Eisenhower in War and Peace

Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union pressed for a summit conference. In Britain, Anthony Eden had succeeded Churchill as prime minister in April and faced a general election at the end of May. Eden believed that the announcement of a meeting of the heads of government would enhance his prestige prior to the election.² In France, Edgar Faure, who had been premier of the Fourth Republic since February, shared the view that a summit meeting would redound to his political advantage, and the new Soviet leadership of Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, who had replaced Georgy Malenkov as chairman of the council of ministers, and Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), seemed similarly motivated. In the United States, Dulles and Eisenhower were initially reluctant, but were soon swept up by world opinion, which clamored for a summit. The time seemed ripe to press for a truce in the Cold War. Senator Walter George of Georgia, the influential chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, added his voice to those urging a meeting, and Eisenhower yielded. “Not wishing to appear senselessly stubborn in my attitude toward a Summit meeting,” wrote Ike, “I instructed Secretary Dulles to let it be known through diplomatic channels that if the other powers were genuinely interested in such a meeting we were ready to listen to their reasoning.”³

On May 8, 1955, the governments of Britain, France, and the United States dispatched identical notes to Moscow suggesting a meeting of the four heads of government “to remove sources of conflict between us.”⁴ The Soviets accepted one week later, and on June 13 it was announced that the Big Four would meet in Geneva on July 18.

When the meeting was announced, the Republican Old Guard threw a tantrum. Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, evoking images of Munich and Yalta, warned that all international conferences contained seeds of “appeasement, compromise, and weakness.”⁵ Joe McCarthy, still reeling from the Senate’s condemnation, proposed a resolution requiring the president to condition his going to Geneva on Russian agreement to have the conference discuss the satellite nations of Eastern Europe. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson sprang to Ike’s defense. McCarthy’s proposal “placed a loaded gun at the President’s head,” said LBJ.⁶ Johnson immediately recognized the opportunity McCarthy had provided to put the Senate on record supporting Eisenhower and to embarrass the GOP’s Old Guard at the same time. With Senator George’s cooperation, LBJ kept McCarthy’s resolution alive, reported it to the Senate floor with Democratic votes, and let the Republicans squirm. When McCarthy belatedly recognized his error and sought unanimous consent to withdraw his resolution, Johnson objected. The yeas and nays were called, and McCarthy’s resolution was defeated 77–4. The vote was a ringing endorsement for Ike and the Geneva summit. Shortly afterward, the president met with congressional leaders to assure them that Geneva would not be another Yalta. No decisions would be made without their approval, said Eisenhower, and there would be no appeasement.⁷

“Personally, I do not expect any spectacular results from the forthcoming ‘Big Four’ Conference,” Ike wrote Swede Hazlett. “Nevertheless, the general world and domestic outlook is better than it was two and a half years ago.”⁸

As the date for the conference approached, expectations increased, and Eisenhower was caught up in the spirit. Speaking to a national radio and television audience from the White House less than an hour before his departure for Geneva, Ike said his trip was unprecedented.

Eisenhower was the last of the Big Four to arrive in Geneva. By a quirk of fate, the Reverend Billy Graham was holding a revival crusade in the city that coincided with the summit. Graham acknowledged that the timing was accidental, although he did not rule out the possibility that Providence may have played a role. Graham told The New Yorker’s Richard Rovere that he was much in favor of the summit. “Moses long ago held a parley at the Summit,” said Graham, “and had there received a ten-point directive that the heads of government would do well to restudy.”¹⁰

The summit lasted five days.^a Little progress was made on the agenda items the Big Four considered—disarmament, European security, and German reunification—but the atmosphere of collegiality provided a refreshing change from the hostile chill that had characterized East-West relations since the imposition of the Berlin blockade in 1948. At Geneva, the Big Four agreed to disagree. As one scholar of the period put it, they implicitly agreed to accept the status quo, and a decision to accept the status quo can be every bit as important, and in certain circumstances, as helpful, as a decision to change things.¹¹ Anthony Eden said it best when he told Parliament the summit “has given this simple message to the whole world: It has reduced the danger of war.”¹² Nikita Khrushchev agreed. “Neither side wants war,” he told the East Germans on his way back to Moscow.¹³

Socially, the delegations mixed easily. Eisenhower held a lengthy private luncheon with his old friend Marshal Zhukov, who had been rescued from the internal exile Stalin had imposed and was now the Soviet minister of defense. In his memoirs, Eisenhower—who had been stung by political criticism of his friendship with Zhukov—was at pains to distance himself from his former comrade, who was “no longer the same man he had been in 1945.”¹⁴ But the notes of the luncheon conversation kept by Ambassador Charles Bohlen, who translated for Ike, reveal an animated, wide-ranging two-and-a-half-hour discussion that touched on most issues confronting the two countries. Zhukov insisted the Soviet Union did not want war. Eisenhower said all his experience with Zhukov in Berlin led him to believe his old friend, and he believed him now. Zhukov appealed for détente. Eisenhower replied that fear and distrust flourished on both sides; they were emotions difficult to dispel. And now there was the arms race.¹⁵

Zhukov suggested that the way to relax tensions would be to curtail the polemic and invective between nations. Ike agreed, but reminded Zhukov that he could not control either Congress or the press. The discussion widened. Ike pressed disarmament. What about inspection to determine the facts? asked the president. Why not? Zhukov responded. And why not reduce the size of the armies? Eisenhower agreed. When Zhukov mentioned the admission of mainland China to the United Nations, and Ike brought up the subject of prisoners of war still held by the Soviet Union, it was clear the conversation had reached its end.

The day after his lunch with Zhukov, Eisenhower stole the spotlight at Geneva when he unveiled his “Open Skies” proposal to throw open the airspace above the United States and the Soviet Union to mutual inspection flights by each country. Ike’s proposal was totally unanticipated and caught the world by surprise. But the plan had been carefully crafted by a high-level committee of experts working under Nelson Rockefeller, Ike’s special assistant for Cold War strategy, at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, just south of Washington. The proposal was then thoroughly vetted at NSC level by Radford, Dulles, Stassen, and Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Anderson, as well as Ike’s old friend General Alfred Gruenther and various subcabinet appointees. The administration maintained the utmost secrecy about the plan, but when Ike rose to speak he was scarcely shooting from the hip.

To add drama to the occasion, Eisenhower spoke without notes. “Surprise in presentation I knew might be important,” the president observed afterward. Looking directly at the Soviet delegation, Eisenhower said, “I have been searching my heart and mind for something that I could say here that could convince everyone of the great sincerity of the United States in approaching the problem of disarmament.” The ornate council chamber of the Palais des Nations (the former home of the League of Nations) was hushed as Eisenhower continued. José-María Serty Badia’s massive neo-Baroque murals stared down on the delegates from the walls and ceiling. Outside a torrential rain was falling. Neither Cecil B. DeMille nor Alfred Hitchcock could have devised a more intimidating setting.

At the precise moment Eisenhower concluded, a tremendous flash of lightning followed by a clap of thunder filled the council chamber. Every light in the building went out. “It was the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard,” said Eisenhower. “For a moment there was stunned silence. Then I remarked that I had not dreamed I was so eloquent as to put the lights out.”¹⁷ ^b

Eisenhower’s “Open Skies” proposal captured the world’s imagination, even though the Soviets were uninterested. After Stalin’s death, the Russian leadership continued to be obsessed with secrecy. Telephone directories and maps were unavailable to most in the Soviet Union, and the Kremlin was not about to introduce an open society. Khrushchev later denounced Eisenhower’s proposal as a ploy aimed at penetrating the iron curtain for purposes of espionage.

Elsewhere, Eisenhower was the hero of the hour. “Without being effusive or overreacting,” wrote journalist Robert Donovan, “Eisenhower conveyed a sense of decency and dignity which mocked the picture of his country as an immature nation hell-bent for war.” Richard Rovere told readers of The New Yorker that “the man has an absolutely unique ability to convince people that he has no talent for duplicity.”^c Le Monde, then in a robustly anti-American phase, reported that “Eisenhower, whose personality has long been misunderstood, has emerged as the type of leader that humanity needs today.”¹⁸ Eisenhower’s “Open Skies” proposal was a dramatic moment in the Cold War, and an important attempt to begin the retreat from the danger of a nuclear Armageddon.

The summit concluded on a high note. “This has been an historic meeting,” Eisenhower told his departing colleagues. “It is my judgment that the prospects for a lasting peace are brighter. The dangers of the overwhelming tragedy of modern war are less.”¹⁹ For Eisenhower, the Geneva summit of 1955 provided a new window through which to view Soviet behavior, much as Ronald Reagan discovered after meeting Mikhail Gorbachev in the Swiss city thirty years later. “There is no doubt in my mind, that in the few days we were there I personally gained insight and understanding that I could never have achieved otherwise,” Ike wrote his brother Milton on July 25. “I think, too, that the personal contact—in some cases, the friendships—that were developed there alone made the trip worthwhile.”²⁰

Eisenhower returned to a rapturous reception. The Gallup poll reported his approval rating at a record 79 percent.²¹ James Reston, writing in The New York Times, announced that “the popularity of President Eisenhower has got beyond the bounds of reasonable calculation and will have to be put down as a national phenomenon, like baseball. The thing is no longer just a remarkable political fact but a kind of national love affair, which cannot be analyzed satisfactorily by the political scientists and will probably have to be turned over to the head-shrinkers.”²²

Eisenhower worked assiduously to keep the “Spirit of Geneva” alive. “Now that the Four Power Conference has become a part of history,” he wrote Bulganin on July 27, “I want you to know how deeply I believe that our combined efforts during the past week produced an effect that will benefit the world. Since last Saturday evening, I have been thinking over your farewell words to me, which were to the effect, ‘Things are going to be better; they are going to come out all right.’…If we can continue along this line, with earnest efforts to be fair to each other and to achieve understanding of each other’s problems, then, eventually, a durable peace based on right and justice will be the monument to the work we have begun.”²³ ^d

The “Spirit of Geneva” seemed to introduce a new, more relaxed phase of the Cold War. From 1948 to the summer of 1955, there were war scares on an almost monthly basis, with major fighting in Korea and Vietnam. For the time being, both sides stepped back from the brink. As British foreign secretary Harold Macmillan put it, the summit had made it clear that “all the great nations who were in the nuclear game now accepted that modern war, that is nuclear war, was quite impossible and could only lead to mutual destruction.”²⁴

Not everyone was pleased. The thaw in East-West relations was serious enough for J. Edgar Hoover to warn a closed session of a House Appropriations subcommittee that the “Spirit of Geneva” was encouraging American Communists to leave their hiding places and make inroads among naïve fellow citizens. Hoover said that for each of the country’s estimated 22,280 Communists, there were ten more Americans being duped.²⁵

As in 1951, the effort to extract a commitment from Ike was led by Lucius Clay. “Clay approached the matter circumspectly and even in roundabout fashion,” Eisenhower confided to his diary shortly after the midterm elections. “But when he once got on to the real purpose of his visit, he pursued his usual tactics aimed at overpowering all opposition and settling the matter without further question.” Clay told Eisenhower that the recent loss of the House and Senate meant that the Republican party had to be revitalized into an “Eisenhower Republican Party.” Although the name troubled him, Ike did not disagree. “The Republican party,” he wrote, “must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk. I believe that so emphatically that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary, repudiate it.”²⁷

Eisenhower said the Republican party had been led astray by people such as Robert Wood, New Jersey congressman Fred Hartley, “several of our old generals, two of whom are my classmates, Malone, McCarthy, and Bertie McCormick.^e The political strength that these people could generate in the United States could not elect a man who was committed to giving away $20 gold pieces to every citizen for every day of the calendar year! But entirely aside from their political significance is the fact that their thinking is completely uncoordinated with the times in which we live.”

After meeting with Clay, Eisenhower wrote Swede Hazlett that he was troubled by the Twenty-second Amendment, which Ike thought significantly reduced the influence of a second-term president. “The implication of this is that only the most unusual of circumstances should induce any man to stand a second time for the Presidency.”³⁰

On July 11, 1955, before Eisenhower’s departure for Geneva, fifty-four Republican members of the House issued a formal call urging the president to announce that he would seek reelection. Eisenhower did not reply. Upon his return from Geneva, a delegation of distinguished Republicans from Ohio known as the Bull Elephants Club called on Ike in the White House and presented him with a similar appeal. Eisenhower responded with a rambling, impromptu speech (Ike at his dissembling best) delineating the burdens of the presidency and the need for more young Republicans, but totally avoiding any answer to their request.³¹ At his news conference on August 4, Edward Folliard of The Washington Post asked the president about his response to the Bull Elephants, and whether the Geneva Big Four meeting had made it more or less likely that he would run in 1956.

Eisenhower, who evidently expected the question, was ready with his answer. “Eddie, if I were such an infallible prophet that I could understand all about the world situation, the domestic situation, and my own situation, including the way I felt, and possibly with the health and everything else, as of that moment, then there would be no great excuse for deferring the decision. I have not that gift of prophecy.”³²

With speculation rife, Eisenhower departed Washington on August 14, 1955, for a lengthy summer vacation in Colorado. Over the next several weeks the president enjoyed the hospitality of Aksel Nielson at his ranch near Fraser, and spent most of his time ensconced in the rambling home of the Douds at 750 Lafayette Street, known to the press as the “Summer White House.” A habitual early riser, Ike visited his office at nearby Lowry Air Force Base for an hour or two each morning, and then headed for the golf course at the Cherry Hills Country Club, which was one of his favorites. Friday, September 23, was no exception. Ike was in good spirits. His secretary Ann Whitman noted in her diary, “I have never seen him look or act better.”³³ Eisenhower raced through his correspondence and dashed off a quick note to Lyndon Johnson, who had recently suffered a heart attack and was convalescing at his ranch in Texas. “I am delighted to have your encouraging report on your recovery,” Ike wrote. “I most earnestly hope that you will not let your natural bent for living life to the hilt make you try to do too much too quickly.”³⁴

Eisenhower played eighteen holes that morning with the club pro, “Rip” Arnold. The game was interrupted twice by phone calls from Secretary of State Dulles, wanting to discuss matters that Ike thought could have waited. (There were no cell phones in 1955, and Eisenhower had to leave the course and return to the clubhouse to field each call.) Eisenhower was in a foul mood at lunch, wolfed down a hamburger lavishly garnished with raw onions, and decided to play another nine holes with Arnold that afternoon. Again he was interrupted by a phone call from Washington. “At this point his anger was so real that the veins stood out on his forehead like whipcords,” an observer noted.³⁵ The call proved to be a false alarm, no one was calling, and Eisenhower really hit the roof. After eight holes he called it quits, complaining of heartburn, which he attributed to the onions at lunch.³⁶

Back at the Doud home, Eisenhower painted for several hours and then was joined for dinner by George Allen and his wife, who were visiting Denver. Ike and Allen passed up their customary predinner drink, and Eisenhower retired about ten o’clock. He was awakened by severe chest pain at about 1:30 a.m., which he again attributed to the onions at lunch. Mamie, who was sleeping in an adjoining bedroom, heard him stirring and asked if he wanted anything. Ike asked for some milk of magnesia, and she found it and gave him a dose. When Mamie turned on the light and looked at her husband, she decided he was seriously ill and immediately called Major General Howard Snyder, the family physician. Snyder, who had accompanied the Eisenhowers to Denver, was staying at the BOQ at Lowry Air Force Base. He arrived at the Doud home a little before 3 a.m.

There was no cover-up. Dr. Snyder genuinely believed that Ike was suffering from indigestion.^g Not until roughly 1:15 p.m. did Snyder realize that Eisenhower’s symptoms more closely resembled those of someone suffering a heart attack rather than a digestive upset. At that point, he called Fitzsimmons Army Hospital to order an electrocardiogram. The equipment was brought to the Doud home by Dr. Byron Pollock, chief of cardiology at Fitzsimmons, and General Martin Griffin, the hospital commander, dressed (at Snyder’s request) in civilian clothes. “At 2:00 p.m.,” according to the report filed by James Rowley, the chief of Eisenhower’s Secret Service detail, “they announced the cardiograph disclosed a coronary thrombosis condition and they all concluded it would be best to move the president to the hospital where all the necessary equipment was available.”⁴²

Eisenhower was placed in an oxygen tent at Fitzsimmons, the appropriate medication was administered, and Dr. Paul Dudley White of Massachusetts General, the nation’s preeminent heart specialist, assumed responsibility for the president’s care. White met the press almost immediately after examining Ike and briefed them completely on his condition. “Tell them everything,” Ike instructed him. White noted that coronary thrombosis was “the commonest important illness that besets a middle-age man in this country today.” He told reporters that Eisenhower had suffered a “moderate” heart attack—“not a mild one, not a severe one, but something in between.” The president was still seriously ill, said White, but there was good reason to believe that he could make a complete recovery.⁴³ That Eisenhower survived the twelve-hour hiatus between the initial attack and the first accurate diagnosis was a testament to his remarkable constitution. At sixty-four, Ike weighed 172 pounds, only seven pounds more than when he graduated from West Point. His blood pressure was a reasonable 140/80 and his pulse averaged sixty beats per minute. He exercised daily and spent hours out of doors on the golf course. He had the willpower of an ox. And he continued to be just plain lucky. “Divine Destiny,” George Patton had often called him, and on September 24, 1955, Eisenhower’s luck ran true to form.

If Eisenhower had to have a heart attack, September 1955 was a good time to have one. Congress was in recess, the Geneva Big Four meeting had already taken place, there were no urgent foreign or domestic matters that required his personal attention, and the 1956 election campaign had not begun. On Monday, September 26, the New York Stock Exchange took its worst plunge since the Great Depression, but the encouraging words of Dr. White soon set things straight. In Washington, Vice President Nixon presided over routine meetings of the cabinet and the National Security Council, while John Foster Dulles, as the ranking cabinet officer, handled major policy issues. Sherman Adams and James Hagerty moved their offices to Denver, Attorney General Brownell ruled that no delegation of authority was required, and Ike’s cabinet officers continued to run their departments as if nothing had happened. Nixon, for his part, studiously avoided any attempt to assume command in Eisenhower’s absence. “The policies and programs of the administration as determined and approved by the President are well established along definite lines and are well known,” said a White House press release on September 30. “Coordination of the activities of the several departments … will be continued by the full cooperation among the responsible officers of those departments so that the functions of the government will be carried forward in an effective manner during the absence of the President.”⁴⁴

In Denver, Eisenhower’s recovery moved forward without complication. On October 14, 1955, Ike’s sixty-fifth birthday, he was photographed in a wheelchair on the hospital roof looking tanned and healthy. On his shirt pocket, the words much better thanks had been embroidered. With matters running smoothly in Washington, Eisenhower ruled out any return until he could walk into the White House without assistance. If cabinet officers needed guidance, they flew to Denver, and Adams carried Eisenhower’s wishes back to Washington each Friday.

In Washington, a crowd of five thousand well-wishers greeted the president at National Airport. “The doctors have given me at least a parole if not a pardon,” Ike told the happy onlookers. “I expect to be back at my accustomed duties, although they say I must ease into them and not bulldoze my way into them.”⁴⁶ After a long weekend in the White House, Eisenhower and Mamie drove to Gettysburg for another period of rest and recuperation. He presided over the occasional cabinet meeting at Camp David, and returned to Washington just before Christmas.

As he recovered, Eisenhower fretted about the 1956 election. If the doctors had doubts about his health, the issue would be settled. He would not run. But if they gave him something approaching a clean bill of health, then he would have to decide whether to seek reelection. The Republican convention was scheduled to meet in San Francisco in August, and sooner or later he would have to announce his intentions. As in 1951, Eisenhower was undecided. But he also relished the uncertainty that made him the center of attention, and the longer he could hold off making an announcement, the greater was his clout in the White House. This was particularly important if he should choose not to run again.

Aside from his health, Eisenhower’s principal concern was his successor. If he stepped down, who would take his place? The landscape looked barren. In the Republican party, Earl Warren was the most obvious choice, but it was unlikely that he would resign his post as chief justice. Eisenhower was also skeptical of Warren’s ability to make crisp decisions. The former governor, in Ike’s view, preferred to wrestle with decisions far too long. Richard Nixon was too inexperienced, and Senator William Knowland was “impossible.” Both wanted the job, but neither was presidential timber. Eisenhower thought that either Governor Dewey or Herbert Brownell could handle the responsibility, but they were anathema to Republicans in the Midwest and would split the party. Neither could be elected. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey would make an excellent president, and so would Ike’s brother Milton, but neither could get the nomination. The same was true of Alfred Gruenther and Lucius Clay.

It was shortly after Ike’s conversation with Hagerty that Leonard Hall, who had succeeded Arthur Summerfield as chairman of the Republican party, visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg to discuss the nomination. “I chatted with him,” Hall recalled, “and he was really low—the way most men are after they have heart attacks.”

Finally I said, “Chief, the Cabinet members have all been up here to see you, and when asked by the newspaper men whether they talked any politics with the president, they were able to say no. If I go out of here and say I haven’t talked politics with you, they’ll call me a damned liar.”

“Len,” Eisenhower replied, “you go out and say what you think you should say.”

That was the way he operated. Ike was a fellow who could delegate. He would give you tremendous leeway. He wanted you to take the initiative.

So I went out and said to the press that the ticket was going to be Ike and Dick. George Allen told me later that he was with the president when my statement came over the ticker. He said Ike grinned and said, “Dammit, I didn’t tell Len to say that.” But that was the way Ike worked.⁴⁸

Eisenhower still made no public statement. That, too, was typical. If he decided not to run, Clay and Hall could be disowned and no damage would be done. On the other hand, if he was running, it would be useful for them to prepare the way. In early February 1956, Eisenhower checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for what amounted to a final physical. Afterward, Dr. Paul Dudley White announced, “Medically the chances are that the President should be able to carry on an active life satisfactorily for another five to ten years.” The way was clear for Eisenhower to run. If he did, White said he would vote for him.⁵⁰

Eisenhower continued to keep his own counsel. From Walter Reed he went to George Humphrey’s Georgia plantation for two weeks of quail hunting, golf, and fishing. He pushed himself physically, played eighteen holes of golf on two occasions, and tromped through the woods like a veteran hunter. But he still made no announcement about his future plans. The word was out through Clay and Hall that Ike was running, but Eisenhower had not confirmed it.

On February 25, 1956, the president returned to the White House. Three days later he called Clay in New York. “Please come down here for dinner tonight and spend the night with us,” said Eisenhower.

“I knew that when he called up personally that something was involved,” Clay recalled. “So I said, ‘Of course, except we cannot spend the night.’ ” Clay and his wife, Marjorie, were expected in Houston, Texas, later that evening.

The following day, February 29, 1956, President Eisenhower told a special news conference that he intended to run. “I have reached a decision,” he told the press. “If the Republican National Convention asks me to run, my answer will be positive, that is, affirmative.”

“How many persons were in on your secret?” asked Edward Folliard of The Washington Post.

“Well, since last evening there have probably been a half dozen,” Eisenhower replied.

Eisenhower’s reluctance to endorse Nixon was scarcely a vote of confidence. Earlier he had suggested to Nixon that he might be better off to accept a cabinet post (anything except secretary of state or attorney general), where he could acquire some administrative experience. “The subject came up at five or six of our private conversations,” Nixon recalled, “and I always gave the same answer: ‘If you believe your own candidacy and your Administration would be better served with me off the ticket, you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I want to do what is best for you.’ ”

According to Nixon, Eisenhower never faced up to the issue. “He always answered somewhat obliquely saying, ‘No, I think we’ve got to do what’s best for you.’ ”⁵⁴ Sherman Adams and James Hagerty urged Ike to dump Nixon—Adams believed the vice president would cost Eisenhower three or four percentage points—and so, too, did his friends in the Gang. But Eisenhower declined to ask Nixon to step down. Better than most perhaps, Eisenhower recognized that Nixon was his principal link to the Republican Old Guard, and he hesitated to sever that connection. And if it were a matter of retaining that tie, he much preferred Nixon as his go-between rather than William Knowland and the other GOP oligarchs on Capitol Hill.⁵⁵

Eisenhower was genuinely conflicted. He would not endorse Nixon, but he would not ask him to step down. The choice was Nixon’s. “He has his own way to make,” Ike told Jim Hagerty in March. “But there is nothing to be gained politically by ditching him.”⁵⁶ On the other hand, Eisenhower doubted Nixon’s capacity to govern. “I’ve watched Dick a long time,” the president told former speechwriter Emmet Hughes, “and he just hasn’t grown. So I just haven’t honestly been able to believe that he is presidential timber.”⁵⁷

At his press conference on April 25, 1956, Eisenhower was reminded that he had said Nixon must chart his own course. “Had he done this?” asked William Lawrence of The New York Times.

“Well,” Eisenhower replied, “he hasn’t reported back in the terms in which I used the expression … no.”⁵⁸

That was Nixon’s opening. He asked for an appointment with the president the following day. “I would be honored to continue as Vice President under you,” he told Eisenhower. “The only reason I waited this long to tell you was that I didn’t want to do anything that would make you think I was trying to force my way onto the ticket if you didn’t want me.”⁵⁹ Eisenhower said he was pleased. He called Hagerty and said, “Dick has just told me, he’ll stay on the ticket. Why don’t you take him out right now and let him tell the reporters himself. And you can tell them that I’m delighted with the news.”⁶⁰

^a Eisenhower insisted that the meeting not be “unduly prolonged.” A lengthy meeting, he wrote Eden, “will inevitably lead the public to expect concrete solutions to the specific problems that obviously trouble the world. A meeting of a very few days could logically be accepted by the people as an effort to ease tensions and to outline means and methods of attacking the tough problems we have to face. But a prolonged meeting would lead to expectations which cannot possibly be realized.” Eisenhower to Anthony Eden, May 31, 1955, 16 The Presidency 1720–21.

^b “To this day, the Russians are still trying to figure out how we did it,” wrote General Vernon Walters, who served as one of the translators for the American delegation. Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions 289 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978).

^c In a 1965 interview, Eisenhower said, “We knew the Soviets wouldn’t accept it [“Open Skies”]. We were sure of that.” But there is little contemporary evidence to support Ike’s assertion. To the contrary, American actions at Geneva indicate they were exceedingly anxious for the Soviets to accept. Also see Eisenhower’s letter to General Gruenther, July 25, 1955, in which he extols the possibility of agreement with the Russians. For whatever reason, perhaps because of renewed tension in Berlin or the war in Vietnam, Eisenhower chose to back away from the “Open Skies” proposal. It is another example of Ike’s effort to recalibrate history, not unlike his rewriting of his wartime relationship with Kay Summersby. For Eisenhower’s 1965 comments, see Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dulles Oral History, Princeton University. The Gruenther letter is in 16 The Presidency 1790–91.

^d Bulganin replied on August 9, 1955. He agreed with Eisenhower that progress toward peace would be slow. “But the fact that we succeeded in clearing the ground for quests for agreement and in making a beginning toward sincere cooperation is very encouraging. There may be differences in ideological questions, but this must not interfere with our being good neighbors.” Bulganin to Eisenhower, August 9, 1955, 16 The Presidency 1795n6.

^e Robert Wood, the longtime head of Sears, Roebuck, was cochairman of For America, an activist isolationist organization dedicated to keeping the United States free of international commitments. Fred A. Hartley, Jr., was the coauthor of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Eisenhower’s classmates were retired generals James Van Fleet and George E. Stratemeyer, both of whom had joined For America. Senators George W. “Molly” Malone (R., Nev.) and Joseph McCarthy (R., Wis.) anchored the right wing of the GOP in the Senate, and Bertie McCormick was Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and with Wood a founder of For America.

^f Eisenhower’s relationship with Dr. Snyder was not unlike that of FDR’s with Admiral Ross McIntire, who was Roosevelt’s White House physician. Like Snyder, McIntire was a friend of the family and a poker-playing crony of the president. He was an ear, nose, and throat specialist and had been engaged originally because of FDR’s chronic respiratory problems. But he had no training in cardiology, and allowed Roosevelt’s hypertension to go for years without treatment. Like many physicians at the time, McIntire believed older people needed higher blood pressure to move their blood through narrowing arteries. In both cases. FDR and Eisenhower were poorly served by their doctor friends. Jean Edward Smith, FDR 602–6.

^g The only cover-up was Dr. Snyder’s subsequent attempt to conceal the fact that he had misdiagnosed the president. Most early biographers, as well as the Eisenhower family, accepted Dr. Snyder’s version of events: namely, that he recognized from the start that Ike had suffered a heart attack and treated him accordingly. Many heart specialists familiar with Eisenhower’s case were skeptical of Dr. Snyder’s statement, but the full record was not revealed until Professor Clarence G. Lasby of the University of Texas published Eisenhower’s Heart Attack in 1997. Professor Lasby provides convincing evidence that Dr. Snyder erred in his initial diagnosis, and details Snyder’s subsequent attempt to conceal the fact. See especially pages 57–112.

TWENTY-FOUR

Heart Attack