Summer News Coverage: Usual Fare for First Families
The White House
Here are just a few of the news stories involving the president and his family over the course of the summer:
• In June the president assured the American public that the vaccination schedule would be resumed for the youngsters who needed to be top priority.
• Later that month the press picked up on a stray comment the president made and queried him about whether he planned to run for another term.
• In July he and his family relished a weekend away from Washington.
• In August the president was looking forward to a fishing trip to Colorado. Once there, national events pulled him away; he interrupted his vacation for an emergency visit to six northeastern states that had suffered massive flooding.
• In late August the Democrats and Republicans sparred over whether the president should be on vacation “given the state of the country.” And if he did deserve some time off, had he selected an appropriate spot for his vacation?
But these stories were not about President Barack Obama. They were about President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the summer of 1955.
The vaccination program of the time was a life-altering one: Eisenhower was announcing the resumption of the program dispensing the polio vaccine. The campaign to vaccinate 9 million youngsters that spring was organized single-handed by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes), without government aid. The program was halted temporarily when one of the three laboratories approved to prepare the vaccine had not followed protocol, causing a problem with the vaccine.
The Democrats attacked the Republican administration for inadequate testing of the vaccine, but of course, the irony of this can be understood in hindsight. The vaccine program halted a devastating and previously unstoppable epidemic that was leaving mostly children but also some adults temporarily or permanently paralyzed. The problem with the vaccine was eventually traced to a single source, Cutter Laboratories, which had deviated from the manufacturing methods originally used for the clinical trials.
