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to Paris had gone surprisingly well. The British and the Italians had agreed in principle to accept Thor intermediate-range missiles as part of NATO’s defense shield, though now the United States would also have to find a home for the additional Jupiters it had agreed to produce to satisfy Lyndon Johnson’s subcommittee. More important, Ike had impressed his hosts with a combative attitude that belied his weakened medical condition. He was once again the war hero of old that the Europeans remembered.

But somewhere over the Atlantic, the president once more lost his fighting spirit. When he returned to Washington and appeared with John Foster Dulles at a televised press conference to report on the NATO summit, he seemed listless and deflated. Dulles did almost all the talking, while Ike, at times, looked completely detached and uninterested as his secretary of state droned on. After observing the joint television appearance, Harry Truman quipped that he had been “just about as thoroughly bored with Mr. Dulles as the President was.” The press pounced with renewed calls for Eisenhower’s resignation. Time did its bit to further deflate the sinking American leader. “The symbols of 1957 were two pale, clear streaks of light that slashed across the world’s night skies and a Vanguard rocket toppling into a roiling mass of flame on a Florida beach,” it noted in its year-in-review issue. “On any score 1957 was a year of retreat and disarray for the West. In 1957, under the orbits of a horned sphere and a half-ton tomb for a dead dog, the world’s balance of power lurched and swung toward the free world’s enemies. Unquestionably, in the deadly give and take of the cold war, the high score of the year belongs to Russia. And, unquestionably, the Man of the Year was Russia’s stubby and bald, garrulous and brilliant ruler: Nikita Khrushchev.”

As the American press hailed Khrushchev’s ascent with grudgingly glowing cover stories, Eisenhower was quietly conferring with his attorney general to “make some specific arrangements” for the vice president to succeed him in the event of further incapacitation. He was also preparing a highly unusual State of the Union address in which he would concede that 1957 had been “no ordinary” year. “I decided to confine the annual message—probably for the first time in history—to just two subjects,” he said, “the strength of our nation: particularly its scientific and military strength, and the pursuit of peace.”

The State of the Union would be one last “Chin Up” talk, using the biggest stage afforded to an American leader to try to put the nation’s plight in perspective. He would stress the country’s considerable resources, talents, and relative merits, and he would outline specific plans to shore up what he considered minor education and defense shortcomings. He would rally the troops, as he had done on D-Day and at the Battle of Bulge. And he would try to steal Lyndon Johnson’s thunder in doing so.

But America was in no mood to listen to its old soldier. The public did not want to be placated with soothing words. Words were empty. What America wanted was action, the sort of call to arms that the flamboyant senator from Texas was advocating. A low point had been reached where no amount of reassuring would restore the country’s shattered confidence, either in itself or in its commander in chief. Only a successful satellite would make things right again. The only question was which satellite: the army’s or the navy’s?

• • •

Vanguard’s TV3 might have died a very public death, but the $110 million program behind it was still very much alive. The administration simply had too much invested in Vanguard, in terms of both financial and political capital, to pull the plug just because of one highly publicized failure. In the new spirit of discretion demanded by John Foster Dulles, launch dates were now classified. But otherwise, the six-vehicle program remained unchanged. It still enjoyed priority over ABMA’s Explorer satellite, and on Thursday, January 23, it was given one last shot to beat the army into space.