Our story begins in Denver where President Dwight D. Eisenhower was campaigning. Kansas Senator Frank Carlson was manning the door at an event, letting in the people he believed Ike would want to see.
My father, Art Lowell, was also there. My mother and I had driven him to Abilene where he boarded the train with Ike and Frank which then headed to Denver.
After Ike was elected, he told Carlson that the White House was “the loneliest house I’ve ever been in.” So Carlson, a devout Baptist, suggested that Ike meet with his prayer group. That meeting turned out to be the first joint prayer breakfast including House and Senate members and the president.
Carlson called Conrad Hilton, who was allowed to see Ike in Denver, and asked that the prayer breakfast be at Hilton’s Mayflower Hotel and that Hilton pick up the breakfast tab for 400 or 500 people.
Eisenhower called it a “wholly enjoyable occasion” and was surprised at the size of the crowd. After the breakfast ended, Ike said, “I do hope I may speak for all of you in thanking him (Hilton) for such a breakfast, the likes of which I have not had in 10 years. As long as you feed me grits and sausage, everything will be alright.”
President Donald J. Trump has once again managed to defile a tradition dating back to Concordia’s own Frank Carlson, President Eisenhower and Conrad Hilton.
The president could have used Thursday morning’s event to douse some flames. As expected, he chose to spew his fury at those who tried to impeach him. Trump called them very dishonest and corrupt people. Lashing out at Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to vote for impeachment, Trump said, “I don’t like those who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.”
THE KEYNOTE speaker and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks urged those attending the breakfast to love their enemies because there is in this country a “crisis of contempt and polarization.”
One reporter attending the breakfast observed that Trump’s comments included his usual campaign litany of economic boasting and that it was a clear sign that the post-impeachment Trump is emboldened like never before.
No, President Trump, you are no Eisenhower or for that matter, no Frank Carlson.
Brad Lowell is publisher of the Concordia Blade-Empire
