For Dwight Eisenhower, the decision was wholly personal. It involved him in a most tangible way, for it stands to affect his immediate future. He of course takes for granted, as most everyone else does, that the future of ‘America and even of the world is in- volved in his decision, as indeed it is; but Eisenhower doesn’t know just how, nor do most of Eisenhower’s sup- porters. That is why, when the Pres- ident finally confronted, from his office in the White House, a television audience of an estimated sixty-five million people, to “explain” why he had arrived at his breath-catching decision to run again, there was not a word said, not an inflection intention- ally turned loose, having to do with the political or social or philosophical imperatives that impelled that de- cision.
There was no talk of alien forces, champing at the bit, whose designs he intends to frustrate. No mention of the need for his personal supervision of a grand political or moral purpose. In his climactic hour, at the summit of his popularity, Eisenhower as never before appeared as the very essence of himself. He was there as President
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