THROUGH THE war years, through the time of his service in Washington as Chief of Staff, in New York at Columbia, in Paris with SHAPE, and through the eight years of his Presidency, Ike had fantasized about his retirement. He thought that perhaps he would write an occasional article on some national issue, play a lot of golf and bridge, but mainly concentrate on taking it easy. After a half century of service to the nation, he was, he insisted, bone tired, and had to have some rest. No more meetings, no more speeches, no more conferences, no more decisions to make. George Washington at Mount Vernon was his model.
Ike’s Mount Vernon was his farm at Gettysburg. Both he and Mamie loved the farm and the area. The climate, except in winter, was temperate. The location was ideal. They lived in a rural setting, but close enough to Washington and New York for occasional trips to those cities, and convenient for their friends to come to them for weekend visits. The farm was on the edge of the battlefield, which enhanced the sense of being a part of the continuity of American history. Because of its location, there were tourists to put up with—every visitor to the battlefield, it seemed, wanted to see the Eisenhower farm too, and most of them hoped to catch a glimpse and take a picture of the former President walking on his land. Ike enjoyed this visible proof that he had not been forgotten. When he went into town, people would take his picture, or ask for an autograph, or assure him that they had voted for him. He complained about it, but immediately added, “Suppose people didn’t like us. That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?”1
The home had a colonial appearance on the outside, but all the modern conveniences inside. The glass-enclosed sun porch was perfect for reading or painting. The furnishings were elegant, the pick of the hundreds of gifts Eisenhower had received over the years from heads of state and American millionaires. Mamie had a priceless collection of Boehm porcelain birds in one room, of which she was very proud but about which Ike would only comment, “God, wouldn’t you hate to have to dust them.” Through the presidential years, Ike had hardly seen Mamie during daylight; at Gettysburg, he made up for it by spending long hours with her on the sun porch, overlooking the green fields, reading, watching television, or painting.
When the gang or other guests came for a visit, Ike did the cooking, because the only thing Mamie knew how to make, aside from broiling a steak or baking a potato, was fudge. “I was never permitted in the kitchen when I was a young girl,” she explained. Otherwise, she was a devoted wife, who appreciated Ike’s protective attitude toward her. “For any marriage to be successful,” she told one reporter, “you must work at it. Young women today want to prove something but all they have to prove is that they can be a good wife, housekeeper, and mother. There should be only one head of the family—the man.” “As for spats,” she told the same reporter, “if a quarrel develops, one should leave the room. It takes two to quarrel.”
John, Barbara, and the grandchildren lived on a farm in a small home of their own about a mile away. Eisenhower was extremely proud of his only son. Mamie and Barbara were very close and happy in their relationship; the Eisenhowers related to Barbara as a daughter, rather than a daughter-in-law. But it was David, Barbara Anne, Susan, and Mary Jean who gave them their greatest joy. “I just love having them around,” Mamie declared. “The girls try on my clothes and watch TV with me. We do a lot of talking and laughing.” Inevitably, David was his grandfather’s favorite. “When he was smaller we spent more time together,” Eisenhower told one reporter. “Today, he likes baseball, football, and soccer, like other boys his age, but these are things I can no longer do with him. I do go fishing, skeet shooting, and play golf with him. And often we just sit around and talk seriously.” He was aware of the potential for problems arising from the close proximity of the two families. “Grandparents should be helpful,” he admonished a reporter (and himself and Mamie), “but not busybodies. They should help out with their grandchildren’s education if they can, but under no circumstances should they get in the way and become prime ministers for them. That’s the one way to ruin your children’s marriage.”2
There were many trips, beginning immediately after January 20, 1961. In February of that year, the Eisenhowers took a train to Palm Desert, California, where they stayed on the ranch of Floyd Odlum and his wife, Jacqueline Cochran, the famous aviator who had played a key role in persuading Ike in 1952 to run for the Presidency. Ike intended to just play some golf and bridge and generally relax, but he discovered that he could not put national affairs out of his mind. Riding his electric cart around the golf course at Eldorado, he turned on the radio and listened to an account of Colonel John Glenn’s around-the-world astronaut flight. Slater felt that Eisenhower was “a little disappointed that the trip hadn’t been made during his administration.” He also confessed that he was terribly unhappy about the “careless spending” of the Kennedy Administration, and its “complete lack of interest in the soundness of the dollar and the disregard of what inflation will do to the savers.” He was also concerned about Kennedy’s “build up of the military, the space scientists and armament industries.” Eisenhower warned that “this combination can be so powerful and the military machine so big it just has to be used.”3
• •
As the quotations indicate, after all those years at the center of power, making the decisions, Eisenhower was finding it difficult to relegate himself to an observer’s role. His major concern, however, was less with shaping the future, more with justifying the past, and specifically his own Administration. But writing his presidential memoirs proved to be a much more difficult task than writing Crusade had been. Crusade had been the story of an unqualified success with a definitive and happy ending, but the White House memoirs covered issues that were still ongoing, the outcome of which no one knew—Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, disarmament, nuclear testing, and so forth. The cast of characters in Crusade was relatively limited; in the presidential memoirs, it was endless. Eisenhower found something good to say about almost everyone who appeared in Crusade, even Montgomery, and found little cause for the slightest disparagement of his associates, which was not at all the case in his White House memoirs, but he hated to be critical. Crusade covered three and a half tightly compressed years, as compared to the eight years in the White House.
Further, in Crusade he could tell the story of making a decision, then show how it worked in action, but the situation for the presidential memoirs was more a case of describing a decision made, followed by inaction. That is, he decided not to expand the war in Korea, not to enter the war in Vietnam at the time of Dien Bien Phu, not to accelerate the arms race, not to attack McCarthy directly, or support Brown v. Topeka, or dismantle the New Deal, or lower taxes, or support the British and the French at Suez, or intervene in Hungary. The two-volume White House memoirs, in short, necessarily had to be negative and inconclusive, while Crusade had been positive and conclusive.
Despite their shortcomings, Mandate for Change and Waging Peace (together titled The White House Years) represented a major effort, and they made a major contribution. Neither as salty nor as personal as Truman’s memoirs, they nevertheless did cover all the major and most of the minor issues of the Eisenhower Administration. There were few if any errors of fact, a remarkable achievement in a manuscript of nearly three thousand pages, and a tribute to the thoroughness and accuracy of the research effort. The memoirs did achieve what Eisenhower most wanted them to achieve—he got to explain his side of the story and present his motivation in making this or that decision. They therefore immediately became, as they remain, one of the starting points for any serious study of the politics of the 1950s.
Following the publication of the White House memoirs, editors at Doubleday persuaded Eisenhower to write a more informal autobiography, covering those parts of his life not touched upon in Crusade or The White House Years. In preparing the book, Eisenhower reverted to his old practice of dictating personally. He thoroughly enjoyed going back in his mind to his boyhood days in Abilene, his years as a cadet at West Point, and his experiences as a young officer. He paid handsome tributes to Fox Conner, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, to his parents and his brothers, his high school teachers, and his fellow junior officers. He told some funny stories, and some sad ones, and some revealing ones. He called the book At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, and it received a much warmer reception, and enjoyed far higher sales and more translations, than The White House Years.
• •
April was planting time, and in 1961 by the beginning of the month the Eisenhowers were back at Gettysburg, preparing for the new season. On the seventeenth, Bissell’s paramilitary force of Cuban refugees, now grown to some two thousand strong, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Deprived of air cover or reinforcements, operating with inadequate communications equipment, the men were quickly killed or captured by Castro’s armed forces. It was a debacle.
Kennedy called Eisenhower. Could Eisenhower come to Camp David for consultation? Of course, Eisenhower replied, and on April 22 he flew by helicopter from Gettysburg to Camp David. Kennedy met him when he landed, and the two men went to the terrace at Aspen Cottage to talk. Kennedy described the planning, objectives, and anticipated results of the landing, confessed that it had been a total failure, and said the causes of the failure were gaps in intelligence plus some errors in ship loading, timing, and tactics.
The two men began strolling around the grounds, heads bent, deep in conversation. Eisenhower had the impression that Kennedy “looked upon the Presidency as not only a very personal thing, but as an institution that one man could handle with an assistant here and another there. He had no idea of the complexity of the job.” Eisenhower asked Kennedy, “Mr. President, before you approved this plan did you have everybody in front of you debating the thing so you got pros and cons yourself and then made your decision, or did you see these people one at a time?” Kennedy confessed that he had not had a full meeting of the NSC to discuss and criticize the plans. He seemed to Eisenhower to be “very frank but also very subdued and more than a little bewildered.” He said to Eisenhower, ruefully, “No one knows how tough this job is until after he has been in it a few months.” Eisenhower looked at Kennedy, then said softly, “Mr. President, if you will forgive me, I think I mentioned that to you three months ago.” Kennedy replied, “I certainly have learned a lot since.”
Eisenhower asked Kennedy why on earth he had not provided air cover for the invasion. Kennedy replied that “we thought that if it was learned that we were really doing this rather than these rebels themselves, the Soviets would be very apt to cause trouble in Berlin.” Eisenhower gave him another long look, then said, “Mr. President, that is exactly the opposite of what would really happen. The Soviets follow their own plans, and if they see us show any weakness then is when they press us the hardest. The second they see us show strength and do something on our own, then is when they are very cagey. The failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would not otherwise do.”
“Well,” Kennedy responded, “my advice was that we must try to keep our hands from showing in the affair.” Eisenhower, astounded, snapped back, “Mr. President, how could you expect the world to believe that we had nothing to do with it? Where did these people get the ships to go from Central America to Cuba? Where did they get the weapons? Where did they get all the communications and all the other things that they would need? How could you possibly have kept from the world any knowledge that the United States had been assisting the invasion? I believe there is only one thing to do when you go into this kind of thing. It must be a success.”
Kennedy seized on the last sentence. “Well,” he said, “I assure you that hereafter, if we get in anything like this, it is going to be a success.” Eisenhower, pleased, replied, “Well, I am glad to hear that.” The former President then told Kennedy, “I will support anything that has as its objective the prevention of Communist entry and solidification of bases in the Western Hemisphere,” but also gave him warning: “I believe the American people will never approve direct military intervention, by their own forces, except under provocations against us so clear and so serious that everybody will understand the need for the move.”4
Eisenhower’s unhappiness with Kennedy was increased by one of Kennedy’s responses to the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy challenged the Russians to a race to the moon. Eisenhower thought that a terrible mistake, and said so, although only in private. Nevertheless his criticisms got through to the NASA astronauts, and one of them, Major Frank Borman, wrote Eisenhower about it in June of 1965.
Eisenhower sent Borman a long, careful reply. “What I have criticized about the current space program,” he said, “is the concept under which it was drastically revised and expanded just after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.” Eisenhower gave it as his judgment that the challenge to the Russians to race to the moon was “unwise.” American prestige should not have been put on the line in that fashion, because “it immediately took one single project or experiment out of a thoughtfully planned and continuing program involving communication, meteorology, reconnaissance, and future military and scientific benefits and gave the highest priority—unfortunate in my opinion—to a race, in other words, a stunt.” As a result, Eisenhower said, “costs went up drastically,” while the benefits of the space program were lost.5
• •
On October 14, 1963, Ike celebrated his seventy-third birthday. He had been in and out of Walter Reed a half-dozen times since he left the White House, but never stayed more than a few days, as all the ailments were minor ones. His general physical condition, for a man his age who had suffered a major heart attack, a stroke, and undergone major surgery for ileitis, was excellent. He was playing golf regularly, walking about his farm, puttering in his garden, keeping active.
Shortly after Ike moved permanently to Gettysburg, John wrote that he was “shocked and worried at the Old Man’s demeanor.” To John, his father’s movements were slower, his tone less sharp, “and he had time even during the work day to stop and indulge in what would formerly be considered casual conversation. I feared for his health.” But, John soon realized, he was wrong—it was simply that his father was relaxed, more so than he had ever been. Ellis Slater thought that Ike “has seldom looked better—[he] seems quite relaxed.” He got tired sooner and more often than in the past, but he still had that remarkable ability to bounce back after a good night’s sleep. His mind was as sharp as ever, as was his interest in and concern about public affairs.6
His friends were passing from the scene. In March 1962, Pete Jones died. After the funeral, the Eisenhowers flew to Baja California, with what remained of the gang, for some fishing, shooting, and bridge. Ike got up at 5 A.M. each morning in order to be in the ravines when the white-wing doves started flying shortly after sunrise. One day he shot a dozen, the next sixteen, and on the following morning he killed thirty birds, tops in the group. After the shoot, he went marlin fishing, where he was again successful, then spent the afternoons swimming in the pool and the evenings playing bridge.
Ike and his gang were well looked after; in addition to Moaney, there was a Mexican manager, a cook, three maids, four workers to handle luggage and other chores, three planes and pilots, two boats with crews, and a platoon from the Mexican Army to arrange for the jeeps to drive to the ravines for the shooting. The pilots flew over the Gulf of California, at Ike’s request, so that he could observe the whales nursing their calves. Ike stayed in Baja for two weeks; when he was not otherwise occupied, he wrote articles for Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post on the futility of summit meetings and the importance of fiscal responsibility. Taken all together, it was exactly the way he had envisioned his retirement. And, it might be said, exactly the kind of a retirement most Americans thought he deserved and ought to have.
Certainly Eisenhower’s rich friends thought so. Beginning in the winter of 1961–1962, the Eisenhowers took a train each year to Palm Desert, where a home was provided for them by one friend, while Jackie Cochran and Floyd Odlum provided the general with an office and made their ranch available to him for entertaining his friends (at their expense). Another friend provided him with a car.
The office was appallingly busy. In his retirement, Ike received an average of seventy-five hundred letters a month; he claimed to answer two-thirds of the mail. It proved to be too much for Ann Whitman. He insisted on dictating to her alone—during the White House years, she was the only human being he ever dictated to. Whitman was accustomed to handling the load, but when her boss was the President, she had twelve typists she could call on. At Palm Desert, and in Gettysburg, she had only two, and unlike the secretaries in the White House, they refused to work more than eight hours a day, five days a week, which meant Whitman had to carry an enormous typing load. Cochran commented that “Ann didn’t even take time to eat. I never saw anybody put in the hours that she did in my life.” Ike hardly noticed. He was so accustomed to people knocking themselves out for him that he took it for granted.
There was another problem. During the White House years, Mamie seldom saw Whitman, but at Palm Desert and Gettysburg, they were often together. The two women shared a single obsession, Dwight Eisenhower. He took both of them for granted, but they were competitors for his attention, or so it seemed to Mamie, who resented the way in which her husband relied on Whitman. “There was,” Cochran remembered, “a lot of dissension between Ann and Mamie.”7 At the end of that first winter in Palm Desert, Whitman joined Rockefeller in New York, which made the general distinctly unhappy. Thereafter, he had little contact with the woman who had given so much of her life to serving him, a woman who had been indispensable when he was President.
• •
By the fall of 1963, conditions in South Vietnam, which had seemed so stable when Eisenhower left office, had deteriorated badly. A major insurgency was under way. Kennedy had committed nearly sixteen thousand American troops to the country, but political intrigue in Saigon continued and intensified. There was a military coup; one result was the assassination of Diem, the man who had generated such enthusiasm in Eisenhower back in 1954 and in the following years. There was speculation that the CIA was involved in the assassination. Eisenhower commented on the subject in a letter to Nixon. “I rather suspect the Diem affair will be shrouded in mystery for a long time to come,” he began. “No matter how much the Administration may have differed with him, I cannot believe any American would have approved the cold-blooded killing of a man who had, after all, shown great courage when he undertook the task some years ago of defeating Communists’ attempts to take over his country.”8
Within the month, there was another assassination, equally mysterious and far more shocking. On November 22, 1963, Eisenhower was in New York for a luncheon at the U.N. when he received the news of Kennedy’s death.
The following day, November 23, Eisenhower went to Washington to view Kennedy’s casket and to pay his respects to the widow. Then, at the request of the new President, he crossed the street and went to the Executive Office Building for a conference with Lyndon Johnson.
As Richard Nixon once noted, Dwight Eisenhower “was not the kind of man who appreciated undue familiarity.” He would give chilling looks to anyone who tugged at his arm or tried to slap him on the back. Lyndon Johnson was the kind of man who could not resist pulling, tugging, slapping, or punching the people he was talking to. Jerry Persons remembered the time, in 1959, when Eisenhower had an appointment with Johnson. “I want you to stand between Lyndon and me,” Eisenhower told Persons. “My bursitis is kicking up, and I don’t want him to grab me by the arm.”9
But grab Johnson did, figuratively if not literally. At their meeting the day after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson indicated to Eisenhower that he intended to call on him regularly for advice and support. As a beginning, he asked for a memorandum containing specific suggestions. Eisenhower responded that night with a dictated message. He suggested that Johnson call a joint session of Congress to make a speech of not more than ten minutes. “Point out first that you have come to this office unexpectedly and you accept the decision of the Almighty,” Eisenhower advised, then promise that “no revolution in purpose or policy is intended or will occur.” Further, promise a balanced budget.10
During his first years as President, Johnson concentrated on domestic affairs. In that area, his policies and programs were far too liberal for Eisenhower. Knowing this, Johnson did not ask Eisenhower’s advice or opinions, although he did send birthday and anniversary presents, Christmas greetings, and the like, always writing in a humble and subservient manner. His attempts to ingratiate himself included innumerable invitations to come to the White House for lunch or for dinner parties, sending Mamie flowers on any excuse, and promoting Goodpaster to three-star rank (not that Goodpaster did not deserve it, but Johnson was careful to let Eisenhower know that he had done it as a favor). In February 1964, Johnson went hundreds of miles out of his way to pay his respects at Palm Desert.
Johnson started a practice of writing or calling Eisenhower on the telephone before every significant act, both to report on what he intended to do and to seek Eisenhower’s support and to ask his advice. Although Johnson’s letters to Eisenhower were so full of overblown praise and gratitude as to be obsequious and phony, Johnson was quite sincere in his requests for Eisenhower’s counsel, to which he gave great weight. Johnson had, after all, come to the White House almost completely innocent of any experience in foreign affairs. All through the fifties he had deferred to Eisenhower’s judgment on virtually every foreign-policy crisis. Like almost everyone else in politics, he regarded General Eisenhower as the nation’s greatest and wisest soldier. He was obviously aware of how valuable Eisenhower’s public support of his Vietnam policy could be to him, and he was not above using Eisenhower for his own purposes in this regard, but the record makes it absolutely clear that as Johnson made his crucial decisions on the conduct of the war in Vietnam, he both sought and was influenced by Ike’s advice—except on the basic question of the wisdom of fighting in Vietnam.
It is equally true that Ike’s advice was consistently hawkish, and that the main thrust of Eisenhower’s criticism of Johnson on Vietnam—insofar as he was critical rather than supportive—was that Johnson was not doing enough. That had also been true of Ike’s criticism of Kennedy’s foreign policy; in both instances, Ike was far more belligerent, more ready to take extreme action, as an outsider than he had been when he was the man on the spot.
In 1964, Johnson began Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of North Vietnam. He also began sending in American combat units, as opposed to advisers. On March 12, 1965, Ike wrote him to pledge his full support and to assure him that he was doing the right thing. Johnson replied that “you are in my thoughts always and it is so valuable to me to have your thoughts, interest, and friendship.” 11
Beginning in April of 1965, Johnson sent Goodpaster to Palm Desert or Gettysburg on a biweekly basis to give Ike a detailed briefing on what was happening, and to seek his advice. These meetings usually lasted two to three hours. At the first such meeting, Ike told Goodpaster that “he strongly recommended getting rid of restrictions and delaying procedures. These result in many cases from attempts to control matters in too much detail from Washington. Such practices normally result from inexperience on the part of governmental officials.” Ike urged Goodpaster to tell Johnson to “untie Westmoreland’s hands.” The President should give General William Westmoreland, who had recently become the commander in Vietnam, whatever he requested, then leave him to fight the war. He thought this was “absolutely essential.”12
At a June 16 briefing in Gettysburg, Goodpaster said that the President wanted Ike’s views on the proper use and size of reinforcements being sent to Vietnam. The JCS wanted to send only one brigade of the air mobile division, and use it to defend coastal base areas. Westmoreland wanted the entire division, and he wanted to use it to operate offensively within South Vietnam. Ike “considered the matter at some length.” He then commented that “we have now appealed to force in South Vietnam, and therefore we have got to win. For this purpose, simply holding on or sitting passively in static areas will not suffice. He added that there is no use building bases if they are not put to full use. The only reason for creating them is to make it possible to take the offensive and clear the area.” He therefore concluded that “General Westmoreland’s recommendation should be supported,” and added that “he was strongly impressed by General Westmoreland.”13
On July 2, 1965, Eisenhower called Johnson on the telephone. Senators Robert Kennedy and Mike Mansfield were becoming increasingly critical of the escalation. Eisenhower urged Johnson to ignore them. “When you once appeal to force in an international situation involving military help for a nation,” he said, “you have to go all out! This is war, and as long as the enemy are putting men down there, my advice is do what you have to do!” He advised Johnson to tell the Russians that if they did “not bring about some understanding we will have to go all out.”
At this point Johnson asked Eisenhower, in a plaintive voice, “Do you really think we can beat the Viet Cong?” It was his first confession of uncertainty, at least to Eisenhower. Ike was cautious in his reply. He said it was hard to tell, that it depended on how far the North Vietnamese and Chinese were willing to go, and what Johnson was willing to do. As far as Ike was concerned, “We are not going to be run out of a free country that we helped to establish.” Johnson, still gloomy, said that if he escalated further, “we will lose the British and Canadians and will be alone in the world.” Ike snapped back, “We would still have the Australians and the Koreans—and our own convictions.”
Then, as secretary Rusty Brown recorded the conversation, “President Johnson said he wanted General Eisenhower to think about this as he wanted the best advice possible and General Eisenhower is the best Chief of Staff he has.” Eisenhower’s advice was to go for victory.14
Through August of 1965, Eisenhower remained extremely hawkish. On the third, he told Goodpaster, “We should not base our action on minimum needs, but should swamp the enemy with overwhelming force.” He wanted to “mine the harbors without delay, telling the world to keep shipping out of Haiphong and making clear that there is to be no sanctuary.” He complained that “there seems to him to be too much of a brake on everything we do.” Goodpaster said the JCS were worried about getting overextended in Vietnam, which might tempt the Russians to attack in Europe. “General Eisenhower said he was not concerned over this point. If we were to become involved in war in Europe, he would not be for sending large forces into the area, but would be for using every bomb we have.”15
On August 20, after Goodpaster reported on a “search and destroy” mission in Chulai, Eisenhower said that that was “the way to do it. It was highly professional, overwhelming and quick.” He told Goodpaster to tell Johnson “that there is no question about his support for what the President is doing. He supports it strongly.” 16
By October 1965, Johnson’s major ground reinforcements were beginning to move into Vietnam. Ike was enthusiastic. He told Goodpaster, “We must now be sure to put in enough to win. He would err on the side of putting in too much rather than too little. He thought that overwhelming strength on our side would discourage the enemy, as well as keep down casualties.” Ike did warn that sending conscripted troops to Vietnam would cause a major public-relations problem, and he thought Johnson should try to avoid it by sending only regulars or volunteers. Goodpaster responded that there just were not enough of either category.17
In January 1966, Johnson wanted Ike’s advice on a suggestion that some of the “old heads,” retired general officers from World War II, be consulted about operations in Vietnam. Eisenhower was opposed. “He stated that there is no better man than Westmoreland. The thing to do is give him the means and let him alone to the maximum possible extent.” Two weeks later, Johnson asked, through Goodpaster, what Ike thought about the idea of adopting an “enclave” strategy, i.e., digging in around the bases and cities while abandoning offensive operations in the hinterland. “General Eisenhower indicated he would have nothing to do with such proposals. They would put us in a situation where hope of a successful outcome would be lost. They in fact could only result in complete failure on our side.”18
Ike’s impatience over Johnson’s gradual application of pressure on the Communists, and his concern over the way in which the Johnson Administration centralized the decision-making power, not allowing Westmoreland the free hand Eisenhower thought he had to have, were growing daily.
Further, Eisenhower was beginning to worry that as the war dragged on, popular support for it would wane. On September 19, Goodpaster recorded that “General Eisenhower said he had been seeing various statements implying that ‘small wars,’ or hostilities such as those in Vietnam, could go on almost indefinitely. Some comments in fact suggest that such a condition must be regarded as normal, and that our society must be geared to support this as well as other ongoing problems.” Ike would not accept such a view. “He felt this is not something that can go on and on, but is something that should rather be brought to an end as soon as possible. He commented that our people inevitably get tired of supporting involvements of this kind which go on for a long time, with no end in sight.” 19
But although he predicted and anticipated antiwar protests, as they increased in volume so did Eisenhower’s anger. “Frankly,” he wrote Nixon in October 1966, “it seems that the Vietnam War is creating more whimperings and whinings from some frustrated partisans than it’s inspiring a unification of all America in the solution of a national problem.” And he complained about “the selfish and cowardly whimperings of some of these ‘students’ who—uninformed and brash though they are—arrogate to themselves the right to criticize, irresponsibly, our highest officials, and to condemn America’s deepest commitments to her international friends.”20
No matter how strident the antiwar protests, however, Eisenhower could not believe that America would cut and run. In February 1967, he wrote George Humphrey (who had told him that his fear was that Johnson would negotiate an agreement and “bring the boys home,” thereby winning re-election), “America has invested a lot of lives in Vietnam. I cannot believe the nation will be satisfied with any agreement that our people would recognize as ‘phony,’ or which the Communists would soon, and with impunity, violate.”21
Ike wanted victory, not negotiations. And he wanted it soon. In April 1967, he told Goodpaster to tell Johnson that “a course of ‘gradualism’ . . . is bound to be ineffective.” To make his point, he used one of his favorite examples: If a general sent a battalion to take a hill, he might get the hill, but would suffer heavy casualties in the process, whereas if he sent a division, the casualties would be minimal.22
In July, Eisenhower’s frustrations were such that he told reporters how opposed he was to a “war of gradualism,” and urged Congress to declare war against North Vietnam. That war, he said, “should be given first priority. Other goals, however attractive, should take second place.” In October, he said the country should “take any action to win.” Asked if he would draw the line at the use of nuclear weapons, he replied, “I would not automatically preclude anything. When you appeal to force to carry out the policies of America abroad there is no court above you.”23
On November 28, 1967, Eisenhower and Bradley made a television broadcast from Gettysburg over NBC. Together with Truman, the two old generals had joined a short-lived group called the Citizens Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam. Bradley defined the object of the committee as to help the American people understand the war, because “when they understand it, they will be for it, we think.” Eisenhower argued that a military victory was possible if certain changes in strategy and tactics were made. “This respecting of boundary lines on the map,” he said; “I think you can overdo it.” He suggested a foray into North Vietnam “either from the sea or from the hills . . . I would be for what we call hot pursuit’ ” into Cambodia or Laos.” He ended with a curt dismissal of the “ ‘kooks’ and ‘hippies’ and all the rest that are talking about surrendering.”24
But it was not just kooks and hippies who wanted out, as Eisenhower well knew. He told Goodpaster privately that “many of the people who see him—neither ‘hawks’ nor ‘doves’—are talking in terms of discouragement about the course of the war in Vietnam. They say that nothing seems to be going well and that, perhaps, it would be better to get out of it than to continue.” Goodpaster responded with a pep talk—things were going well, he insisted, and there was an end in sight. Ike was encouraged. “He said he is optimistic that we can win this war.”25
Another presidential election was coming up. The agony of Vietnam was obviously going to be a major issue. In October 1967, Eisenhower spoke in general terms about the kind of candidates he wanted to see nominated. “I don’t regard myself as a missionary, and I don’t want to convert anybody,” he said. “But if any Republican or Democrat suggests that we pull out of Vietnam and turn our backs on the more than thirteen thousand Americans who died in the cause of freedom there, they will have me to contend with. That’s one of the few things that would start me off on a series of stump speeches across the nation.”26
In early 1968, Eisenhower wrote an article on the war for Reader’s Digest. “The current raucous confrontation,” he wrote of the antiwar movement, “goes far beyond honorable dissent . . . it is rebellion, and it verges on treason. . . . I will not personally support any peace-at-any-price candidate who advocates capitulation and the abandonment of South Vietnam.”27
Simultaneously, the Communists launched their Tet offensive. They suffered extraordinarily heavy casualties, but the reaction in the United States verged on panic. No one had anticipated the offensive, or so it appeared, nor had anyone suspected that the Viet Cong were so numerous and well coordinated. It all reminded Eisenhower of the reaction to the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled that in December 1944, when he asked for reinforcements to follow up the victory in the Ardennes, the Allied governments had provided the men he needed to finish the job. But in 1968, rather than send Westmoreland the reinforcements he wanted to follow up his victory, the Johnson Administration put a ceiling on manpower commitments to Vietnam. In New Hampshire, meanwhile, Senator Eugene McCarthy, running on an antiwar platform, did surprisingly well in the Democratic primary against Johnson, and Senator Robert Kennedy entered the race against the President.
Johnson had promised Eisenhower that he would persevere, but he went on national television to announce that he was halting the bombing of most of North Vietnam, and that he was personally withdrawing from the presidential race. Eisenhower was filled with anger, his remarks about Johnson’s cutting and running unprintable. Goodpaster went on to a new assignment, and Eisenhower’s connection with the Johnson Administration came to an end.
• •
Vietnam was the main, but not the only, cause of unhappiness for Eisenhower in the mid-sixties. Longhairs, hippies, rock music, extensive drug use by teen-agers, and riots in the ghettos were, to Eisenhower, deplorable. He wrote a British friend in 1965, “Lack of respect for law, laxness in dress, appearance, and thinking, in conduct and in manner, as well as student and other riots with civil disobedience all spring from a common source; a lack of concern for the ancient virtues of decency, respect for law and elders, and old-fashioned patriotism.”28
Like most older Americans, Eisenhower was appalled by many of the trends of the 1960s. Why could not the youth of the sixties be more like the youth of his day? Why were not draft dodgers an object of scorn, as they had been during World War II? Why could not the kids get their kicks out of the fox-trot and beer and cigarettes rather than rock and roll, marijuana, and LSD? Why was not Norman Rockwell, rather than Andy Warhol, the most popular artist of the day? Eisenhower expressed his concern over the decline in “our concept of beauty and decency and morality,” over the use by Hollywood and book and magazine publishers of “vulgarity, sensuality, indeed downright filth, to sell their wares,” over the sort of painting “that looks like a broken-down tin lizzie loaded with paint has been driven over it.”29
A major reason for the decline in morality and good taste, he felt, was the decline in the quality of the nation’s leadership. That at least could be set right in the 1968 presidential election. He could not escape a sense of personal responsibility for the Republican debacle in 1964, because of his failure to denounce Barry Goldwater or endorse a candidate of his own choosing, and he was determined not to make the same mistake again.
His candidate was Nixon, and in 1968, unlike 1960, he had no hesitancy about him. It was not so much that Nixon had gone up in his estimation—although he had—as it was a case of having no choice. The other contenders, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Barry Goldwater, were all for various reasons unacceptable, and in comparison to any Democratic candidate, Nixon was in Eisenhower’s view light-years ahead.
As early as 1966, Eisenhower made his opinion public. In November of that year, just prior to the congressional elections, Johnson had issued a blast against Nixon, who was speaking around the country for Republican candidates. Johnson called Nixon a “chronic campaigner” who “never did really recognize and realize what was going on.” As proof, Johnson cited a remark made in response to a journalist’s request in a 1960 press conference for an example of a major idea of Nixon’s adopted by Eisenhower. Ike had answered: “If you give me a week I might think of one.” Eisenhower called Nixon from Gettysburg and said, “Dick, I could kick myself every time some jackass brings up that goddamn ‘give me a week’ business. Johnson has gone too far . . . I just wanted you to know that I’m issuing a statement down here.”30
In the statement, which was widely reported, Eisenhower said he had “always had the highest personal and official regard” for Nixon, who was “one of the best-informed, most capable, and most industrious Vice-Presidents in the history of the United States and in that position contributed greatly to the sound functioning of our government. He was constantly informed of the major problems of the United States during my Administration. Any suggestion to the contrary or any inference that I at anytime held Dick Nixon in anything less than the highest regard and esteem is erroneous.”31 (It must be pointed out that somehow, whenever he talked about Nixon, Eisenhower could not get it to come out right. Thus in this case, in the key sentence, he did not say Nixon was “consulted” about the “major problems”; instead, the verb he used was “informed.”)
On March 14, 1967, Eisenhower held an impromptu press conference at the Eldorado Country Club. The governor of California, Ronald Reagan, was with him. Reporters were clamoring for Eisenhower’s attention. From one side, a reporter asked his opinion of Reagan; another newsman, on his other side, simultaneously asked his opinion of Nixon. Eisenhower turned to the man who had asked about Nixon and remarked that “he is one of the ablest men I know and a man I admire deeply and for whom I have great affection.” Most of the other reporters, however, had heard only the question about Reagan, and assumed that Eisenhower was talking about the governor. Headlines the next day proclaimed that Eisenhower had said, “Governor Reagan is one of the men I admire most in the world.” Walter Cronkite reported it that way on the evening television news. Eisenhower called to straighten him out; Cronkite, according to Eisenhower, “was chagrined to admit that his information came from a newspaper and he hoped sometime to change it.” Eisenhower, however, was stuck; he could hardly issue a clarification saying that “Reagan is not one of the men I admire most in the world.” In any case, he did admire Reagan; he told Arthur Larson he did not believe Reagan to be as much of a right-winger as he was portrayed to be. Still Nixon was his man.32
He made that clear to Republican politicians in private meetings and in his correspondence with them. His standard line (in this case to Fred Seaton of Nebraska) was, “I cannot think of anyone better prepared than Dick Nixon is to undertake the responsibilities of the Presidency.”33
That was a bit short of an unqualified endorsement. Eisenhower did not say that Nixon was well prepared,” or “completely capable,” or anything like that, only that he was “better prepared” than anyone else. In March, when the gang came to Palm Desert for the annual visit with the Eisenhowers, the members got to talking politics. Slater recorded that “many of us are still resentful that Nixon did not run a better campaign in 1960 and all had one or more instances to report where things would have been better had he taken advice. The President (meaning Eisenhower) still doesn’t understand why Nixon and Lodge didn’t call on him for help and why they didn’t take the position of wanting to continue the Eisenhower philosophy of how the country should be run.” Still, considering the competition, Eisenhower and his friends concluded that “Nixon would probably make the best president.”34
• •
After President Eisenhower recovered from his September 1955 heart attack, the doctors had told him that there was no medical reason for him not to run for a second term, and they predicted that he could lead an active life for a period of as long as ten years. In November 1965, when he and Mamie were at Augusta for a week, he remarked one night that the ten years were up. The next day, in Mamie’s cabin, he suffered a second heart attack. He was rushed to a nearby Army hospital, and two weeks later was transferred to Walter Reed. Recovery was slow, but for a seventy-five-year-old man who had been struck by two major heart attacks, surprisingly good. Soon the doctors were allowing him to play golf again, although they restricted him to a cart and to a par-three course.
• •
Still, his heart was failing, and he knew it. He was a man who had spent his lifetime facing facts. The end was approaching, and he began to prepare for it. He dispersed his herd of Angus cattle and otherwise put his affairs in order. He had already decided he wanted to be buried in Abilene, where he had had a small Meditation Chapel built, just across the street from his childhood home and just west of the Eisenhower Library and Museum. It was a small, simple, dignified chapel constructed with native sandstone, quite in keeping with the quiet little town on the Plains. In 1967 he had Icky’s body moved there from Fairmont Cemetery in Denver and placed at the foot of the area reserved for his body and Mamie’s.
That winter, on his way to Palm Desert, Eisenhower stopped off in Abilene to visit the chapel. When he arrived in California, he was still upset and depressed, not at the thought of his own death, but by the tiny plaque on the floor over Icky’s body, the physical reminder of what he and Mamie had lost in 1921 when four-year-old Icky died. He soon recovered his natural good spirits, helped by his friends, some good cards at bridge, and the opportunity to play golf in the lovely desert climate. Rather than grouse at being restricted to a par-three course, he made jokes about it, telling an old Abilene friend that “I suppose in another year I will be having to play the ladies’ tees even on that course.”35 That winter he scored a hole in one, about which he bragged incessantly.
His thoughts were turning back toward his youth. Visitors noted that he was much more inclined to reminisce about his days as a cadet, or his childhood in Abilene, or his experiences as a junior officer, than he was about SHAEF or the White House. In April 1968, he heard that a proposed governmental reorganization plan included transferring all of the affairs of the American Battle Monuments Commission to the Veterans Administration. He immediately wrote President Johnson: “From my viewpoint, both as a junior officer who once served with the Battle Monuments Commission and as one who has followed its affairs over these many years, I hope that you will decline to approve this particular move.”
His reason went beyond nostalgia. The commission was in charge of what surely must be some of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world. No American can visit them, especially the one at Omaha Beach, without feeling a surge of pride, so magnificently are they maintained. Eisenhower explained to Johnson that the cemeteries were closed to future burials, and that they were monuments rather than mere cemeteries. “Nearly all of them are in foreign countries and every one of them is precious to the families and relatives of those who died during those two world conflicts. The American Battle Monuments Commission has always maintained the highest possible standards in the care of these cemeteries.” Johnson granted the request.36
Eisenhower wrote that letter from the hospital at March Air Force Base, because in April of 1968 he had suffered his third major heart attack. A month later, he had recovered enough strength to be moved to Ward Eight at Walter Reed. Despite his invalid status, he had not lost his flair for giving commands. He ordered the commanding officer at March to give the nurses accompanying him on the flight east a few days’ leave in Washington before returning to their duties.
At Walter Reed, Eisenhower had the finest care the Army and modern medicine could provide. Mamie moved into a tiny room next to his suite. Dominated by a high hospital bed, it was cramped and uncomfortable, but it was where she wanted to be. (She would not consider living at Gettysburg alone; she once commented, “Whenever Ike went away, the house sagged. When he came home, the house was alive again.”) For a woman who loved to surround herself with knickknacks and family photographs, it was surprisingly bare. She passed the time by sewing facecloths together and stuffing them with foam to make pillows for her friends.
By July, Eisenhower had recovered enough strength to take an active interest in the presidential campaign. He remained committed to Nixon, a commitment that was solidified by the courtship then going on between his grandson, David, and Nixon’s daughter Julie. He decided to make a preconvention endorsement of Nixon. On July 15, when Nixon stopped in for a short visit, Eisenhower informed him of his decision.
Two days later, Eisenhower released his statement. He said he supported Nixon for the nomination “because of my admiration of his personal qualities: his intellect, acuity, decisiveness, warmth, and above all, his integrity.” He sent Nixon a copy of the press release, with a handwritten note across the top: “Dear Dick—This was something I truly enjoyed doing—DE.”37
The convention opened in Miami on August 5. That evening, Eisenhower put on a business suit, and television cameras were brought into Walter Reed. He gave a speech to the delegates, who stopped their usual frenetic activity for a few minutes and listened in respectful silence as he gave them some words of encouragement. The next morning, Eisenhower suffered yet another heart attack.
This attack took a new form. It did not cause additional muscle damage, but it did upset the rhythm of the heart, causing it to periodically go out of control and fibrillate. Instead of beating, it merely vibrated, pumping no blood. Whenever a fibrillation began, the doctors were able to restore rhythmic beating through electrical impulses. Everyone feared that this was the end. John and Barbara moved into the guesthouse at Walter Reed while their children stayed with friends around Washington. John began the detailed planning for the funeral. But, after a week, the fibrillations stopped, and soon Eisenhower was out of danger. He was even able to receive visitors again.
On Eisenhower’s seventy-eighth birthday, the Army Band gathered outside his room to play a serenade for him. Eisenhower was wheeled to his bedroom window, where he acknowledged the tribute with a smile and a wave of a small five-star flag. His extreme weakness was obvious, and brought tears to everyone’s eyes.
He was, however, calm and cheerful. He told John that his mind was eased because a law had been passed that provided widows of former Presidents lifetime Secret Service coverage. “This last August,” he said, “when it looked like I might cash in my chips, my only worry was about Mamie. This puts my mind at rest on that count at least.”
Nixon’s victory in November was not by the margin Eisenhower had hoped for, but he was delighted that at least Nixon had won. In December, as Nixon began naming his Cabinet, he asked Eisenhower if he would receive each appointee. Eisenhower agreed, indeed told Nixon, “I am quite anxious to meet the ones I do not know.” He also sent Nixon some advice on replacing Earl Warren, who had resigned, asking Nixon to destroy the memo after he read it (Nixon did not; it is now in the Eisenhower Library). Eisenhower suggested Herb Brownell, or elevating Potter Stewart up to Chief Justice and appointing William Rogers to the vacancy on the Court.38
• •
As the end approached, his thoughts were increasingly with his family. For Thanksgiving, 1968, Mamie arranged for each member of the family to share the turkey feast with him. “With the precision of an Army drill instructor,” Julie Nixon recalled, “Mamie arranged for members of each family [the Nixons as well as the Eisenhowers] to share a course of the meal with Ike in his bedroom.” Susan Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon had juice with him, David and Julie shared the fruit cup, and so on, until Barbara Eisenhower and Pat Nixon joined him for the pumpkin pie. Julie was depressed by his appearance: “He was so thin and wasted under the Army-issue sheet. The blueness of his eyes was startling in his dead-white face.”39
In December, Eisenhower watched on closed-circuit television the wedding of David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon. David’s haircut by the standards of his contemporaries in the late sixties was extremely short and made him something of an object of ridicule, but his grandfather thought it much too long. Eisenhower offered his grandson $100 if he would get it cut before the wedding. David had it trimmed, but not short enough to satisfy his grandfather, who did not pay up.
Christmas and New Year’s passed without any celebration by the Eisenhowers, because Mamie had come down with a severe respiratory ailment, which confined her to bed for more than a month. By February, Eisenhower was taking a terrific beating. The doctors informed him that he would have to undergo a major abdominal operation. Complications had arisen from his ileitis operation of twelve years earlier; scar tissue had wrapped itself around his intestine, causing a blockage. The doctors were worried that his heart could not survive the ordeal, but it did. John visited him shortly after the operation.
“It’s an eerie feeling,” Eisenhower told his son, “to have them hit you with one thing and then another.” “Well,” John replied, “now that you’ve had that intestinal blockage taken out, you ought to start feeling better. Maybe now you can gain some weight.”
“God, I hope so,” Eisenhower sighed.40
• •
On Monday, March 24, 1969, Eisenhower suffered a severe setback. His heart was failing. The doctors began giving him oxygen through tubes stuffed into his nose. He was aware that he was dying, and he wanted the end to come soon. He asked Billy Graham to come by; together they talked about spiritual matters.
He still had the old impulse to give something to those who served him. John had just published a book on the Battle of the Bulge entitled The Bitter Woods, which had made the best-seller list. Eisenhower ordered a dozen copies and had John autograph them, so that he could give them to the doctors and nurses who had taken care of him. He gave John last-minute instructions: “Be good to Mamie.”
The evening of March 27, the electrocardiogram machine above his bed, which monitored his heartbeat, showed a slight improvement. When John came in to say good night, he told his father that the pattern of the cardiogram was a bit better. Eisenhower winced—he wanted his final release. John, in his turn, winced at the sight of his father; he wrote later that it “made me resolve to avoid ever being placed in a hospital where my life would be artificially prolonged.”
• •
All his life, Eisenhower had been a man of the most extraordinary energy. He had carried a burden of high command and decision making that was heavier, and lasted longer, than any other leader of the free world. Not even Roosevelt, not even Churchill, not even de Gaulle, had met the demands that Eisenhower had. For twenty years, on a daily basis, he had had to render judgments, make decisions, give orders at the highest level. The process had often left him exhausted. He had always bounced back after that miracle that is a soldier’s night’s sleep.
But he was tired now, more tired than he had ever been. No amount of sleep would help him bounce back. The ultimate weariness had descended.
He was a man born to command. On his deathbed, he was still in charge. On Friday morning, March 28, John, David, Mamie, the doctors, and a nurse gathered in his bedroom. Eisenhower looked at them. He barked out a command: “Lower the shades!” The light was hurting his eyes. The Venetian blinds were pulled; the room became nearly dark.
“Pull me up,” Eisenhower told John and one of the doctors. They propped up the pillows behind him and, one on each arm, raised him until they thought he was high enough. Eisenhower looked from side to side. “Two big men,” he growled. “Higher.” They pulled him higher.
Mamie grasped his hand. David and John stood stiffly at each corner of his bed. The electrocardiogram was fluttering.
Eisenhower looked at John. He said softly, “I want to go; God take me.”41 He was ready to go home, back to Abilene, back to the heart of America, from whence he came. His great heart stopped beating.