Departure of Mr Adams

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28699, 24 September 1958, Page 12

Departure of Mr Adams

When Mr Sherman Adams allowed a Boston industrialist, Mr Bernard Goldfine, to present him with expensive gifts and to pay his hotel bills, he could scarcely have envisaged the consequences that would flow from his imprudence. They are many and heavy, and Mr Adams’s departure from the White House does little to mitigate them. The most serious consequence is the damaging blow it deals President Eisenhower. No President has ever depended on a subordinate as Mr Eisenhower on Mr Adams. Indeed, it is doubtful, after the warning of his heart attack, whether Mr Eisenhower would have consented' to stand for a second term without the assurance of having Mr Adams at his side to share and lighten the heavy load of his high office. Just how dependent Mr Eisenhower was on his aide can be gauged from his poignant remark, “I need him”, when the investigations into Mr Adams’s conduct began. Mr Eisenhower will be unable, in the remainder of his term, to delegate anything like the authority that made Mr Adams the second most powerful man in Washington. As a result, he will be unable to devote himself to the questions of foreign affairs and defence that have been his main concern in the past. Mr Adams’s resignation can be scarcely less damaging to the Republican Party, already beset by the recession and unemployment, the revelation of Soviet scientific advances and the dimming magic of President Eisenhower’s name. The mistake made by Mr Adams was the sort of mistake an official can easily make in a government that has huge favours to dispense to business and industry. Precisely the same sort of error was made by President Truman’s aide. Major-General Harry Vaughan, and the Republicans made the

most of his indiscretions in the 1952 Presidential campaign. The “ mess in Washington ” was an important campaign issue, and Mr Eisenhower pledged that his administration would be marked by irreproachable personal and official conduct. Mr Adams’s acceptance of favours destroyed the ** clean “ as a hound’s tooth ” standards Mr Eisenhower promised, and the Democrats can scarcely be blamed if they make the best use of it they can in the campaign for Congressional elections in November and even in the Presidential election ~amoaign in 1960. The Republicans have lost the issue of “ clean government ” in the forthcoming campaigns, and there is evidence that public opinion is already aroused against the party. • It was set back heavily in the California primary election, and the Democrats won convincing victories in the Congressional election this month in Republican Maine, long regarded as a political barometer — M as Maine “ goes, so goes the nation ”. Whether these reversals are a reflection of Mr Adams’s conduct or not, they made his resignation inevitable. Though his departure deprives the President of so much .support, it will go at least some of the way towards restoring faith and confidence in the absolute integrity and dignity of the White House. As the “ Los “Angeles Times” put it, “an “assistant to the President of “ the United States, particu- “ larly this assistant, must be “so circumspect as to make “Caesar’s wife in contrast look “ like a loose woman ”. Mr Adams committed no crime, but dubious conduct has no place in the White House. Americans expect the conduct of their highest officials to be beyond question, and Mr Adams’s resignation is an expression of their wilL