CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Recovery

January–March 1956

AT THE BEGINNING of the new year, Eisenhower flew to Key West for a week in the sun. Slater, Bill Robinson, George Allen, and Al Gruenther joined him there. Eisenhower’s friends agreed that there had been a “great change . . . in his apparent health, his enthusiasm, and completely relaxed attitude . . .” They played bridge almost nonstop, with “a great deal of banter and kidding and laughing.” When Eisenhower reneged, he was the butt of the jokes for the remainder of the evening. Slater said he feared they were overdoing the bridge, that they were taxing Eisenhower’s strength. Allen replied that he had “never seen the President in such good spirits,” and told Slater that their bridge games were as nothing compared to the poker games he used to play with Truman in the White House; Truman’s games sometimes began early in the morning and would “go on and on until late at night,” often with “dire results” for Truman.1

Inevitably in an election year, much of the talk around the bridge table was political. The burning question was, of course, whether or not Eisenhower would run again. The members of the gang agreed among themselves that he would. Allen had it straight from Mamie—who was in Gettysburg—that she wanted him to stay in office. Slater too thought Eisenhower would stand for re-election, because he had done such a good job of organizing his office that “things seem to move with clocklike precision.” Slater reasoned that “the team [Eisenhower] has developed is now so well trained and experienced, his work is not at all detailed, in fact it has been reduced pretty much to conference and decision status, which isn’t difficult for a man who has been doing that sort of thing for so long.”2

On January 8, on the eve of flying back to Washington, Eisenhower held a news conference at Key West. He said he was feeling “better—stronger—and much more able to get about.” The week in Florida “has been a very splendid period of just sheer recreation for me, and I am going back . . . as ready to go to work as a person could be, after the physical experience I have been through.” But he refused to answer questions about his intentions.³

When he got back to Washington, Eisenhower had a consultation with his doctors. They told him he would have to stick to a fat-free diet, that he had to lie down for a half hour before lunch, that he should spend the hour after lunch talking with personal friends about noncontroversial subjects, and that he should take a ten-minute rest at the end of each hour during Cabinet and NSC meetings. Dr. Snyder told Eisenhower something he had known all his life—“that it is not the really big problems that upset him, it is the little silly annoyances.” Later, talking to Whitman, Eisenhower said that he had been more determined to quit in September, before his heart attack, than he was now.⁴

On January 10, Eisenhower arranged a dinner to discuss the question of a second term. He invited Dulles, Humphrey, Brownell, Summerfield, Hagerty, Adams, Lodge, and Milton Eisenhower. He wanted it to be a “top secret” affair and had Whitman phone the secretary of each of the men invited, issuing the invitations but swearing the secretaries to secrecy. Only Eisenhower and Whitman knew whose names were on the list, or so they thought, but there was a leak and the list was published. Eisenhower decided to postpone the dinner until January 13.⁵ Meanwhile, he tried to figure out the source of the leak. Talking to Hagerty about it, Eisenhower remembered that back in late December, when he had conferred with Nixon about Nixon’s future, he had mentioned the dinner to the Vice-President. Eisenhower said he had then told Nixon, “Ordinarily you would be the first one I would ask to such a dinner. Since you are going to be so much the object of conversation, it would be embarrassing to you. I have no secrets from you.” Then, Eisenhower recalled, he had given Nixon the list. Since he knew that neither he nor Whitman had released it, Nixon had to be the culprit.⁶ Evidently Nixon felt that as he had not a single friend among those Eisenhower had decided to consult, his best bet was to try to break up the meeting. But Eisenhower ignored Nixon’s leak, and went ahead with the meeting anyway, on a secret basis, three days later.

Before consulting with his advisers, Eisenhower consulted with his family and friends. Milton and John Eisenhower joined George Allen in opposing a second term, primarily on the grounds that Eisenhower would live longer without the aggravations of four more years as President. Mamie, however, insisted that they were wrong. She told her husband that “idleness would be fatal” for a man with his temperament.7

On Friday night, January 13, Eisenhower hosted the dinner for his advisers. After the meal, the President asked each man to outline the pros and cons of running again. Without exception, each adviser was for it. Dulles spoke first. He said “there was no one person in the world, and perhaps there never had been any person in the world, who commanded the respect of as many people as did the President.”⁸ The others insisted that Eisenhower was the “only man” who could rebuild the Republican Party—without him, it would be captured by the right wing (Knowland had already announced that if Eisenhower did not run again, he would enter the race). To Eisenhower, that was the great danger. Before the meeting, he had scribbled down the names of men he could support as his successor. These included Adams, Lodge, Robert Anderson, and Hauge, all of whom got an “A-plus” from Eisenhower, and Nixon and Brownell, each of whom got an “A.” The notable thing about his list was the absence of any member of the Old Guard, except Nixon. But his advisers were unanimous in insisting that Eisenhower was the only Republican who could be elected in 1956. On the negative side, the advisers admitted that Eisenhower had “earned the right” to “lay down the burden.” Further, “no man is indispensable.” Eisenhower’s health precluded a vigorous campaign, and all agreed that if Eisenhower had a setback after taking the nomination, “it would be calamitous.” If he died in office, after winning re-election, it would be “difficult.” There was another consideration; would the people who liked Ike the most vote against him, on the grounds that “the party and the nation are now asking too much of him?”⁹ Milton, who was still against his brother’s running again, warned him that he might actually lose the election on the issue of his health, which the Democrats would be certain to raise. Milton also pointed out that there were “vast possibilities for good” that Eisenhower could accomplish as a private citizen.

Eisenhower summed up. He said he was surprised at the strength of the sentiment for his being a candidate. He warned the group about the danger of his winning re-election, then suffering another heart attack that might kill him or leave him incapable of performing his duties. He repeated that under no circumstances would he campaign as actively as he had in 1952. He then promised to think it all over, thanked the men for their advice, and at 11:15 P.M. the meeting broke up.10

When the others had left, Milton went upstairs with his brother. “If I were in your place,” Milton said, “I would [insist] that I had the full right, beyond all possibility of reproach, to decide negatively.” Milton thought the President ought to take into account his personal desires, his health, the alternative opportunities for service, and “what duty might require.” A couple of days later, Milton summed up in a letter to his brother the arguments presented at the dinner, then added one last point of his own. “If you decline to run,” he wrote, “you will clearly go down in history as one of our greatest military and political leaders, with no major domestic or international difficulty to mar your record.” If Eisenhower stayed in office, he might enhance his standing and “contribute mightly” to peace, “or you might face serious economic setbacks at home and upheavals abroad.” Then his reputation would be ruined. Eisenhower scribbled in the margin of Milton’s letter that the question of protecting his reputation was “of no great moment; even though history might condemn a failure it cannot weigh the demand of conscience.”¹¹

But if Eisenhower was not worried about his reputation, he was deeply worried about his health. Besides his concern about what would happen if he had another attack after being nominated, but before the election, he was not at all sure he could do the job. He told one of the doctors at Fitzsimons, who had given him a “most encouraging prognosis,” that it was rather like a quarterback on a football team. “He may have all of the wisdom to be derived from years of experience in the game, but when the need arises, he has to throw himself unreservedly into the play. . . . If we merely needed a brain on the field, a quarterback could play if he had to be in a wheelchair; but that isn’t true in his case, nor is it in the Presidency.”¹² To his brother Edgar, Eisenhower wrote that “my attempt to do something for my country in the post I now occupy has cost me a lot in health, much in wear and tear on mind and disposition, to say nothing of some hundreds of thousands of dollars.”¹³

The wear and tear of being the President told on his sleeping habits. Eisenhower told Swede that although he had no trouble at all going to sleep, after five hours or so in bed, “I find that when I have weighty matters on my mind I wake up extremely early, apparently because a rested mind is anxious to begin grappling with knotty questions.” Eisenhower assured Hazlett that while he never fretted over a decision already made, and did not “indulge in useless regrets,” he always found that when he came awake “I am pondering some question that is still unanswered.” Thus it was “a desire to attack the future” that cost him sleep. Now that he was back in the White House, Eisenhower said his routine included a short swim in the pool each day, a half-hour walk, and climbing one full set of stairs. In addition, he had started swinging his golf clubs again, although he had not yet attempted to actually play a game. The doctors had told him to avoid “all situations that teed to bring about such reactions as irritations, frustration, anxiety, fear, and, above all, anger.” In reply, he asked the doctors, “Just what do you think the Presidency is?” He confessed he was also unable to heed their advice to “eat slowly.” All this made his decision about how he was going to spend the next five years more difficult.14

A number of factors made the decision in 1956 more difficult for Eisenhower than 1952 had been. He was sixty-five years old, had suffered a heart attack, had persistent stomach problems, was not sleeping well, and claimed that he resented the idea that one man was indispensable. He also claimed he had grown immune to the argument that he had a “duty” to serve. Surely neither the nation nor the Republican Party had any right to ask more of him. His supporters could not agree. Virgil Prettyman, a former Columbia University faculty member, quoted to him a statement written by George Washington, which Prettyman wanted Eisenhower to put under his pillow at night. Washington had written, in 1787, that nothing could draw him out of retirement “unless it be a conviction that the partiality of my countrymen had made my services absolutely necessary, joined to a fear that my refusal might induce a belief that I preferred the conservation of my own reputation and private ease to the good of my country.”¹⁵ Eisenhower replied that Washington’s statement was all very nice, but wondered on what basis Washington had reached the conclusion that “the partiality of my countrymen had made my services absolutely necessary.”¹⁶ To another friend, Eisenhower quoted Lincoln’s famous remark to the effect that deputations and platoons came to him daily to define for him God’s will, which led him to wonder why God never revealed His will directly to the President. “I, too,” Eisenhower concluded, “desire to know wherein my duty lies.”¹⁷

As with every recovering heart-attack patient, death was very much on his mind. “As I embark on the last of life’s adventures,” he wrote by hand on a sheet of White House stationery in early February, “my final thoughts will be for those I’ve loved, family, friends and country.”18 Under the circumstances, would it be fair and right for him to run again? What if he died or were incapacitated between the convention and the election, or after the election? Such questions added not only to his personal anxiety, but also to his concern about what would happen to his party and his country. His choice of a running mate in 1956 would be far more critical than it had been in 1952, not so much in terms of voter appeal, but in the possibility that the running mate might have to become the candidate, or succeed Eisenhower upon his death. That was why Eisenhower had tried to persuade (and continued to try to persuade) Nixon to take a Cabinet post.

Eisenhower’s feelings about Nixon were ambiguous. In their three years together, they had not developed an intimate relationship. Eisenhower appreciated Nixon for his obvious qualities—he was extremely hardworking, highly intelligent, loyal, devoted to Eisenhower and the Republican Party, an effective campaigner who could take the low road, allowing Eisenhower to stay on the high road. On January 25, in a press-conference briefing, Eisenhower told Hagerty that “it would be difficult to find a better Vice-President.” As compared to Knowland and most other prominent Republicans, Eisenhower much preferred Nixon, who had, in the President’s view, learned a great deal since 1952. But, Eisenhower added, “People think of him [Nixon] as an immature boy.” Eisenhower did not say that he agreed with that judgment, but did indicate that he thought Nixon should leave the Vice-Presidency, where he might become “atrophied,” to assume a post in the Cabinet.¹⁹

In a conversation with Dulles, Eisenhower was more direct. He said “he was not sure” it was a good idea for Nixon to stay on the ticket. Using the approach that he had fixed in his mind as the best way to ease Nixon out, he claimed that another term as Vice-President would ruin Nixon politically (a judgment neither Nixon nor anyone else accepted, not only because a “dump Nixon” move would be sure to damage his career, but for the more obvious, if crass, reason that as Vice-President, Nixon had only a recent heart-attack victim between himself and the White House). Eisenhower nevertheless seriously told Dulles that Nixon ought to become Secretary of Commerce. Dulles doubted that Nixon would take it, and suggested that Nixon succeed him as Secretary of State. Eisenhower laughed and said Dulles was not going to get out of his job that easily, then added that “he doubted in any event that Nixon had the qualifications to be Secretary of State.”20

In a January 25 press conference, Eisenhower was asked if, in the event he decided to seek re-election, he wanted Nixon for a running mate. Eisenhower replied that “my admiration, respect, and deep affection for Mr. Nixon . . . are well known.” Then he said, in a statement that was the direct opposite of the truth, that “I have never talked to him under any circumstances as to what his future is to be or what he wants it to be, and until I confer with him I wouldn’t have anything to say.”²¹ That fell far short of an endorsement and left Nixon in agony, but it allowed Eisenhower to keep his options open.

If not Nixon, who? Earl Warren was the most obvious choice. The polls indicated that an Eisenhower-Warren ticket would run as much as five points ahead of an Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. Eisenhower had great admiration for Warren, probably considered him the best man in the Republican Party (aside from himself), but was sure Warren would never resign from the Supreme Court in order to become Vice-President. On the other hand, if after his physical checkup in mid-February Eisenhower decided (or was told by his doctors) not to run again, Warren would make an excellent presidential candidate, one behind whom the whole Eisenhower wing of the party could unite to defeat Knowland, Nixon, or some other representative of the Old Guard. But when Eisenhower was asked at a press conference about the possibility of Warren becoming a candidate, Eisenhower said that “the Supreme Court and politics should not be mixed.” Later, on January 30, Hagerty told Eisenhower that Warren had gone out of his way at a private party to express his annoyance at Eisenhower’s remark. Did that mean Warren was considering running if Eisenhower withdrew? Eisenhower did not know, but commented in his diary that if it did, “it would be a great relief to me,” because he would feel easier about retiring if he knew that Warren would succeed him. But for a Warren candidacy to be “feasible and ethical,” Warren would have to wait for a draft. Only then could he submit his resignation and accept the nomination. Eisenhower wrote that “unless I could have personal assurances in advance that [Warren] would respond to a draft, my own problem remains more difficult to solve.”²² At a February 8 press conference, Eisenhower was asked if he would be opposed to a Warren candidacy. “Opposed? For goodness sake, I appointed him as Chief Justice of the United States; and there is no office in all the world that I respect more. Of course I admire and respect and have a very deep affection for Mr. Warren.”23

But despite the flattering words, Eisenhower had doubts about Warren. He had told Hagerty, “Earl likes to take a long time to make up his mind.” That was the perfect temperament for the Chief Justice, but it was a luxury the President could not afford. And if Eisenhower had doubts about Warren, they were dwarfed by the doubts he had about every other potential candidate in the Republican Party. At one point in February, Eisenhower’s thoughts turned again to a new party, one encompasing southern Democrats and Republican moderates. He even toyed with the idea of running as a Democrat. He tried out the idea with Len Hall, chairman of the RNC; Hall, nonplussed, managed to reply that he would rather not discuss such a possibility. Well, Eisenhower explained, “All this business of batting your head against the wall” with the Old Guard, “you finally get worn down.” Eisenhower said “he thought he could get better discipline on the other crowd.” If he ran as a Republican, his coattails might bring back Republican control of Congress, a prospect he dreaded. “Why should I help such people as [Knowland] to get chairmanships—it becomes a terrible thing to do to our country almost.”²⁴

That was another problem with dumping Nixon; it would rid Eisenhower of the only member of the Old Guard he respected, and leave the rest. Eisenhower tried another idea. He asked Hall about inviting Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio, a Democrat, to jump sides and accept a Republican nomination for the Vice-Presidency. Hall liked the idea. They recalled Lincoln’s selection of Andrew Johnson in 1864, when Lincoln had run not as a Republican but as a National Union Party candidate. Lausche was a Catholic, a moderate, friendly to the South, a man Eisenhower admired. The President said he “would love to run with a Catholic.” Hall pointed out that if the Republicans did not nominate a Catholic in 1956, the Democrats would do so in 1960, probably “young John Kennedy, an attractive guy.” Then Eisenhower indulged in another fantasy; there were any number of southern Democratic senators he could think of who would make good candidates for the Vice-Presidency and possible successors. But he caught himself up; the segregation problem precluded a southerner. Eisenhower returned to the Lausche idea; if the Republicans would accept him as the vice-presidential candidate, Eisenhower said, “It would just knock the props out of the [Democrats].” But in the end, Eisenhower realized it was all pipe dream, and he told Hall to talk to Nixon, “but be very, very gentle.”²⁵

Eisenhower’s sense of himself as the nation’s steward, meanwhile, which had come on him so strongly after the heart attack, had grown in the months of recuperation. As will be seen, it was at this time that Eisenhower put his greatest efforts into such programs as the Soil Bank and the Interstate Highway System. As another example, he made more diary entries in January 1956 than in any other month of his Presidency, or indeed during the war. Most of the entries were concerned with long-range problems. One was about a report he had read on the damage that could be anticipated in the United States in the event of an all-out nuclear war. There were a number of scenarios, but even at best, the country would suffer 65 percent casualties. To Eisenhower, this was “appalling.” Even if the United States were “victorious,” “it would literally be a business of digging ourselves out of ashes, starting again.”26

Nuclear war had to be avoided at all costs. But so did surrender. Eisenhower looked around him and could see no one whom he could trust to take his place. He could not trust Nixon or Knowland to act deliberately in a crisis; he could not trust Warren to act soon enough. That was one reason why he never told Nixon—as FDR had told two of his Vice-Presidents, Garner and Wallace—that the time had come for them to part. There was no one else around he liked or trusted any more than he did Nixon, except Warren, but Warren could not be asked to leave the Court to be a Vice-President. So Eisenhower was stymied, both by the actual situation and by his own perception of himself and his contemporaries. In finding shortcomings in every possible successor, Eisenhower was coming to see himself as indispensable. He never said so directly, in fact denied it vehemently every time his supporters told him he was the “only man” who could keep the peace. He never said it to himself, never wrote it in his diary. But nevertheless, he had come to think of himself as indispensable.

His associates reinforced the belief. At every opportunity, they told him it was so. Nixon did so, of course, at some length. So did Hagerty and all the aides. So did the Secretary of State, who met with the President over cocktails two days before Eisenhower announced his decision. In his memo on the conversation, Dulles wrote, “I expressed my feeling that the state of the world was such as to require the President to serve.” Dulles believed that America’s standing in the world had never been higher, that Eisenhower was the most trusted leader around the world and the greatest force for peace. Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “I suspect that Foster’s estimate concerning my own position is substantially correct.”²⁷

There was no escaping. As Eisenhower later told Swede, he had been forced to “bow my neck to what seemed to be the inevitable.” What made it inevitable was his own belief that no one else could get the country through the next four years. As he explained to Swede, a major factor in his thinking was “a guilty feeling on my own part that I had failed to bring forward and establish a logical successor for myself.” On the positive side, by running again he could “hope that I may still be able to do something in promoting . . . peace. And that I can help our people understand that they must avoid extremes in reaching solutions to the social, economic, and political problems that are constantly with us. If I could be certain that my efforts would really promote these two things, I shall certainly never have any cause for sympathizing with myself—no matter what happens.”28

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Eisenhower’s mind was made up. He would run again if the doctors gave him a go-ahead. On February 12, he went to Walter Reed for a series of tests; two days later the doctors declared, “Medically the chances are that the President should be able to carry on an active life satisfactorily for another five to ten years.”²⁹ After the tests, Eisenhower went down to Humphrey’s plantation in Georgia for some quail shooting. On February 25 he returned to Washington. Four days later he announced his decision at a press conference. He would be a candidate for re-election.

Eisenhower’s announcement was tantamount to his nomination. Thus he immediately had to face the question every nominee faces: Who would be his running mate? Eisenhower refused to answer, “in spite of my tremendous admiration for Mr. Nixon.” The President said “it is traditional . . . to wait and see who the Republican Convention nominates” before announcing the vice-presidential candidate. That was too coy to satisfy the reporters. Charles von Fremd of CBS asked for clarification: “Would you like to have Nixon?” Eisenhower replied, “I will say nothing more about it. I have said that my admiration and my respect for Vice-President Nixon is unbounded. He has been for me a loyal and dedicated associate, and a successful one. I am very fond of him, but I am going to say no more about it.”³⁰

Eisenhower began his campaign the night he made his announcement. On nationwide TV and radio, he went through his medical record, informed the public of what the doctors had told him, said that he would not be able to travel as extensively or attend as many ceremonial functions as he had in his first term, and admitted that he would need to take regular rest periods, and vacations. “But let me make one thing clear,” he added. “As of this moment, there is not the slightest doubt that I can perform as well as I ever have, all of the important duties of the Presidency.” He had in fact been doing so for many weeks. But he also wanted delegates to the Republican Convention to know that he would “wage no political campaign in the customary pattern.”31

The idea of being the candidate but not campaigning bothered him. Nixon, Hagerty, and others had assured him he could be just as effective by making four or five major television addresses, but Eisenhower confessed to Dulles that he “attached importance to the motorcades where he had an opportunity to look in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people on each occasion.” He drew strength from such contact.³² But he knew he had to avoid the fatigue of a whistle-stop campaign, and in any case he thought it unseemly for a President to go barnstorming. Still, as he told Swede, “I am a competitor, a fighter.” When the campaign neared its climax, he knew he would be told that the outcome was in doubt and that he simply had to throw himself into active campaigning. When that time came, Eisenhower feared “my own reluctance ever to accept defeat might tempt me into activity that should be completely eliminated from my life.”³³.

But that time would not come until October; meanwhile, in March, Eisenhower’s political problem was what to do about Nixon. He continued to urge Nixon to pick a Cabinet post for himself (but not State or Justice), to insist on something that seemed ridiculous to every other observer, that Nixon would thereby strengthen himself for 1960. In Eisenhower’s press conferences that spring of 1956, Nixon was the number-one topic. The more Eisenhower tried to praise him, it somehow seemed, the more tongue-tied he got; the more he tried to endorse Nixon’s leadership qualities, the more doubtful he sounded. Thus on March 7, in response to a question as to whether he would “dump Nixon” or not, he began indignantly: “If any one ever has the effrontery to come in and urge me to dump somebody that I respect as I do Vice-President Nixon, there will be more commotion around my office than you have noticed yet.” Then he said he “had not presumed to tell the Vice-President what he should do with his own future.” He added that he had told Nixon that “I believe he should be one of the comers in the Republican Party. He is young, vigorous, healthy, and certainly deeply informed on the processes of our government. And so far as I know, he is deeply dedicated to the same principles of government that I am.” Well, then, if Nixon wanted to stay on the ticket, would Eisenhower be content? Eisenhower snapped back, “I am not going to be pushed into corners here . . . I do say this: I have no criticism of Vice-President Nixon to make, either as a man, an associate, or as my running mate on the ticket.”34 What Eisenhower did not tell the press, but did say to Nixon, was that Nixon would be better off running one of the big departments, but “if you calculate that I won’t last five years, of course that is different.” It was cruel, really, of Eisenhower to put it that bluntly—what on earth could Nixon answer? The Vice-President contented himself with mumbling that “anything the President wanted him to do, he would do.”³⁵

A week later, at a press-conference briefing, Eisenhower told Hagerty, “The idea of trying to promote a fight between me and Dick Nixon is like trying to promote a fight between me and my brother. I am happy to have him as a personal friend, I am happy to have him as an associate, and I am happy to have him in government.” That sounded like an endorsement, but Eisenhower immediately added, “That still doesn’t make him Vice-President. He has serious problems. He has his own way to make.” Eisenhower said he did not know what Nixon was going to do, “but there is nothing to be gained politically by ditching him.” Ambiguous as always about Nixon, Eisenhower then said he did not want to give Nixon the inside track to the nomination in 1960. “I want a bevy of young fellows to be available four years from now.”³⁶

Despite the lack of intimacy between the two men, despite Eisenhower’s frequently expressed private doubts about Nixon’s ability either to run the government or to win votes, despite Hagerty’s warning to Eisenhower that “not one person was for Nixon for Vice-President for a second term,” Eisenhower would not act decisively to get rid of Nixon.³⁷ Despite Eisenhower’s undoubted admiration for many of Nixon’s talents, despite Eisenhower’s frequently expressed public satisfaction with Nixon’s actions as Vice-President, despite Nixon’s popularity with the Old Guard, which was insisting that he stay on the ticket, Eisenhower refused to endorse Nixon. Instead, he remained indecisive.

One aspect of Eisenhower’s refusal to act resulted from a personal trait of Eisenhower’s. For all his rough talk about getting rid of the incompetent, Eisenhower found it extremely difficult to fire anyone who had been loyal to him. Way back in 1943, at the time of the battle of Kasserine Pass, Eisenhower had told Patton, “You must not retain for one instant any man in a responsible position where you have become doubtful of his ability to do the job. . . . This matter frequently calls for more courage than any other thing you will have to do, but I expect you to be perfectly cold-blooded about it.”38 But even during the war, except in the most extreme cases, Eisenhower could seldom bring himself to fire a man. So too as President; he never said one good word about Charles Wilson, and often recounted Wilson’s shortcomings in detail to his staff, but he never fired Wilson. Nor could he bring himself to fire Nixon.

•  •

January was a busy month, not only for presidential but also for congressional politics. Congress was back in session. Eisenhower wanted to establish a record for the upcoming campaign, but so did the Democrats. Eisenhower asked Congress for action on the Soil Bank, the Interstate Highway System, school construction, statehood for Hawaii, and natural-gas regulation. On every item he was frustrated. The only place he was able to enforce his will was on the level of defense spending—and the Democrats quickly made defense spending one of the major issues of the campaign.

The agricultural bill for 1956 embodied some, although not all, of Eisenhower’s ideas on striking a balance between conservation and production. It did not incorporate the President’s hope that the federal government could buy back some of the submarginal land that had been homesteaded in the late nineteenth century. It did give farmers a choice; they could leave fallow the land that they would otherwise plant to wheat or corn, and the government would pay them in either cash or kind the value of their probable yield, the old New Deal program. What was new in Eisenhower’s vision was his proposal to encourage a longer-range program, the Conservation Reserve. In the latter case, a farmer could receive federal payments over a period of years for putting land back into ungrazed grass or forest, or water storage. The purpose was nicely summarized in the words “Soil Bank.” Benson’s department estimated that the Soil Bank would reduce total cultivated acreage in the United States by 12 percent. This would cut the surplus, which would then lead to an upsurge in commodity prices. It would cost about $350 million annually, but much of that money would come back simply through reduced costs to the government for storing charges on the surplus. Benson, personally, did not think much of the plan. Benson said, “I could not get enthusiastic . . . about the idea of paying farmers for not producing.” Indeed, he said, it “outraged my sensibilities.” But the President wanted it, and the Soil Bank went to Congress as the Administration’s bill to deal with the farm problem.³⁹

More congenial to Benson, whose ultimate goal was to free farmers from the government altogether, was the Administration’s insistence that the Soil Bank be tied to flexible price supports. This was the point at which the Democrats drew the line. Their best issue for 1956 was the depressed condition of the American farmer. Every other major segment of the economy was booming; inflation was at 1 percent; Eisenhower had made and kept the peace. On the personal side, the Democrats could question Eisenhower’s physical ability to carry on, or argue that a vote for Eisenhower was really a vote for Nixon. But on the national level, the Democrats could do nothing with the race issue, because of the South. There were precious few other issues available to them. Eisenhower had so effectively staked out the middle of the road as his territory, Democrats hardly knew whether to attack him from the left or the right. (On many of the crucial votes in that session, Eisenhower got more Democratic than Republican support.) Thus the appeal of the farm-parity issue to the Democrats. It was one on which they could break cleanly with Eisenhower and one that had broad appeal among a major segment of the population. Eisenhower had tied the Soil Bank to flexible and lower parities; the Democrats offered more than one hundred amendments to his farm bill, most of them calling for a rigid 90 percent parity. The Democrats were offering a deal—they would give Eisenhower his Soil Bank if he would let them give the farmers increased price supports.

If the two were joined together in one bill, Eisenhower swore he would veto it. He believed that rigid supports had created the surplus problem in the first instance, and to tie them to a program designed to reduce the surplus was irresponsible and unworkable. “I will not go out of office with rigid supports in being to ruin our agriculture,” the President told a meeting of the Republican leaders.40 But Eisenhower feared that the Democrats had him on this one; he told his aides “the Democrats are going to do a very simple thing, write a bill that has something for everybody and if I then veto it, a lot of people will be mad.”⁴¹

Which is exactly what happened. After months of debate, Congress finally passed a farm bill, one that tied the Soil Bank to 90 percent parity payments. By then, mid-April, it was too late to have any significant impact on the 1956 crop, much of which was already in the ground. On April 16, Eisenhower vetoed the bill. That night, on national TV, he explained his action. “I had no choice,” he declared. “I could not sign this bill into law because it was a bad bill.” He said he was glad that the Soil Bank was in it, but “other provisions of the bill would have rendered the soil bank almost useless. The fact is that we got a hodge-podge in which the bad provisions more than canceled out the good.” He told Congress to try again.42

•  •

In January, Eisenhower and Humphrey talked on the phone about exercising greater direction over economic movements through a judicious use of government expenditures. One of Eisenhower’s favorite programs for reducing the peaks and valleys on the GNP chart was the Interstate System. Back in November 1955, the President had talked to Hauge, then informed Weeks that he wanted Commerce to plan to use the Interstate System for managing the economy. As Hauge put it, “That was the fundamental purpose of the plan in the initial instance.” The bill had failed in 1955 due to Democratic objections to the method of financing (bonds). The Democrats wanted to tax the users to pay for the highways. Eisenhower had originally wanted tolls, as had Humphrey, but in January they agreed to cooperate with the Democrats in order to get started on construction. In the House, Hale Boggs of Louisiana and George Fallon of Maryland had introduced a bill providing for users’ taxes to pay for the system. Eisenhower gave the word to the Republican leaders—cooperate with Boggs and Fallon and “yield to Democratic insistence on financing,” until a bill was passed. Through the late winter and early spring, Boggs and Fallon, with Republican cooperation, worked on their bill.⁴³

•  •

Oil and taxes make for intense politics. With millions, even billions, of dollars involved, the politics of oil are played with stunning intensity. In 1955, the House passed a bill that deregulated independent producers of natural gas. In early 1956, it came up for debate in the Senate. The oil-producing states favored the bill, the consuming states opposed. It was quite that simple—there were no liberal-conservative, Republican-Democratic divisions over the bill, only a division between the haves and the have-nots. Insofar as either side made a serious argument, the issue was whether or not deregulation would encourage exploration and thus ultimately lower prices by expanding supplies. On balance, Eisenhower thought that the bill would accomplish those goals, and in addition he had a general objection to federal regulation that led him to favor the bill.

On February 7, the bill passed the Senate, but only after a scandal had been revealed. The oil lobby was accused of trying to buy votes, openly and brazenly, and of using strong-arm tactics to get a favorable vote. Eisenhower was distressed. He had many close friends in the oil industry, especially in Texas, and he knew they all wanted the bill. But he recognized that “there is a great stench around the passing of the bill.” It was, he wrote in his diary, “the kind of thing that makes American politics a dreary and frustrating experience for anyone who has any regard for moral and ethical standards.”44 To Gabe Hauge, he broadened his complaint, saying that he “was greatly irritated with business because of the gas bill.” Hauge said quietly that business must have an honorable place. Eisenhower replied, “I want to give businessmen an honorable place, but they make crooks out of themselves.” Still further broadening his complaint, Eisenhower told Hauge that it was a dangerous fact that the American economy had become so dependent upon the decisions of a handful of men, the directors of the great corporations, who could make decisions (such as a recent U.S. Steel announcement of a price rise) that could bring on great inflation, despite the government’s efforts. What bothered Eisenhower most was that the board of directors represented, at most, 2 percent of the stockholders. In his youth, Eisenhower said, a man was risking his own money. “There is something to be said for the tycoon age as against the directorship age.”⁴⁵

The next day, February 14, his ire still aroused against big business, Eisenhower informed the Republican leaders that he intended to veto the natural-gas bill. He explained that in addition to the lobbying efforts that had become public knowledge, Brownell had “uncovered other bad stuff.” Eisenhower made it clear he did not believe that any vote was bought, “but when things were done like what the oil industry did in this instance . . .” Knowland cut him off. The minority leader said a veto was out of the question, that it would make every man who voted for the bill look like a crook, “and would play into the hands of the left-wingers . . . and encourage similar demagoguery against other bills.” Eisenhower rejoined that the Republican Party could not afford to be known as the party of big business, and he would hate to leave the Administration open to the charge “that business could get this bill by throwing sufficient money around.” He cursed the “incredible stupidity of the industry.”⁴⁶

On February 17, Eisenhower vetoed the bill, citing the “arrogant” lobbying efforts of “a very small segment of a great and vital industry” as his reason.⁴⁷ Given the publicity the lobbying effort had already received, and given what Eisenhower knew might soon be revealed (and was; that summer Brownell got a number of indictments), the President had little choice. Still, given that he liked the objectives of the bill, and given that the Republican Party was counting on millions in contributions from the oil industry for the upcoming campaign, the veto was an act of some courage. Eisenhower wrote private letters to a number of his oil-industry friends, including Sid Richardson, explaining his motives and assuring them that he felt the “questionable aura that surrounded its passing” had been created “by an irresponsible and small segment of the industry.” (To give some idea of the amounts of money Richardson, at least, controlled, it should be pointed out that about a month earlier, George Allen had told Ellis Slater that Richardson was the richest man in America. Slater had protested that Roy Cullen—another of Eisenhower’s oil friends, from Houston—and H. L. Hunt were richer. No, Allen assured him—Richardson was worth “a billion dollars.”48 A billion dollars in 1956 was almost 2 percent of the entire federal budget.)

•  •

In January, Eisenhower had sent to Congress a revised and broadened program for school construction. The shortage of classrooms that had existed when Eisenhower took office had become more acute in the past three years, as the baby-boom generation swelled the school-age population. Eisenhower had been trying to get Congress to provide federal aid to the most impacted areas and the poorest states, rather than a program that would provide aid to every state, regardless of need. Between 1953 and 1956 he failed to get action. His latest proposal was to provide more than a billion dollars in federal grants, to be matched by the states, for the neediest school districts over the next five years. Two amendments were attached to the bill in the House. One allocated the money on the basis of a state’s school-age population, making the bill much more attractive to congressmen from New York City, Philadelphia, and other wealthy and heavily populated areas, less to those from the poorer states, especially in the South. The second amendment also drew northern votes at the expense of southern support. It was introduced by Adam Clayton Powell, a black congressman from Harlem. It would deny any school-construction funds to any state that refused to comply with the Brown decision and integrate its schools.

In public, Eisenhower opposed any linking of school-construction funds with integration. As he explained to the Republican leaders, such an amendment was sure to kill the bill, because the southerners would “filibuster it to death.” But he also admitted “that in view of the Supreme Court decision, a vote against Powell would seem to be a vote against the Constitution.”⁴⁹ Powell got his amendment attached to the bill; Eisenhower failed to support him; the bill was defeated.

•  •

By keeping his distance from the Powell Amendment, Eisenhower was consistent. Ever since the Brown decision was announced, and even before, he had gone to great lengths to divorce himself from the problem of race relations, and especially integration of the schools. Integration, he said over and over, was the responsibility of the courts. The judges should exercise the leadership. There was no executive responsibility. He would not involve himself or his Administration.

In early January, in his State of the Union address, Eisenhower called for a bipartisan commission to investigate the racial situation and make recommendations for appropriate legislation. He hoped that such a commission would act as a buffer to keep the race issue out of partisan politics and reduce tension. Brownell, meanwhile, was eager to sponsor a new civil-rights bill (none had been passed since Reconstruction, eighty-five years earlier).50 Eisenhower told Brownell to get to work on it.

On January 25, at a news conference, Eisenhower was asked how he felt about the Powell Amendment. Eisenhower began his answer by asserting “these things aren’t simple.” He reiterated, “My devotion to the decisions of the Supreme Court, particularly when they are unanimous, I hope is complete.” He said, “I believe in the quality of opportunity for every citizen of the United States,” but immediately repeated, “It isn’t quite as simple at that.” Eisenhower emphasized that “we want the schools now,” and reminded the reporters that the Supreme Court itself had said that desegregation should be “implemented gradually.” The President said he had to recognize “the deep ruts of prejudice and emotionalism that have been built up over the years in this problem.” He wanted a school-construction bill passed, he concluded, and he wanted moderation on the race issue.⁵¹

Moderation was hard to find. To the black community, words like “moderate” and “gradual” had come to mean “never,” which was exactly what the majority of the white South wanted—never. Racial violence, always endemic in the South, increased, almost always by the whites against the blacks. For Frederic Morrow, the “black man in the White House,” it was an agonizing time. Morrow was a forty-six-year-old black lawyer, former field secretary for the NAACP, and veteran of World War II, who joined the Administration in July 1955 as a White House staffer. He was the first Negro ever to be named to a presidential staff in an executive capacity. Initially he had numerous personal problems—the other staff aides would not eat with him, none of the secretaries in the White House pool would work for him, and so on—but they paled beside his massive political problem, which was how to get the Administration to act in defense of civil rights. In late 1955, in Mississippi, a fourteen-year-old Negro from Chicago, Emmett Till, was accused of wolf-whistling at a white woman in a store. Shortly thereafter, his trussed and mutilated body was found in a river. Through memoranda and conversations, Morrow tried to persuade the President to speak out on the Till incident, but without success. Morrow warned that such indifference contributed “to the Negro’s thinking that the Republican Party deserts him in crisis.” No one listened.52

Indeed, Eisenhower and his aides felt that the black community was guilty of pushing too hard, too fast, and of ingratitude. In February 1956, Eisenhower expressed his disappointment at the results of a study of black voting in the 1954 congressional elections. Eisenhower felt that after all he and the Republicans had done for Negroes—the desegregation of military base facilities and of Washington, D.C., the appointment of Morrow—the percentage of Negroes voting Republican should have gone up. But it had not. Max Rabb, who was in charge of minority problems for the President, told Morrow that “most of the responsible officials in the White House had become completely disgusted with the whole matter.” Rabb said the Administration felt that “Negroes were being too aggressive in their demands; that an ugliness and surliness in manner was beginning to show through.” Rabb added that “he could no longer argue that Negroes would be an asset politically or that doing things for them would gain any support for the Administration.”⁵³

Rabb’s tough and ugly-sounding words need to be tempered by an observation Morrow made in his diary at this time. Citing Eisenhower’s public commitment to equality of opportunity for all Americans, Morrow wrote: “During my lifetime I have never known of any other President who made such a statement publicly, with such complete conviction, and wholly without reservation.”⁵⁴

But, as Morrow well knew, black Americans needed more than moral support and words. The South’s counterattack against Brown by 1956 was being launched with vigor and imagination. In February, four southern state legislatures passed interposition resolutions that claimed the Supreme Court decision in Brown had no force or effect in their states. Eisenhower was asked at a February 29 news conference about his reaction to the doctrine of interposition. Eisenhower ducked: “Now, this is what I say: there are adequate legal means of determining all of these factors.” He would leave interposition to the courts. He expected that “we are going to make progress,” but emphasized that “the Supreme Court itself said it does not expect revolutionary action suddenly executed. We will make progress, and I am not going to attempt to tell them how it is going to be done.”55

On March 1, Eisenhower showed again his capacity for caution on the race issue. A federal judge ordered the University of Alabama to enroll Autherine Lucy; university officials then expelled her on the astonishing grounds that in her suit against the university, she had lied when she said that her race was the reason she had earlier been denied admittance. To Morrow, and to millions of others, this seemed a clear-cut case of defiance of federal court orders, something Eisenhower had sworn many times he was pledged to (and determined to) enforce. But he remained aloof, strengthening the view in the South that the Eisenhower Administration would never intervene to enforce integration.⁵⁶

In early March, the South’s counterattack escalated from the state to the federal level, as 101 southern members of the House and Senate signed a “manifesto” in which they committed themselves to try to overturn the Brown decision. On March 14, Eisenhower was asked to comment. He managed to see the thing from the South’s point of view. “Let us remember this one thing,” he said, “and it is very important: the people who have this deep emotional reaction on the other side were not acting over these past three generations in defiance of law. They were acting in compliance with the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court [in the Plessy case].” Brown had “completely reversed” Plessy, Eisenhower pointed out, “and it is going to take time for them to adjust their thinking and their progress to that.” How much time? “I am not even going to talk about that; I don’t know anything about the length of time it will take.” Eisenhower criticized “extremists” on both sides, and offered this advice: “If ever there was a time when we must be patient without being complacent, when we must be understanding of other people’s deep emotions as well as our own, this is it.” As to the manifesto, Eisenhower was quick to point out that the signers “say they are going to use every legal means,” that they did not intend to act outside the law, that “no one in any responsible position anywhere has talked nullification,” which Eisenhower admitted would put the country in “a very bad spot” if it happened.⁵⁷

Eisenhower hoped that would be the end of his involvement, but when 101 congressmen formally declare they intend to change a Supreme Court decision, the President cannot escape that easily. At his next news conference, Eisenhower was asked how he, the Chief Executive, felt about defiance of Supreme Court orders. Eisenhower asserted that no one had used the words “defy the Supreme Court,” again spoke of the difficulty southerners had readjusting from Plessy to Brown, then said, “These people [white southerners] have, of course, their free choice as to what they want to do.” He could hardly have meant it the way it sounded, but he was getting irritated by the whole issue and wanted to be done with it. His conclusion was less than resounding: “As far as I am concerned, I am for moderation, but I am for progress; that is exactly what I am for in this.”58

Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, protesting segregated seating on the city buses. Black citizens were shot, their homes and churches were bombed, but the city police were arresting the boycotters. Eisenhower told his Cabinet that he was “much impressed with the moderation of the Negroes in Alabama,” and that he thought the South had made “two big mistakes,” one in not admitting Miss Lucy and the other in opposing the reasonable demands of the Montgomery black community.⁵⁹ But when Robert Spivack asked Eisenhower to comment publicly, at a press conference, on King’s Montgomery crusade, Eisenhower backed away. “Well, you are asking me, I think, to be more of a lawyer than I certainly am. But, as I understand it, there is a state law about boycotts, and it is under that kind of thing that these people are being brought to trial.” He could see no reason for federal involvement.⁶⁰

A common white southern assertation at this time was that integration was a Communist plot. Eisenhower was hardly so naïve as to believe that, but he did fear that the Communists would take advantage of the racial unrest. On March 9, J. Edgar Hoover presented to Eisenhower and his Cabinet a twenty-four-page briefing on the explosive situation in the South. Hoover damned the extremists on both sides, the NAACP and the White Citizens Councils. He said blacks were so terrified that they would refuse to testify as to the violence they had seen or suffered, or even talk to FBI agents. But Hoover emphasized that his greater concern was with the efforts of the Communists to infiltrate the civil-rights movement and use it to add to social unrest. For his part, Eisenhower feared that the Communists were trying to “drive a wedge between the Administration and its friends in the South in that election year . . .”⁶¹

After Hoover made his presentation, Brownell outlined the civil-rights bill he was proposing. It called for a bipartisan commission, created by Congress, with the power to subpoena and to investigate alleged civil-rights violations; for a new Assistant Attorney General in charge of civil rights in the Justice Department; for new laws enforcing voting rights; and for strengthening existing civil-rights statutes to protect privileges and immunities of citizens. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about the proposals and told Brownell to go ahead with them. But Humphrey objected to Brownell’s bill, which he charged went too far and too rapidly toward desegregation. Humphrey insisted that progress had to be evolutionary. He also gave a warning. “We’ve talked about the Deep South,” he said, “but your worst problems can come in Detroit, Chicago, et al. All they need to run wild is a little expectation of backing.”62 Wilson agreed that there were real dangers in Detroit. He pontificated: “A social evolution takes time. You can’t speed it up.”

“I’m at sea on all this,” Eisenhower confessed. “I want to put something forward that I can show as an advance.” But he too was fearful. “Not enough people know how deep this emotion is in the South. Unless you’ve lived there you can’t know . . . We could have another civil war on our hands.” More probably, pressure from the North might lead the South to abandon public education altogether. The whites would then have their own church-related schools, Eisenhower said, while the blacks would have no education at all. He used the word “dilemma.” “I must enforce the law,” but he did not know how to do it. “They come in and say I should force the university to accept Miss Lucy,” he complained. He could not do it, because education was a local matter. His hands were tied.⁶³

Eisenhower’s hope was that if the desegregation crisis moved beyond the courts, his bipartisan commission would act as a buffer between the contending sides and the Administration, so that he would not have to use force in a specific case. He had another approach to noninvolvement—asking the churches to exercise the leadership. In March, Eisenhower had a long talk with the Reverend Billy Graham; he followed it up with a letter of March 22 in which he repeated his main point: “Ministers know that peacemakers are blessed. They should also know that the most effective peacemaker is one who prevents a quarrel from developing, not the one who has to pick up the pieces remaining after an unfortunate fight.” Progress achieved “through conciliation will be more lasting and stronger than could be obtained through force and conflict.”⁶⁴ Graham heartily agreed and promised to work with southern ministers to improve race relations. But he also advised the President to stay away from the race issue during the campaign.⁶⁵

Eisenhower’s moderate, middle-of-the-road stance with regard to race relations was, of course, consistent with his general approach to all his problems. He often asserted that a person who stood at either extreme on a political or social question was always wrong. And in his memoirs, he made the best possible case he could for his position of refusing to act even while violence flared all across the South. He said he was committed to the cause of civil rights, but “I did not agree with those who believed that legislation alone could institute instant morality, [or] who believed that coercion could cure all civil rights problems . . .”66

Whenever Eisenhower stated his position on extremists always being wrong, he would add, “except on a moral issue.” He did not see the desegregation crisis as a moral issue, but rather as one of practical politics, in which every point of view (meaning that of the white southerners) had to be considered and responded to. His critics charged that he was guilty of moral equivocation; his supporters replied that he was carefully and safely guiding the country through dangerous times.

•  •

In the field of civil rights, almost all of what Eisenhower did was in full public view. By refusing to take the initiative or otherwise provide leadership, he had put himself in a position in which he could only react to events, not control them. In the field of defense, where Eisenhower’s involvement and commitment were much deeper, the opposite situation prevailed—he had the initiative, he operated secretly, and he controlled events.

On January 24, Dulles came to see Eisenhower, filled with anxiety. Russian Ambassador Zaroubin had asked for an interview with the President. Dulles feared that Zaroubin was going to make a “very strong protest” against the Air Force “weather balloons.” These balloons were part of an on-again, off-again project to obtain photographic reconnaissance information from over the Soviet Union. The U-2 was coming along, but was not quite ready; the Air Force had therefore received Eisenhower’s permission to try yet another type of balloon. As a cover, the Air Force had released hundreds of the balloons, then announced that they were weather balloons participating in research for the International Geophysical Year. The things were floating over Japan, Oklahoma, the Pacific Ocean, everywhere. But the ones that mattered were over the Soviet Union, and the Russians had managed to shoot some down. Dulles thought Zaroubin would use the incident to denounce Open Skies, and that the Russians might well launch “a worldwide propaganda campaign against the United States, picking up the old charges of warmongering and all the rest.” Eisenhower was a bit chagrined. “Foster may be right on his guess” about Zaroubin’s mission, the President told Hagerty. “I haven’t thought too much of this balloon thing and I don’t blame the Russians at all. I’ve always thought it was sort of a dirty trick. But that was the gamble we took when we made the decision and they ought to have a good answer ready for me if I have to use it when I see the ambassador.”67 But the only answer the State Department could come up with was to stick to the “weather research” story.

The next day, Zaroubin arrived, met with Dulles and Eisenhower, and left. Eisenhower called Hagerty into his office. “Well, Jim,” he said, laughing, “it wasn’t what we thought. There is no mention of the balloons.” Dulles joined the laughter and commented, “Maybe that’s what you get for having somewhat of a guilty conscience.” What Zaroubin had brought was a proposal for a twenty-year friendship treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, an idea Dulles thought preposterous.⁶⁸

In early February, the Russians did make a loud and public protest against the balloons, charging that the United States was engaged in military espionage. Dulles conferred with Eisenhower. The President “recalled that he . . . had been rather allergic to this project and doubted whether the results would justify the inconvenience involved.” Eisenhower said he thought the operation should be suspended. Dulles cautioned that they should suspend in such a way “so it would not look as though we had been caught with jam on our fingers.” But of course they had. The next day, February 7, Dulles informed the Soviets that no more balloons would be released. He did not apologize, nor did he retreat from the weather-research story.⁶⁹

Five weeks later, Air Force Chief of Staff Twining proposed a new balloon project, one that would involve “very high-flying balloons” and that with proper funding could be ready in eighteen months. Goodpaster wrote a memorandum for the record on Eisenhower’s response: “Pursuant to the President’s direction, I called General Twining and told him that the President is not interested in any more balloons. General Twining said he fully understood and that would be the end of it.”⁷⁰

•  •

At the beginning of 1956, Eisenhower made an effort to revive his original Atoms for Peace proposal, and simultaneously to stop all production of fissionable material for military purposes. On January 13, acting on Strauss’s recommendation, the President allocated twenty thousand kilograms of U-235 for commercial atomic power purposes, the uranium to be distributed over a period of ten years. Eisenhower also directed that if the Russians joined an international atomic pool, the U.S. would be willing to immediately allocate one thousand kilograms to it.71 At the time, the Americans were demanding an Open Skies inspection system, while the Russians were insisting on stationary posts established within the United States and the U.S.S.R. There were so many nuances involved that Eisenhower expressed his sympathy for Stassen, the American negotiator at the disarmament talks, “because of the inherently almost insoluble character of the project.” But Eisenhower told Dulles and Strauss that if the inspection system broke down, “then the international pool theory becomes an alternative that it seems to me the world would seize upon with great relief and enthusiasm.” He hoped that with such a pool, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could “suspend the production of fissionable material except for peaceful purposes.” The pool, he thought, should be larger than the arsenal of any one nation.⁷²

Disarmament was on Eisenhower’s mind because he had read, in late January, a new DOD study of the damage the U.S. would suffer in a nuclear exchange with the Russians. The results were so terrifying that Eisenhower felt more strongly than ever the need to do something, anything. Aside from the inspection problem, the disarmament talks were stalled over the question of where and how to undertake reductions. The Russians wanted to reduce and even eliminate nuclear weapons, an area in which America had a clear lead; the Americans wanted to reduce ground forces, an area in which the Russians had a clear lead. Eisenhower told Goodpaster that Stassen was going to have to come up with something new. The specific American offer—to reduce the total U.S. armed forces personnel by a half million to 2.5 million total—was old, stale, and unacceptable to the Russians. And in any case, as Eisenhower told Goodpaster, “There is nothing so illusory as reduction of armament through reduction of men.” Eisenhower wanted some different and more hopeful approach, but could not find it. Thus he reiterated the Atoms for Peace idea.⁷³

On March 2, Eisenhower sent his formal proposal to Bulganin. If the Russians would accept Open Skies, the Americans would accept on-site inspection teams. He abandoned the previous American demand that the Russians match a 15 percent reduction in American ground forces by a 40 percent reduction of the Red Army. Instead, Eisenhower wanted to attack head on the problem of the nuclear arms race. He proposed that thereafter neither side use fissionable materials to make bombs, but instead put their production into some type of Atoms for Peace program. “My ultimate hope is that all production of fissionable materials anywhere in the world will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes.”⁷⁴

The JCS were uneasy with such an offer. Eisenhower assured them that he “felt it was very unlikely that the Soviets would accept our proposal, and if they were to accept, it is very unlikely that we would suffer disadvantage.”75 Eisenhower was right. Bulganin spurned the offer. The United States won some propaganda points, but the arms race went on. Its momentum was such that not even Eisenhower could slow it down, much less halt it, not to mention reverse it through actual disarmament.

•  •

The Democrats, as noted, were hard pressed to find an issue other than health or farm prices to use against Eisenhower in the presidential campaign. In February, Senator Symington of Missouri tried an issue that did not quite catch on in 1956, but which came to be a major one in 1960. It was the missile gap.

The American ballistic-missile program got started shortly after World War II, but in the cost-cutting days of the Truman Administration only a few millions of dollars had been appropriated for it (less than $7 million for ICBMs, for example). Nor did Eisenhower put any emphasis on it during his first year in office. But in 1954, following the Castle series of tests in the Pacific, the AEC reported to Eisenhower that nuclear weapons could be so drastically reduced in size that a missile could be designed and built powerful enough to carry the bombs. (Previous atomic warheads weighed nine thousand pounds.) Eisenhower then ordered research and development on missiles speeded up; in 1955 he put a half billion dollars into it, and asked for $1.2 billion in 1956. One reason for doubling the budget in 1956 was another recommendation from the scientists, that the U.S. develop an IRBM with a range of fifteen hundred miles. Eisenhower agreed, but he also divided the program and then split them again. The Air Force had two separate projects for ICBMs, Atlas and Titan; the Army (Jupiter) and the Navy (Thor) had IRBM responsibility. Within the Administration, there was some grumbling about this division of responsibility, and Eisenhower worried about the inherent waste involved because of duplication, but the President nevertheless decided that competition and the full use of all existing resources would speed development. In addition, in connection with the International Geophysical Year (which would begin in July 1957), in 1955 Eisenhower had created yet another program, Project Vanguard, designed to put an earth satellite in orbit.⁷⁶

With all the money involved, at a time when Eisenhower was continuing to reduce appropriations for conventional forces, the President told his Cabinet that he expected “to be called on to justify this money.” But to his surprise, “I find out that newcomers are saying why aren’t you doing more.”77 The newcomer he had in mind was Senator Symington, who at the beginning of February 1956 charged that the United States lagged seriously behind the Soviet Union in the production and development of guided missiles. At a press conference on February 8, Eisenhower was asked to comment. “Well,” he began, “I am always astonished at the amount of information that others get that I don’t.” He protested that he was putting money into the missile program as fast as it could be absorbed. “Now,” he admonished, “there are only so many scientists.” In any case, the President did not want anyone to get the idea that the Russians were in fact ahead, or that missiles were an ultimate weapon. Because they were so inaccurate, to be effective you needed to have great numbers of them, each loaded with a powerful (and thus heavy) warhead. America already had the assured capability of destroying Russia many times over. “Now, I just want to ask you one thing,” Eisenhower said to the reporters, “and if there is anyone here that has got the answer to this one, you will relieve me mightily by communicating it to me here or in private: Can you picture a war that would be waged with atomic missiles . . . ?” It would just be complete, indiscriminate devastation, not “war” in any recognizable sense, “because war is a contest, and you finally get to a point [with missiles] where you are talking merely about race suicide, and nothing else.”⁷⁸

Despite Eisenhower’s assurances about America’s position in the missile race, and despite his warnings about the outcome of such a race, the Democrats continued to go after the President for not spending enough on missiles. At a Republican leaders’ meeting on February 14, the congressmen asked Eisenhower how to respond to the attack. He told them to point out that the B-52 was a much better means of delivery of much larger bombs. So was the Russian bomber, the IL-28, which “cannot adequately be defended against. We know that and the Russians know it.” But, Eisenhower concluded, he “did not want to belittle the importance of missiles for there was obviously a large psychological factor.” Charley Martin said the Democrats were charging that the President did not know what was going on. “When I listen to Symington,” Eisenhower said, laughing, “I think I don’t!!” Then he added, “I want guided missiles as soon as possible.”⁷⁹

The Democrats kept pounding. At the next leaders’ meeting, on February 28, Eisenhower assured the anxious Republicans that “the agitation is purely political in my opinion.” He said the Administration was spending as much as could be spent. “It is clear that more money cannot be used.” He reminded them again of the great destructive power the U.S. already possessed. “After a certain point, there is no use in having more, no matter what quantity. If we have all we need to create the devastation we know we can create, what the hell is the use of more?” Eisenhower also expressed his serious doubts about missiles in general: “I’ll wager my life I can sit on any base we’ve got and in the next ten years the Russians can’t hit me with any guided missile.”80

Symington, along with Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, was saying that the Russians had developed an IRBM with a range of fifteen hundred miles. The AEC told Eisenhower that the Russians “have never got any up to one thousand miles.” The various American programs, Eisenhower asserted, were stressing accuracy, not’ distance. The President told Hagerty, “If we stopped guiding and other things, we could get all sorts of distances that would scare them to death.”⁸¹

Much as Eisenhower yearned to take missiles out of the area of partisan politics, he could not. Reporters continued to ask him about various Democratic charges; he continued to be calming and reassuring in his answers, admitting only that missiles had “a very great psychological value.”⁸² Eisenhower also had to deal with Bernard Baruch, who wrote the President a series of alarming letters about the need for greater progress in missiles. Baruch’s sense of self-importance was unlimited, as was his penchant for being a bore, but as Eisenhower noted, “because of his standing and reputation in the public mind,” he had to be treated seriously. Eisenhower spent part of the afternoon of March 28 with Baruch, trying to explain to him the entire strategic situation. Further, Eisenhower recorded in his diary, “I tried to show him that we are already employing so many of the nation’s scientists and research facilities that even the expenditure of a vastly greater amount could scarcely produce any additional results.” Baruch wanted Eisenhower to appoint a missile czar and put him in charge of a “Manhattan Project.” Eisenhower repeated that the scientific community could not absorb any additional funds, and that the military was doing satisfactory work on the missile projects already in place.⁸³

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In January 1956, Prime Minister Eden flew to Washington for talks with Eisenhower and Dulles. They discussed numerous international problems, such as the admission of Red China to the United Nations (Eisenhower was firmly opposed) and the situation in the Formosa Straits (quiet). Both sides agreed to support Diem of South Vietnam in his refusal to hold the nationwide elections that had been promised in the Geneva Accords, and to cite as a reason the various violations of the accords by the North Vietnamese.84 But the real subject that was on Eden’s mind was the Middle East.

The situation in the Middle East was the most intractable political problem in the world. In January 1956, Eisenhower came face-to-face with it, and as he said in his memoirs, from that time on “no region of the world received as much of my close attention . . .”⁸⁵ Like his predecessor and his successors, Eisenhower found that when he faced the problem, he was beset by a bewildering variety of conflicting desires and demands. Some of these difficulties emerged in the Eden talks. The PM hinted that he thought Nasser would have to be removed. The President expressed surprise at this. He recalled that Nasser had come to power two years earlier, promising reform and modernization for Egypt, and that he had worked out an arrangement with the British whereby the British had withdrawn their eighty thousand troops from Egypt, but retained their share of ownership of the Suez Canal (France was the other principal owner). Eisenhower wondered why Eden had lost confidence in Nasser. The notetaker recorded, “Mr. Eden replied it was difficult to evaluate Nasser who was a man of limitless ambition.” Dulles remarked that “he did not mind ambition, which was a healthy thing that could be played upon.” Dulles said his own fear about Nasser was that he “might have become a tool of the Russians.”⁸⁶

Dulles was referring to another of the dilemmas in the Middle East—namely, how to keep the Russians out of the area. But bumbling by the State Department, and by Eisenhower, had practically invited them in. A few months after taking power, Nasser asked for American arms. He needed them for the border war being waged along the Gaza Strip, and to strengthen his army, which was inferior to the Israeli Army in numbers, equipment, leadership, and morale. The State Department agreed to sell $27 million worth of arms to Egypt, but only for cash. Nasser turned to the Communists. In October 1955, he concluded an arms deal with Czechoslovakia. Egypt got five times more hardware than it would have received from the U.S. and was allowed to pay by barter arrangement, Egyptian cotton for Czech arms.⁸⁷

The shipment of Communist arms to Egypt, Eden said, violated the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 in which the United States, the U.K., and France had pledged to maintain the status quo in the Middle East by not selling major quantities of military equipment to either the Jews or the Arabs. Eden proposed that the three Western powers “put teeth” in the declaration by turning it into a military alliance designed to enforce the arms embargo. Neither Eisenhower nor Dulles liked that idea. Then Eden tried to draw them into the Baghdad Pact, which had a long and tortuous history. Dulles had first proposed the pact to seal off Russia from the south. The line ran from Pakistan through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. In 1955, Eden, enthusiastic about the idea, joined with those four countries in the Baghdad Pact. Then he learned that the United States had decided not to join. Dulles wanted Britain to take the lead in the Middle East, as the U.S. was doing with SEATO. Further, neither Dulles nor Eisenhower could see why the United States should alienate both Egypt and Israel by joining a pact whose avowed goal was to stop Soviet expansion but whose real purpose was, according to Egypt, to preserve British colonial power in the Middle East. For their part, the Israelis feared that the pact was intended by the British to create a unified Arab world to crush the Jewish state. America had nothing to win by joining, Eisenhower told Eden, and would not. So Eden went home with nothing to show for his troubles except a final communiqué grandly titled “The Declaration of Washington.” It noted the “unity of purpose of our two countries,” and it vowed that “we shall never initiate violence.”88

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For all his professions to Eden about “unity of purpose” and for all his promises about coordinating policies in the Middle East, Eisenhower in fact had set out on a course of his own. Like his predecessor and his successors, he could not resist the temptation to try personal diplomacy. He would send an American envoy who enjoyed the President’s absolute confidence to act as a mediator between Egypt and Israel, and to offer financial inducements for them to make peace. The man Eisenhower chose was Robert Anderson. They met on January 11 in the White House to discuss the offer Anderson was going to take on his secret mission. Eisenhower wanted to avert an arms race in the Middle East, with the United States and the U.S.S.R. as suppliers, but he knew to avoid it there had to be peace between Israel and Egypt. Eisenhower gave Anderson a letter to Nasser and to the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, establishing Anderson’s credentials to speak for the President. Eisenhower then authorized Anderson to verbally offer both sides almost whatever they might want in the way of material aid as a reward for making the concessions necessary to achieve peace. “Eisenhower,” Anderson later recalled, “just about gave me carte blanche.”⁸⁹

Anderson left in the middle of January. He tried everything. He flew back and forth, held secret meetings, promised American money to solve all the problems of both countries. Both sides were willing enough to take American money, but neither would yield on any specific issue. Anderson proposed that the Palestine refugees be resettled throughout the Arab world at American expense. Nasser could not agree to such a callous destruction of a people. Israel was ready to accept an American guarantee of her borders, but not to withdraw to the borders assigned to her by the U.N. in 1948. Nasser agreed that Anderson could serve as an intermediary between him and Ben-Gurion, but said he could not meet with the Israeli leader because he would be assassinated if he did. Ben-Gurion said he would meet with Nasser, but would not agree to use Anderson’s services as an intermediary. Then Ben-Gurion asked about arms from the U.S. That Eisenhower had not authorized Anderson to offer, and he did not.90

Anderson made one further trip, with equally fruitless results. Eisenhower was distressd, but he could see no alternative to continuing the basic course of attempting to be “friends with both contestants in that region in order that we can bring them closer together. To take sides could do nothing but to destroy our influence in leading toward a peaceful settlement of one of the most explosive situations in the world today.” But he was already tilting against Nasser, because he blamed Nasser, not Ben-Gurion, for the failure of the Anderson mission. That was a patently unfair judgment—each side was intransigent—and Eisenhower’s deeper motivation was his fear of the Pan-Arab movement Nasser was trying to create. More aware than most observers of the dependence of Europe on Arab oil, Eisenhower’s worst-case scenario had Egypt forming a united Arab world that would be allied with the Soviet Union. So in his diary entry of March 8, in which he said he would not take sides, he went on to write, “We have reached the point where it looks as if Egypt, under Nasser, is going to make no move whatsoever” to make peace. Meanwhile “the Arabs . . . are daily growing more arrogant.” Therefore “it would begin to appear that our efforts should be directed toward separating the Saudi Arabians from the Egyptians.” This was the germ of an idea Eisenhower would soon be pursuing actively, that of making King Saud of Saudi Arabia into Nasser’s rival for leadership in the Arab world, then linking Saud firmly to the West.

Eisenhower concluded his diary entry, “I am certain of one thing. If Egypt finds herself thus isolated from the rest of the Arab world, and with no ally in sight except Soviet Russia, she would very quickly get sick of that prospect and would join us in the search for a just and decent peace in that region.”⁹¹

On March 28, Eisenhower met with Dulles, Radford, Wilson, and others to discuss Nasser. At Eisenhower’s request, Dulles had a memorandum ready, proposing a new policy, one designed “to let Colonel Nasser realize that he cannot cooperate as he is doing with the Soviet Union and at the same time enjoy most-favored-nation treatment from the United States.” Dulles also wished to avoid an open break “which would throw Nasser irrevocably into a Soviet satellite status.” To achieve these contradictory goals, Dulles proposed to maintain the Western arms embargo against Egypt, to “continue to delay the conclusion of current negotiations on the High Aswan Dam,” to suspend CARE package shipments to Egypt, to “give increased support to the Baghdad Pact without actually adhering to the pact,” and to speed negotiations with the Saudis by assuring King Saud “that some of his military needs will immediately be met and others provided for subsequently.”92

There was no solution, easy or hard. By refusing to support Egypt or to sell arms to Israel, and by insisting on coordinating American policy with Britain’s, Eisenhower had lost control of the situation. Or rather failed to gain control, as neither he nor anyone else had ever gotten a grip on the Middle East. Eisenhower and his advisers were reduced to speculation on what they might have to do if the worst happened. Both Dulles and Radford told Eisenhower that if Egypt attacked Israel, using Russian arms, “there is no question that war would be forced upon us.” In that event, “We would have to occupy the entire area, protect the pipelines and the Suez Canal, etc.”⁹³