nothing to worry about. Afterward Dr. Leonard D. Heeton, the leading surgeon, was asked whether he thought Ike should decline to run for reelection. He said, “I certainly do not.” Of the President’s life expectancy Snyder said, “We think it improves it.” The physicians estimated that he would be back on the job in four to six weeks, and headlines across the country read OKAY FOR IKE TO RUN SAY DOCTORS.
Kenneth S. Davis, Stevenson’s biographer, believed afterward that the frailty of Eisenhower’s health, “far from being a hazard to his reelection, was probably a political asset. Having passed through the valley of the shadow of death, he was now a greater hero, more beloved of the populace than before.” Davis thinks this was due to Ike’s personal qualities, “to the perfection with which he expressed the dominant mood of the country and to the warm affection he personally inspired.” Democrats were aware of Eisenhower’s appeal and treated him gingerly.
Nixon was another matter. The leaders of the party out of power had noted with grim pleasure that he had reconsidered and decided to run again. They took it as an article of faith that the rest of the country despised the Vice President as much as they did, and they went for him with sandbags. Stevenson called the Vice President “shifty,” “rash,” “inexperienced,” and a “man of many masks,” and in Minneapolis on November 5 he told listeners that Nixon “has put away his switch-blade and now assumes the aspect of an Eagle Scout.” The Vice President, he reminded them, had recently declared in their city that there would be no war in the Middle East. Like many other Democrats. Stevenson honestly thought that a Nixon succession to the Presidency would be a catastrophe.
Nixon could ignore the opposition, and he did. The critics in his own party were more serious. Ironically, the GOP leader of the “Dump Nixon movement,” as it was called, was Harold Stassen, Nixon’s first political idol. Not without reason, Stassen believed that the President wouldn’t be heartbroken if the movement succeeded. To an adviser Ike expressed doubts about Nixon’s stature and then said: “Well, the fact is, of course, I’ve watched Dick a long time, and he just hasn’t grown. So I just haven’t honestly been able to believe that he is presidential timber.”
At that point the party’s rank and file took a hand. Republican voters, always strong for Nixon, let their wishes be known; in the New Hampshire and Oregon primaries 52,202 of them wrote his name in under Ike’s. That impressed Nixon, if not Stassen. On April 26 the Vice President asked for an appointment with the President and told him he would be happy to make the race again. Eisenhower rang for Hagerty, who came in to find the two running mates of 1952 grinning at each other. According to Hagerty’s recollection, the President said, “Jim, Dick just told me he would be happy to be on the ticket, and he has made up his mind that he would like to run again with me.” Adams and Persons came in, and after they had the news Ike said to Hagerty, “What do you think we ought to do on the announcement?” The press secretary suggested that Nixon make it to White House correspondents right now. Eisenhower nodded and said, “Jim, you go with him, and after he finishes his announcement, you say I was delighted to hear this news from the Vice President.”
That was the end of serious attempts to dump Nixon in 1956, and for all practical purposes it was the end of Harold Stassen’s political career. His arguments had convinced only one delegate, an eccentric Nebraskan named Terry Carpenter who had been identified with the Coughlin-Townsend fringe in the 1930s. In the roll call of states Carpenter expressed his displeasure with Nixon by cas
ting one vice-presidential vote for a mythical “Joe Smith,” thereby providing the San Francisco convention with its most memorable moments.
***
Four years earlier Governor Stevenson had won the admiration of the commentators by his dignity and grace in defeat. This was his second time round, and it was too much to expect that he could repeat that sparkling performance. He didn’t. He dulled the memory of it. Musing over the tactics which had won in 1952, the Democratic standard-bearer succumbed to the fatal charms of the media manipulators. He allowed himself to be drawn into discussions of the relative merits of the “old” Stevenson and the “new” Stevenson, as if there were two of him running around, and there was a lot of mindless chatter in his entourage about the “blurring” of his “image.”
“The campaign of 1956 was curious and special,” a veteran Democrat later told Emmet John Hughes. “It was nearly a classic of its kind. For it’s almost impossible to recall anything you people did wrong—and nearly as hard to remember anything we did right.” The worst thing was Truman’s emergence from retirement. Trying to secure the nomination for Governor Averell Harriman of New York, he drew Stevenson into a wasting intraparty fight for political survival, and when he found he couldn’t rule the convention he seemed bent upon ruining Stevenson’s hopes. In his anger the former President gave the Republicans ammunition beyond their wildest hopes. He called Stevenson a “conservative” who followed the “counsel of hesitation” and lacked “the kind of fighting spirit we need to win.”
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 115
