THE LAST ten weeks of the Eisenhower Administration were a period of marking time. Because Eisenhower’s role was that of caretaker, he undertook no new initiatives. Instead, he worked to keep the options open, so that on such issues as nuclear testing, balance-of-payments problems, Indochina, Berlin, and Cuba, the incoming President could make his own decisions. One place where Eisenhower did try to tie Kennedy’s hands, however, was the budget. Starting with his vacation at Augusta, he labored over the budget. He told Slater, “You know, I’m going to insist on a balanced budget no matter what Kennedy says he wants. And if he feels otherwise he’ll have to declare himself. There just won’t be enough money to pay for the already committed things and his new ideas too.”1
While working on that final budget, Eisenhower was told that such-and-such a program could not be cut. Goodpaster noted, “The President commented that if he were a dictator he thought he could cut the budget before him 20 percent without damage to the country—by knocking out many sacred cows and completely useless but well-established activities.”2 At another budget meeting, this one with Gates and the Defense people, Eisenhower bemoaned the emphasis Kennedy and his advisers were putting on Maxwell Taylor’s idea of “flexible response.”
Eisenhower’s concern was the same in 1961 as it had been in 1953—keeping the economy sound. Goodpaster recorded that Eisenhower said, “We have constantly got to ask ourselves whether we are cutting out everything that can be cut out. For example, he is clear in his mind that the only way we are going to win in the present struggle is by our deterrent. There may be some use in having a few mobile elements but he cannot see any ‘little wars.’ More and more the matter is a question of big war and the deterrent.”3
Eisenhower knew, however, that his views had already been examined and rejected by the Kennedy team, which certainly did intend to spend more than it took in, to cut taxes, and to dramatically increase defense spending, both in nuclear arms and delivery systems and in conventional arms, so as to create a “flexible response” capacity.
Despite Eisenhower’s unhappiness with Kennedy’s policies, he had no personal rancor toward his successor, as he had had toward Truman. It helped that Kennedy had carefully, and wisely, refrained from any direct attacks on Eisenhower personally during the campaign. It also helped that when Kennedy came to the White House on December 6, at Eisenhower’s invitation, for a briefing from the President, he arrived sitting alone in the back seat of his limousine. Eisenhower and his staff had feared he would show up with a group of assistants preparing to celebrate their victory. The President was also pleased by Kennedy’s manner. At the meeting in the Oval Office, Kennedy listened carefully and intelligently as Eisenhower explained the way the White House functioned.
Eisenhower stressed to Kennedy the seriousness of the balance-of-payments problem. “I pray that he understands it,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary. He was pleased that Kennedy’s attitude “was that of a serious, earnest seeker for information.” Eisenhower told him that because of the gold outflow, and because of his own conviction that America was carrying far more than its share of the free-world defenses, he intended to let the NATO community know that the United States planned to redeploy some troops out of Europe, unless the Europeans pitched in to stop the outflow of gold. Eisenhower assured Kennedy that he would make the announcement of his intention in such a way as to leave Kennedy a free hand in reversing the policy (which Kennedy did a week after taking office). Kennedy then asked about Eisenhower’s personal views regarding Macmillan, de Gaulle, and Adenauer. Eisenhower replied that Kennedy ought to go out of his way to meet them and talk with them individually and as a group; if he did, “he would be impressed by their ability and their integrity.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Kennedy asked Eisenhower whether he would be prepared to serve the country “in such areas and in such manner as may seem appropriate.” Eisenhower replied that of course, “the answer was obvious,” but he added that he hoped it would be in the area of serious conferences and consultations on subjects that Eisenhower knew something about, “rather than errands which might necessitate frequent and lengthy travel.” Kennedy understood.
Finally, Kennedy asked if he could hold Goodpaster for two months or more into the new Administration. Eisenhower was opposed. He said Goodpaster wanted to return to active duty with troops, that a spot was being held for him, and that he wished Kennedy would appoint someone right now who could sit at Goodpaster’s side for the final month. But Kennedy replied that “he would be handicapped” without Goodpaster. Eisenhower reminded Kennedy that he would soon be the Commander in Chief and he could then order Goodpaster to do any duty he wished. Kennedy indicated that he would hold the active-duty spot open for Goodpaster.4 The meeting ended on that pleasant note of agreement. It had been much smoother than the preinaugural meeting Eisenhower had had with Truman back in 1952.
• •
One of the subjects Kennedy had wanted to discuss was Cuba. Eisenhower responded with a brief summary of a meeting he had held a week earlier. At that meeting, the Administration had considered the options with regard to the CIA’s program for Cuba. Gray kept the notes. He recorded: “The President said he wished to ask two questions: (1) Are we being sufficiently imaginative and bold, subject to not letting our hand appear; and (2) are we doing the things we are doing, effectively.” Without waiting for a response, Eisenhower “adverted to the impending transfer of government responsibilities and said that we would not want to be in the position of turning over the government in the midst of a developing emergency.”
Dulles reported that there were some 184 different groups among the refugees, each demanding to become the recognized government-in-exile. “The President asked how might we proceed to bring them all together and Mr. Dulles responded that this was impossible.” Eisenhower remarked that the CIA should not “be financing those we cannot get to work in harness.”
Douglas Dillon, Under Secretary of State, spoke up for his department, saying that “the State concern was the operation was no longer secret but is known all over Latin America and has been discussed in U.N. circles.” Eisenhower responded “that even if the operation were known, the main thing was not to let the U.S. hand show. As long as we pursued that course he was not too concerned.” He added that he did not share the State Department concern about “shooting from the hip as he thinks that we should be prepared to take more chances and be more aggressive.”5
In late December, Dulles and Bissell reported to Eisenhower on their progress. The brigade was up to six hundred men, which stretched the capacity of the training camp in Guatemala. The refugees were highly trained and motivated. Eisenhower asked about political progress: Did the Cubans have a recognized and popular leader yet? No, Bissell replied, not yet. Eisenhower said that he would not approve of any military plans for the utilization of the paramilitary force until there was a genuine government-in-exile. He hoped he would be able to recognize one before he left office.
Castro, however, moved before Eisenhower could do so. On January 2, 1961, Castro ordered most of the State Department personnel in the embassy in Havana to leave the country within twenty-four hours, charging that they were a den of spies. The next day, Eisenhower met with his top advisers. He announced that “the U.S. should not tolerate being kicked around,” and indicated that he was inclined to bring every member of the embassy home and withdraw diplomatic recognition of the Cuban government. Herter mentioned the various problems that such a course of action would create. Treasury Secretary Anderson said that rather than break relations, he favored vigorous action, now, “to get rid of Castro.” He wanted the CIA to get going. Dulles remarked that Bissell’s paramilitary force would not be ready to move until early March. The problem of finding a legitimate government-in-exile remained acute, meanwhile, and there was another difficulty—finding an excuse for an American-sponsored intervention in Cuba.
Herter suggested that “we should stage an ‘attack’ on Guantanamo,” copying the technique Hitler had used in 1939 on the German-Polish border before he invaded Poland. Bissell warned that whatever was decided, it had to be done soon, because he did not think he could hold his paramilitary force in Guatemala together beyond March 1. He explained that the CIA agents who were supervising the training “think morale will suffer dangerously if action is not taken by early March.”
Eisenhower said that it was his opinion that “we had only two reasonable alternative courses of action: (1) Supporting Cubans to go in March or (2) to abandon the operation.” He strongly favored the first course. “When we turn over responsibility on the twentieth,” he declared, “our successors should continue to improve and intensify the training and undertake planning when the Cubans are themselves properly organized.” Meanwhile, he wanted Bissell to increase the size of the force of refugees. “We should permit the Cubans to expand the forces already planned and then find ways to give arms to broader groups.”
As to the immediate future, he had decided to withdraw recognition from the Cuban government that day, even though no government-in-exile had emerged. Eisenhower said he was ready to “recognize in a great hurry the leader whenever we do find him.” Goodpaster warned that a relatively large military force was being created by the CIA that was not responsible to nor connected with any government, and that the operation was building a momentum of its own which would be difficult to stop. Eisenhower replied that the CIA was only creating an asset, not committing the United States to an invasion of Cuba or anything like that. Whether the refugees would be used or not depended entirely on political developments. There was no need to worry.6
• •
For themselves, the Eisenhowers had many chores to do, but they were such old hands at moving that this would be a relatively easy move, physically if not emotionally, because everything was already set up at Gettysburg. Slater spent the first weekend in January at the White House. As he was walking down the hall on Sunday morning, Mamie called him into her bedroom. She was still in bed, but told him she had been up since 5:30 A.M. trying to balance her checkbook. She had already packed the paintings and knickknacks in their bedroom; looking around, she commented to Slater, “Don’t things look bare.”7
Probably no family has ever moved out of the White House gladly, but there were compensations to becoming private citizens. The day after Christmas, 1960, Eisenhower wrote to the members of his gang, and a few other close friends, an identical letter. “During my entire life,” he began, “until I came back from World War II as something of a VIP, I was known by my contemporaries as ‘Ike.’ ” He continued, “I now demand, as my right, that you, starting January 21, 1961, address me by that nickname. No longer do I propose to be excluded from the privileges that other friends enjoy.”8
But of course no former President is simply a private citizen. Already Ike was being bombarded with requests that he speak to this club or that charity, to this organization or that university. Honoraria of $1,000 and more were being offered. One such request came from Edgar out in Tacoma, who was rather pleased with himself at being able to extend to his brother a fee of $1,000 for a twenty-minute speech at the University of Puget Sound. Ike replied that Edgar’s letter “shows how little you know your younger brother. I have made it a practice for years never to accept an honorarium for any talk; this policy I adopted right after World War II.”9
He had no financial worries in any case. Pete Jones and other friends had done a good job of investing his Crusade money for him; Gettysburg was paid for; he had his full pension; there was plenty of money. Besides, he still had a high income potential, even without speaker’s fees. Given Ike’s continuing popularity, given the turbulent years he had just presided over, and given the great success of Crusade, every publisher in the country wanted to produce his White House memoirs. Ike decided to stay with Doubleday, primarily because of friendship with the president, Doug Black. He did not sign a contract, but did make an informal arrangement with Black, trusting that Black would treat him fairly, even generously. There was no package deal involved, as there had been with Crusade; this time, Ike would receive royalties and pay taxes on a regular basis.
One additional reason Ike made his arrangement with Black was that Black said he could arrange first serial publications in The Saturday Evening Post. Ike had been addicted to that magazine when he was a boy—he claimed he read every issue—and he got a great kick out of the idea of appearing in it.10
In January, by special act of Congress, Eisenhower regained the five-star rank he had resigned in 1952. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson took the lead in getting the legislation into law. As a former President, Eisenhower was entitled to a $25,000 per year pension, plus $50,000 for office expenses, which was much more than he would receive as a five-star general. The special act gave him the best of both worlds—he got his rank back, and Congress stipulated that he should receive the full presidential pension and allowance. Further, he got to retain the services of Sergeants Dry and Moaney and Colonel Schulz, as aides, their costs to be deducted from the $50,000 allowance.
• •
On December 14, Whitman typed up a note and sent it into the Oval Office. “Norman Cousins called,” she told the President. “His suggestion: that you give a ‘farewell’ address to the country . . . reviewing your Administration, telling of your hopes for the future. A great, sweeping document.”11 Eisenhower liked the idea. He also liked the work of a young political scientist from Johns Hopkins University, Malcolm Moos, who had joined the staff in late 1958 as a speech writer. Eisenhower talked to Moos, set him to work on a speech, and over the following weeks consulted closely with him to make the text exactly right.
On January 17, 1961, at 8:30 P.M., Eisenhower went on national radio and television to deliver his Farewell Address. His theme was the Cold War. He spoke of war and peace, of police states and of freedom. “We face a hostile ideology,” he declared, “global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” The danger it posed was of “indefinite duration.” There would be many crises, and correspondingly many calls to find a “miraculous solution” by spending ever-increasing sums on research and development of new weapons. Eisenhower warned that every such proposal “must be weighed in the light of . . . the need to maintain balance . . . between cost and hoped-for advantage.”
The irony of the Cold War was that to maintain the peace and retain its freedom, the United States had to build a huge military establishment, but the cost of building it threatened to create a garrison state in which there would be no freedom. “Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors . . .” Eisenhower said. In addition, until after World War II, the United States had “no armaments industry.” In earlier days, “American makers of plowshares could . . . make swords as well.” But because of the Cold War and the technological revolution, “we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”
Then, in ringing phrases, Eisenhower spoke the sentences that would be the most quoted and remembered of his Farewell Address, indeed of his entire Presidency. The sentences summed up his deepest feelings, gave voice to his greatest fears. They were the words of a soldier-prophet, a general who had given his life to the defense of freedom and the achievement of peace. “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said. “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” Then, the direct warning: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” The military-industrial complex should never be allowed to “endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”
Eisenhower next spoke of another great change that had occurred in America in his lifetime, and the dangers that change brought. The solitary inventor, working on his own, had been replaced “by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.” Further, in the old days, universities were “the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery.” But today, “partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Therefore, Eisenhower issued a second warning, not so well remembered later as was the military-industrial complex phrase, but equally prophetic. “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present,” he said, “and is gravely to be regarded.”
Another warning: “We—you and I, and our government—must avoid . . . plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come . . .”
An apology: “Disarmament . . . is a continuing imperative . . . Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war—as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years—I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.” But the most that he could say was that “war has been avoided.” He concluded by praying that “all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.” 12
• •
The speech got a highly favorable reception, which put Eisenhower in a good mood the next morning, when he held his 193rd, and last, press conference as President. He thought the transition was going “splendidly,” he praised Congress for its cooperation (sic!), he wished Kennedy “Godspeed in his work,” he said his greatest disappointment was the failure to achieve peace, he explained his retirement status, and he answered a question about what specific steps he would recommend in dealing with the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower said every citizen should keep well informed, because “it is only a citizenry, an alert and informed citizenry which can keep these abuses from coming about.” He added that the potential abuses of power and influence by the arms makers could come about “unwittingly, but just by the very nature of the thing.” Every magazine you picked up had an advertisement of a Titan missile or an Atlas or what have you, which represented “almost an insidious penetration of our own minds that the only thing this country is engaged in is weaponry and missiles. And, I’ll tell you we just can’t afford to do that.”
Robert Spivack asked if, over the years, Eisenhower felt the reporters had been fair to him. Eisenhower grinned and shot back, “Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see what a reporter could do much to a President, do you?”
William Knighton wanted the President’s opinion on the two-term amendment. “A funny thing,” Eisenhower replied, grinning again, “ever since this election the Republicans have been asking me this.” After the laughter died down, he said he had come to believe that the two-term amendment “was probably a pretty good thing.”13
The following day, January 19, Eisenhower invited Kennedy to the White House for a final briefing. Eisenhower told Kennedy about the man with the satchel, a satchel that contained the communications equipment that connected the President with SAC and the missile forces. He was, Eisenhower said, “an unobtrusive man who would shadow the President for all of his days in office.” To give Kennedy an example of the services available to him, Eisenhower pressed a button and said, “Send a chopper.” In six minutes, a helicopter settled down on the lawn outside the Oval Office.
Kennedy wanted Eisenhower’s judgment “as to the United States supporting the guerrilla operations in Cuba, even if this support involves the United States publicly.” Eisenhower replied “yes,” it should be done, because “we cannot let the present government there go on.” He told Kennedy that the members of the OAS, who in public consistently spoke against any action designed to eliminate Castro, in private were urging the Administration to “do something.” Eisenhower discussed Bissell’s operation in Guatemala. He said that this would be a good time to miss “no opportunity to keep our mouths shut.” (The New York Times, a few days earlier, had carried a story describing the organization and training of the Cuban refugees.)
Then Eisenhower outlined his attempts to “find a man who was both anti-Batista and anti-Castro” to head a government-in-exile. It was “very tough,” he said, to find a man of standing that satisfied all the refugees. Eisenhower said that Kennedy’s “first job would be to find who that man could be.” Then, when the paramilitary force of refugees went into Cuba, “it would have the appearance of a more legitimate operation.” No specific plans for an invasion had yet been made, Eisenhower added, and that should be done as soon as a government-in-exile was formed.
Kennedy asked about America’s limited-war capability. Eisenhower assured him that the armed services were more than strong enough to cope with any situation, then urged Kennedy to hold down the costs of defense, and to strive for a balanced budget (afterward, Eisenhower commented that “I must say that the President-elect did not seem to be impressed”). Eisenhower returned to the subject of Cuba, telling Kennedy that it was his “responsibility to do whatever is necessary.” Clark Clifford, who took notes for Kennedy, saw no “reluctance or hesitation” on Eisenhower’s part. Indeed, five days later Clifford sent a memorandum to President Kennedy reminding him that Eisenhower had said “it was the policy of this government” to help the Cubans “to the utmost” and that this effort should be “continued and accelerated.”14
• •
Inevitably, Inauguration Day came. Inevitably, Eisenhower was leaving the Presidency with some reluctance. A few days before January 20, Henry Wriston came to the Oval Office to deliver the report of the Commission on National Goals, which Eisenhower had appointed a year earlier. With the New Frontier about to take over, the report was already a dead letter, of no interest to anyone. But it had to be received, and photographs taken. While that was going on, Eisenhower heard the clatter of hammers across Pennsylvania Avenue, where a reviewing stand was being constructed for the inaugural. “Look, Henry,” Eisenhower said, “it’s like being in the death cell and watching them put up the scaffold.”15
The morning of January 20, John Eisenhower remembered an “eerie” atmosphere in the White House. It had snowed heavily the night before, forcing many of the staff to spend the night in the basement. Secretary Gates assured Eisenhower that he would have every soldier in the Army shoveling snow to make sure the inaugural went ahead without a hitch. Eisenhower spent most of the morning leaning on his empty safe, reminiscing with Ann Whitman. The servants lined up, and Eisenhower and Mamie went down the line, saying goodbye to each of them. Many had tears streaming down their faces. The Kennedys, the Johnsons, and “a small entourage” of Democrats arrived for a short visit and a cup of coffee.16
At noon, before Chief Justice Earl Warren, the oldest man ever to serve as President to that date gave way to the youngest man elected to the office. After the ceremonies, when all the attention was centered on the Kennedys, the Eisenhowers sneaked away through a side exit. In so doing, Eisenhower later wrote, they made “a fantastic discovery. We were free—as only private citizens in a democratic nation can be free.” They drove to the F Street Club, where Lewis Strauss was the host for a luncheon for the Cabinet and Eisenhower’s close friends. Then it was off for Gettysburg, along the route they knew so well, and home to the farm.
By special, unprecedented action on Kennedy’s part, Ike was retaining the services of his personal Secret Service bodyguard, Special Agent Richard Flohr, for two weeks. Otherwise, he was as free as he felt. When they got to the farm, Ike hopped out the car door to open the gate. For twenty years, he had had almost every physical need taken care of by others. He never wore his shoes while they were being shined, he had not been in a laundromat, or a barbershop, or a clothing store, or indeed—as President—in a retail store of any kind.
There were all sorts of things Ike did not know how to do. Paying tolls at the automatic lanes on the turnpikes, for example. He had forgotten how to type, and had never learned how to mix frozen orange juice or adjust a television picture. He had no idea in the world about how to make practical travel arrangements, how to buy tickets or even where to buy them. He had told Slater, on January 7, that after a few days in Gettysburg following the inaugural, he wanted to go quail shooting down in Georgia at George Humphrey’s place. But, he said, “I can’t drive all that way and I’m just wondering how I’ll get there.” Slater assured him that he could “snitch a ride” on Pete Jones’ airplane.
Ike did not even know how to place a telephone call. For the past twenty years, whenever he wanted to make a call, he told a secretary to put it through for him. The last time he had placed a call himself, in late 1941, he did so by telling the operator the number he wanted. So, the evening of January 20, he picked up the phone to call his son, tried to give the number, heard only a buzzing at the other end, shouted for the operator, clicked the receiver button a dozen times, tried dialing it like a safe, shouted again, and slammed the phone down.
Frustrated, red-faced, he bellowed for Agent Flohr. “Come show me how you work this goddamned thing.” Flohr did. “Oh! So that’s how you do it!” exclaimed a delighted Ike, fascinated by the way the ring clicked around the dial. He rather thought he might enjoy this business of learning to cope with the modern world.17
He would especially enjoy it because, even if he had to place his own phone calls, or get out and open a gate, or wonder how to get from one place to another on his own, he would do so as a private citizen. After a full one-half century in its service, the nation had finally allowed Dwight Eisenhower to retire. He was free.
• •
Any attempt to assess Eisenhower’s eight years as President inevitably reveals more about the person doing the assessing than it does about Eisenhower. Assessment requires passing a judgment on the decisions Eisenhower made on the issues of his time, and every issue was political and controversial. Further, all the major and most of the minor issues of the 1950s continued to divide the nation’s political parties and people in the decades that followed. To declare, therefore, that Eisenhower was right or wrong on this or that issue tends to be little more than a declaration of the current politics and prejudices of the author.
Thus William Ewald, in Eisenhower the President, concludes “that many terrible things that could have happened, didn’t. Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency gave America eight good years—I believe the best in memory.”18 There were no wars, no riots, no inflation—just peace and prosperity. Most white middle-class and middle-aged Republicans would heartily agree with Ewald. But a black American could point out that among the things that did not happen were progress in civil rights or school desegregation. People concerned about the Cold War and the nuclear arms race could point out that no progress was made in reducing tensions or achieving disarmament. People concerned about the Communist menace could point out that no Communist regimes were eliminated, and that in fact Communism expanded into Vietnam and Cuba. On these and every issue, in short, there are at least two legitimate points of view. What did not happen brought joy to one man, gloom to another.
To repeat, then: To say that Eisenhower was right about this or wrong about that is to do little more than announce one’s own political position. A more fruitful approach is to examine his years in the White House in his own terms, to make an assessment on the basis of how well he did in achieving the tasks and goals he set for himself at the time he took office.
By that standard, there were many disappointments, domestic and foreign. Eisenhower had wanted to achieve unity within the Republican Party, on the basis of bringing the Old Guard into the modern world and the mainstream of American politics. In addition, he wanted to develop within the Republican Party some young, dynamic, trustworthy, and popular leaders. He never achieved either goal, as evidenced by the 1964 Republican Convention, where the Old Guard took control of the party, nominating a candidate and writing a platform that would have delighted Warren Harding, or even William McKinley. Franklin Roosevelt did a much better job of curbing the left wing of the Democratic Party than Eisenhower did of curbing the right wing of the Republican Party.
Eisenhower wanted to see Senator McCarthy eliminated from national public life, and he wanted it done without making America’s record and image on civil-liberties issues worse than it already was. But because Eisenhower would not denounce McCarthy by name, or otherwise stand up to the senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy was able to do much damage to civil liberties, the Republican Party, numerous individuals, the U.S. Army, and the Executive Branch before he finally destroyed himself. Eisenhower’s only significant contribution to McCarthy’s downfall was the purely negative act of denying him access to executive records and personnel. Eisenhower’s cautious, hesitant approach—or nonapproach—to the McCarthy issue did the President’s reputation no good, and much harm.
Eisenhower had wanted, in January of 1953, to provide a moral leadership that would both draw on and illuminate America’s spiritual superiority to the Soviet Union, indeed to all the world. But on one of the great moral issues of the day, the struggle to eliminate racial segregation from American life, he failed to speak out, to indicate personal approval of Brown v. Topeka. This did incalculable harm to the civil-rights crusade and to America’s image.
In civil rights, as in civil liberties, Eisenhower was not a reluctant leader—he was no leader at all. He just wished the problems would go away. With regard to civil liberties, the excesses of McCarthy and his supporters were so gross that the problem did tend to solve itself. With regard to civil rights, an area in which the depth of commitment by the American people was considerably less than the commitment to civil liberties, Eisenhower’s refusal to lead was almost criminal. Who can say what might have been accomplished in dealing with this most permanent of problems had President Eisenhower joined Chief Justice Warren in enthusiastically supporting racial equality and justice? But he did not; and by putting the problem off, by leaving it to his successors, he just made it worse.
In foreign affairs, Eisenhower’s greatest failure, in his own judgment, which he expressed on innumerable occasions, was the failure to achieve peace. When he left office, the tensions and dangers and costs of the Cold War were higher than they had ever been. In large part, this was no fault of his. He had tried to reach out to the Russians, with Atoms for Peace, Open Skies, and other proposals, only to be rebuffed by Khrushchev. But his own deeply rooted anti-Communism was certainly a contributing factor to the failure. Eisenhower refused to trust the Russians to even the slightest degree. He continued and expanded the economic, political, diplomatic, and covert-operations pressure on the Kremlin for his entire two terms. This was good policy for winning votes, and may even have been good for achieving limited victories in the Cold War, but it was damaging to the cause of world peace.
Allied with the failure to achieve peace was the failure to set a limit on the arms race (never mind actual disarmament, another of his goals). Better than any other world leader, Eisenhower spoke of the cost of the arms race, and its dangers, and its madness. But he could not even slow it down, much less stop it. The great tragedy here is opportunity lost. Eisenhower not only recognized better than anyone else the futility of an arms race; he was in a better position than anyone else to end it. His prestige, especially as a military man, was so overwhelming that he could have made a test ban with the Russians merely on his own assurance that the agreement was good for the United States. But until his last months in office, he accepted the risk of an expanding arms race over the risk of trusting the Russians.
When finally he was ready to make an attempt to control the arms race by accepting an unsupervised comprehensive test ban, the U-2 incident intervened. Fittingly, the flight that Powers made was one Eisenhower instinctively wanted to call off, but one that his technologists insisted was necessary. In this case, as in the case of building more nuclear weapons, holding more tests, or building more rockets, he allowed the advice of his technical people to override his own common sense. That this could happen to Eisenhower illustrates vividly the tyranny of technology in the nuclear/missile age.
In Central and Eastern Europe, Eisenhower had hoped to take the offensive against Communism. But his unrealistic and ineffective belligerency, combined with his party’s irresponsible advocacy of uprisings and liberation within a police state, produced the tragedy of Hungary in 1956, which will stand forever as a blot on Eisenhower’s record. In his Administration, “roll back” never got started, as “stand pat” became the watchword. But the free world was not even able to stand pat, as Eisenhower accepted an armistice in Korea that left the Communists in control in the north, another in Vietnam that did the same, and the presence of Castro in Cuba.
These failures, taken together, make at first glance a damning indictment. According to Eisenhower’s critics, they came about because of the greatest shortcoming of all, the failure to exert leadership. In contrast to FDR and Truman, Eisenhower seemed to be no leader at all, but only a chairman of the board, or even a figurehead, a Whig President in a time that demanded dramatic exercise and executive power.
The most basic, telling, and realistic criticism of the Eisenhower Presidency is not what he did, but what he did not do. His two terms were the time of the great postponement. This was obviously true of race relations and progress toward the desegregation of American life; it was equally true of such urban problems as the growth of slums, pollution, the loss of the tax base, a decent education for all, care for the elderly, the helpless, the unemployed. Goodpaster had warned the President that sometimes putting off problems meant they would be unmanageable when you finally got around to dealing with them. Ike’s reputation would be higher today had he listened more closely to the warning, and American life today would be different. One reason for the excesses of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the mid-sixties was the magnitude of the problems Johnson tried to deal with; it is possible that the problems would not have been so big had Ike faced up to them.
Ike liked to describe himself as a conservative on fiscal matters, a liberal on human issues. In fact, his policies are most understandable by reference to his birth—he was the last President to be born in the nineteenth century. At heart, he was always a nineteenth-century conservative, deeply suspicious of government and especially of the central government. He thought of deficit spending as almost sinful and immoral, except in wartime; he felt the same way about government programs designed to help people with their economic, health, or social problems.
In many areas, he never outgrew his Abilene, turn-of-the-century upbringing.
In foreign affairs, too, the Eisenhower era was a time of the great postponement. This was most obviously the case in South and Central America (not that his successors have done much better), and especially in Cuba, where he neither accepted Castro nor tried to destroy him. He put off the problems of postcolonial Africa. In the Middle East, he was essentially negative, saying “No” to the British, the French, and Israel without saying “Yes” to Egypt or the Arabs. Perhaps his greatest foreign failure was in Southeast Asia where he also practiced a policy of postponement. His middle-of-the-road tactics left the Communists in control of North Vietnam without creating a South Vietnam strong enough to stand on its own.
Yet it can be argued that Southeast Asia was the scene of one of his great triumphs in foreign affairs, because it was there that he showed the wisdom and the courage to keep his country out of an unwinnable war.
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How effective, if not dramatic, Eisenhower’s leadership techniques were can be seen in a brief assessment of his accomplishments as President, an assessment once again based on his own goals and aspirations. First and foremost, he presided over eight years of prosperity, marred only by two minor recessions. By later standards, it was a decade of nearly full employment and no inflation.
Indeed by almost every standard—GNP, personal income and savings, home buying, auto purchases, capital investment, highway construction, and so forth—it was the best decade of the century. Surely Eisenhower’s fiscal policies, his refusal to cut taxes or increase defense spending, his insistence on a balanced budget, played some role in creating this happy situation.
Under Eisenhower, the nation enjoyed domestic peace and tranquillity—at least as measured against the sixties. One of Eisenhower’s major goals in 1953 was to lower the excesses of political rhetoric and partisanship. He managed to achieve that goal, in a negative way, by not dismantling the New Deal, as the Old Guard wanted to do. Under Eisenhower, the number of people covered by Social Security doubled as benefits went up. The New Deal’s regulatory commissions stayed in place. Expenditures for public works were actually greater under Eisenhower than they had been under FDR or Truman. Nor were Eisenhower’s public works of the boondoggle variety—the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Interstate Highway System made an enormous contribution to the economy. Eisenhower, in effect, put a Republican stamp of approval on twenty years of Democratic legislation, by itself a major step toward bringing the two parties closer together.
Eisenhower’s positive contribution to domestic peace and tranquillity was to avoid partisanship himself. His close alliance with the southern Democrats, his refusal to ever denounce the Democratic Party as a whole (he attacked only the “spender” wing), his insistence on a bipartisan foreign policy, his careful cultivation of the Democratic leaders in Congress, all helped tone down the level of partisan excess. When Eisenhower came into the White House, his party was accusing the other party of “twenty years of treason.” The Democrats in turn were charging that the Republicans were the party of Depression. When Eisenhower left office, such ridiculous charges were seldom heard.
In 1953, Eisenhower had also set as a major goal the restoration of dignity to the office of the President. He felt strongly that Truman had demeaned the office. Whether Truman was guilty of so doing depends on one’s perception, of course, but few would argue the claim that Eisenhower—in his bearing, his actions, his private and social life, and his official duties as head of state—maintained his dignity. He looked, acted, and sounded like a President.
He was a good steward. He did not sell off the public lands, or open the National Wilderness Areas or National Parks to commercial or mineral exploitation. He retained and expanded TVA. He stopped nuclear testing in the atmosphere, the first world statesman to do so, because of the dangers of radiation to the people who had chosen him as their leader.
In the field of civil rights, he felt he had done as well as could be done. His greatest contribution (albeit one that he had grown increasingly unhappy about) was the appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice. In addition, he had completed the desegregation of the armed forces, and of the city of Washington, D.C., as well as all federal property. He had sponsored and signed the first civil-rights legislation since Reconstruction. When he had to, he acted decisively, as in Little Rock in 1957. These were all positive, if limited, gains. Eisenhower’s boast was that they were made without riots, and without driving the white South to acts of total desperation. Progress in desegregation, especially in the schools, was painfully slow during the Eisenhower years, but he was convinced that anything faster would have produced a much greater and more violent white southern resistance.
In 1952, when he accepted the Republican nomination for the Presidency, Eisenhower called on the party to join him in a “crusade.” Its purpose was to clear the crooks and the Commies out of Washington. Once that task had been accomplished, Eisenhower’s critics found it difficult to discover what his crusade was aiming at. There was no stirring call to arms, no great moral cause, no idealistic pursuit of some overriding national goal. Eisenhower, seemingly, was quite content to preside over a fat, happy, satisfied nation that devoted itself to enjoying life, and especially the material benefits available in the greatest industrial power in the world. There was truth in the charge.
Eisenhower’s rebuttal also contained an elementary truth. The Declaration of Independence states that one of man’s inalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness. Eisenhower tried, with much success, to create a climate in the 1950s in which American citizens could fully exercise that right.
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His greatest successes came in foreign policy, and the related area of national defense spending. By making peace in Korea, and avoiding war thereafter for the next seven and one-half years, and by holding down, almost single-handedly, the pace of the arms race, he achieved his major accomplishments. No one knows how much money he saved the United States, as he rebuffed Symington and the Pentagon and the JCS and the AEC and the military-industrial complex. And no one knows how many lives he saved by ending the war in Korea and refusing to enter any others, despite a half-dozen and more virtually unanimous recommendations that he go to war.
He made peace, and he kept the peace. Whether any other man could have led the country through that decade without going to war cannot be known. What we do know is that Eisenhower did it. Eisenhower boasted that “the United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration. We kept the peace. People asked how it happened—by God, it didn’t just happen, I’ll tell you that.”19
Beyond keeping the peace, Eisenhower could claim that at the end of his eight years, the NATO alliance, that bedrock of American foreign policy, was stronger than ever. Relations with the Arab states, considering the American moral commitment to Israel, were as good as could be expected. Except for Cuba, the Latin American republics remained friendly to the United States. In the Far East, relations with America’s partners, South Korea, Japan, and Formosa, were excellent (they were still nonexistent with the Chinese). South Vietnam seemed well on the road to becoming a viable nation.
What Eisenhower had done best was managing crises. The crisis with Syngman Rhee in early 1953, and the simultaneous crisis with the Chinese Communists over the POW issue and the armistice; the crisis over Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and over Quemoy and Matsu in 1955; the Hungarian and Suez crises of 1956; the Sputnik and Little Rock crises of 1957; the Formosa Resolution crisis of 1958; the Berlin crisis of 1959; the U-2 crisis of 1960—Eisenhower managed each one without overreacting, without going to war, without increasing defense spending, without frightening people half out of their wits. He downplayed each one, insisted that a solution could be found, and then found one. It was a magnificent performance.