<--PREV Doc #608  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #610 Document #609; December 14, 1953 To Jack B. Beardwood Series: EM, WHCF, Official File 138 California ; Category: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 8: A world "racing toward catastrophe"   Dear Jack: Your letter to Mr. Masterson was brought to my desk by Governor Adams.1 Both he and I are much interested in what you are doing to revitalize the Republican Party in your part of California--and in the reaction you see there to events on the national scene. I hope that your efforts there can be duplicated in hundreds of other communities throughout the country.2 With warm regard,3 Sincerely 1 Beardwood, of Wilton Becket and Associates, an architectural and engineering firm in Los Angeles, had reported to White House special assistant Charles F. Masterson (Ph.D. Columbia University 1952) on "the way things look out in politically unpredictable California" (Dec. 7, 1953, same file as document). 2 Beardwood headed the California Republican Assembly. He had recently helped organize a branch of that group on the Palos Verdes peninsula, where he lived. He said that the members, "all enthusiastic and all willing to chum up money to help the cause of the 1952 Republican party," planned to "keep control in the hands of real Ike boosters and be a progressive group which will appeal to the independents and the dissident Democrats." Beardwood detailed attacks on Eisenhower by Republican ultra-conservatives in California--on the Bricker amendment, for instance, and on the Social Security program, which they had declared "just another manifestation of the Welfare State as propounded by Roosevelt and compounded by Truman." He observed that the task for Republicans in 1954 would be especially tough because the "1952 victory was the triumph of a man, not a party. And 1954 must be the triumph of a party." Eisenhower had marked off specific paragraphs in Beardwood's letter and had penned across the top margin, "To Gov. Adams: It might be well for you to read to a full cabinet meeting the para[graph]s marked--just as a matter of common interest." Beardwood replied on December 17 (same file as document). See also Beardwood's letter of March 12, 1954, to Masterson and special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce Stanley Maddox Rumbough (A.B. Yale 1942), who was co-founder and vice-chairman of the Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon organization. That letter, along with memoranda it generated among members of the White House staff, is in ibid. For another view of the political situation in California see no. 530. 3 On the subject of Eisenhower's personal popularity, Beardwood had written that "People just don't seem to realize the pressure that a President is under and that he must get away. . . ." Nevertheless, Beardwood said, he thought "the more that can be done to soft-pedal these terribly important changes of scene and chances to relax the better." To that Eisenhower had written in longhand at the bottom of this reply, "P.S. On the question of exercise and recreation, the only advice brought to me in my correspondence, is--`Do more of it--far more.'" Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Jack B. Beardwood, 14 December 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 609. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/609.cfm <--PREV Doc #608  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #610

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