REPUBLICANS LOOKING FOR LEADER FOR 1960

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28450, 3 December 1957, Page 12

REPUBLICANS LOOKING FOR LEADER FOR 1960

(Specially written for the N.Z.P.A. by FRANK OLIVERI

WASHINGTON, December 1. “Jitters” is an American word, though Americans did not invent the nervous state it describes. Lately they have been accused of getting the jitters too often and too readily. Mr Khrushchev has been trying to give them new attacks by threatening them, through American journalists, with erasure from the earth. To most Americans he is just a big blabbermouth, and there is a danger that they don’t listen to him carefully enough, some Americans think. Americans are being told, by American correspondents in London, that important politicians and military leaders in Britain still wonder whether America will "stick,” whether she “is in this for keeps.” Mr Khrushchev can be laughed at (though many think he shouldn’t be), but these other statements cause a degree of worry and distress. There is growing evidence that the people generally are feeling that they are not getting the leadership they ought to be getting from the White House. At the same time they are being told by American correspondents and by Senator Henry Jackson (Democrat), just returned from the Parliamentary conference, that the “future of N.A.T.O. to a large extent is in the hands of American leadership.” Defence Secretary The man to whom many in the capital are turning in hope and expectation is the new Secretary of Defence, Mr Neil H. McElroy, who is described in the press as the most attractive new personality to hit Washington, for a long time. He has made a good impression everywhere, beginning with the White House. The press has been astonished

by the way in which he has, in a few weeks, shown real command over the complications not only of the missile programme but the complicated machinery of the Pentagon. At press conferences he is cautious but candid. Senators who have interviewed him are praising him for so quickly establishing his authority over the three fighting services. The ultimate indication of the deep and favourable impression he has made is that, in less than two months at Washington, he is being spoken of as a Republican Presidential possibility for 1960. As one writer has written, he is up to his elbows in missiles, but before long his problem will be politics and that “he will almost have to fail miserably at the Pentagon to avoid being embroiled in the next campaign.” Even his age is right. He has managed, says James Reston in the “New York Times,” to arrive at the political scene at the right age. All the front runners in the Republican Party are in their forties, but at 53 Mr McElroy is nearer the popular age for Presidential nominees.