June 23, 1962 - Former President Eisenhower (pictured with President Kennedy in March) said last night that the Kennedy Administration was “floundering” while “confidence at home and abroad weakens.” Speaking at a $100-a-plate dinner in Washington, the former Republican President asserted that the national economy “has become uncertain, fearful, ill at ease.” “Quite obviously,” General Eisenhower said, “this Administration is thrashing aimlessly and a bit desperately about in the surging financial, fiscal, and economic currents of our times. Its difficulty appears to stem primarily from an inadequate understanding of our American system — of how it really works, of the psychological, motivational, and economic factors that make it ebb and flow.” The former President’s partisan attack, probably without equal in his political career, pictured the Kennedy Administration as “driven to alienate the business community,” as “publicly disgruntled with the entire medical profession,” and as wielding “a Federal club of reprisal” over the heads of all citizens.
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