More+Notes+from+President+Eisenhower's+Speech+Writer

Excerpts from notes from the day by C.D. Jackson, Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, December 2, 1953: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/CDJacksonDec21953.pdf

[...] Prexy [the President] read their current draft [of Eisenhower’s proposed response to McCarthy] with visible irritation, and made some mumbling comments. Jack Martin [Administrative Assistant to the President] then pitched in with great courage and said that a vacuum existed in this country, and it was a political vacuum, and unless the President filled it somebody else would fill it. The President twisted and squirmed, but Martin stuck to his point. I pitched in as strongly as I could by telling him that so long as [Senator Robert A.] Taft [of Ohio, who had died earlier that year] was alive he [Eisenhower] might have been able to get out of the responsibility of leading the Party, but now he could no longer get out of it, and that people were waiting for a sign, and a simple sign—and now was the time.

Big hassle over text started. President read my text with great irritation, slammed it back at me and said he would not refer to McCarthy personally—“I will not get in the gutter with that guy.”

But gradually an interesting thing developed. The needling and the goosing began to take effect, and the President himself began very ably to firm up the text as he re-read it again, this time very carefully.

Everyone’s mood began to change from divided snarling into united helping him along, and when Prexy dictated the last paragraph exactly as it finally appeared, which contained the real Republican leadership gimmick, the group almost cheered.