Walter Lippmann wrote a dozen columns during the six-week-long crisis in which he flayed the administration for strategic incoherence and incompetence. “There is no policy” on the offshore islands, he asserted, only a “wager” that the Chinese won’t do anything too rash. He described the administration as “paralyzed,” at a “dead end,” and “embarrassing.” Joseph Alsop, not to be outdone, actually rushed to Taiwan in the midst of the crisis and published no fewer than 17 smoldering essays of invective against the Eisenhower administration. He used the crisis to bash Ike for failing to keep a
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