DWIGHT EISENHOWER is one of only two Republicans (the other was Grant) to serve two full terms as President. Along with the two Roosevelts, he is the only twentieth-century President who, when he left office, still enjoyed wide and deep popularity. And he is the only President in this century who managed to preside over eight years of peace and prosperity.
Clearly, Eisenhower was doing something right. Just as clearly, Eisenhower’s famous luck helped him. What follows is an account of how it was done, and of Eisenhower’s role in bringing it about.
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Eisenhower is at the center of events. Just as in Overlord, when he was the funnel through which everything had to pass, the one man who was responsible for the whole operation, so too as President, he was the one man who could weigh all the factors in any one decision—the political repercussions, the effect on foreign policy, the economic consequences, and the myriad of other considerations involved—before acting.
Eisenhower probably complained more about the Presidency than most of his predecessors and successors, and probably enjoyed it more. Although he exercised freely the soldier’s right to grouse, he wanted to be in the position in which he could have a maximum influence on events. He liked making decisions. The primary reason was that he had such complete self-confidence that he was certain he was the best man in the country to make the decisions. So certain, indeed, that the chief reason he agreed to run for re-election in 1956 was that he could not think of any other man who could do his job.
He was sure he made the best decisions. In my own view, sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. I think he was badly wrong on McCarthy and segregation, brilliantly right in his management of the numerous war scares of his first term, and during the Berlin crisis of 1959, consistently correct in his opposition to putting ever-greater sums into national defense, ambiguous and confused on nuclear-testing policy and disarmament. But my own prejudices and politics are unimportant, and I hope I have succeeded in resisting the temptation of inserting them into the text. What I have tried to do is present the record, to relate what Eisenhower did, and how and why he did it.
This book is based on the inner record of the Eisenhower Administration. The vast majority of the citations are to primary documents, many of them only declassified in the late seventies and early eighties. With the full record available to me, I quickly learned in writing this book that I could not rely on the memoirs, whether written or oral, nor on the contemporary reporting, nor the public papers and pronouncements, nor the monographs written on the basis of those sources. All were helpful, of course, to one degree or another, but the real story, the whole story, could come only from Eisenhower’s own diary, memos, orders, and correspondence, from the minutes of the Cabinet, the National Security Council, and the Republican leaders’ meetings, from the transcripts of the telephone calls to and from the Oval Office, from the diaries of such people as Ann Whitman, James Hagerty, and Ellis Slater, and most of all from Andrew Goodpaster’s memoranda covering nearly every private conference Eisenhower held.
What the documents show, in my opinion, is how completely Eisenhower dominated events. Eisenhower, not Charlie Wilson, made defense policy; Eisenhower, not Foster Dulles, made foreign policy; Eisenhower, not Ezra Benson, made farm policy. Whether the policies were right or wrong, whether they reflected ambivalence and hesitation, or revealed the way in which Eisenhower was a prisoner of the technologists and scientists, or displayed bold and aggressive action, they were Eisenhower’s policies. He ran the show.
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As to Eisenhower the man, he is as appealing a human being as President as he was as Supreme Commander. Firm, fair, objective, dignified, he was everything most Americans wanted in a President. There were no real scandals in his Administration. In his private life, he prospered. He loved and cherished his wife, had the pleasure and the pride of having his son work for him in a critical post, and enjoyed to the full his grandchildren. His zest for life was strong. He loved to travel and indulged himself whenever he could. He had a loyal group of close friends, all of them millionaires, his “gang” as he called them. With them he could relax, play golf or bridge or go hunting and fishing, all passions with him, and just be himself.
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A word about organization. When I finished the research and began writing, I was sorely tempted to do the book by subjects, breaking it down into chapters on Eisenhower and McCarthy, or Eisenhower and civil rights, or Eisenhower and Vietnam, thereby relating Eisenhower’s relations with McCarthy, or his approach to civil rights, or his policies in Vietnam from beginning to end. But I eventually decided that such an organization would make the individual subjects easier to understand at the expense of understanding Eisenhower. What I wanted to convey was the magnitude and multitude of problems that come marching up to the President for solution, and the way in which each event relates to and influences others. For example, a decision Eisenhower made about Vietnam would have a major effect on his defense policy; a decision about Korea would be influenced by Senator McCarthy’s latest antics, and in turn would affect what McCarthy did the next day.
I decided that the only way to make the relationship between events and actions understandable, and the only way to get some sense of the factors Eisenhower had to take into account in making a single decision, was to tell the story chronologically. This method of organization has one invaluable advantage—chronologically is the way it happened. The disadvantage is that the book jumps from subject to subject, which does not make for smooth or easy reading. I am convinced, however, that it does give a better understanding of what happened, and why.
And, I hope, a better understanding of Eisenhower the man. His ability to shift from one concern to another, to deal with this problem and then turn to that one, to recall what was said to him months or years earlier on any one of hundreds of subjects, demonstrates the impressive agility, quickness, and intelligence of his mind. His use of his vacation time, and his enjoyment of his many close friends, and most of all the joy he got from his relationship with his wife, son, and grandchildren, demonstrate how healthy he was and the good care he took of himself, psychologically as well as physically. Whether as President, friend, elder statesman, or family man, he remained what he had always been, a great and good man.