It is natural to think of landmark American elections as destined. In retrospect, George Washington seems to have ascended to the presidency rather than to have won it, and Abraham Lincoln’s election is recalled as a matter of faith as much as politics. The thought of Roosevelt losing in 1932 seems preposterous given our memory of the New Deal and the war. So it was with Ike. His renown after World War II makes him seem, with hindsight, an insurmountable candidate, and his identification with the 1950s renders it difficult to imagine the era without him at its head. In fact, however, Ike fought hard to be president and stood a good chance to lose.
In June 1952, Eisenhower swiftly completed his transition from general to political candidate. Although his campaign had been under way for weeks, he gave his first official speech in Abilene, delivered at the conclusion of a drenching rainstorm—a “gully washer,” as Ike recalled it. With it, he sketched the broad themes of his candidacy. “America must be spiritually, economically and militarily strong, for her own sake and for humanity,” Eisenhower told a damp, sparse crowd. “She must guard her solvency as she does her physical frontiers.” For a public waiting to hear more about his specific policies, the speech was as disappointing as the weather.
Henry Cabot Lodge, an old friend and early political supporter, tried to tutor Ike in politics. Soon after Eisenhower announced, Lodge sent him a list of sixty questions for him to be prepared to answer, as well as some general observations on how he might be viewed. “I think I have no quarrel with your general observations,” Eisenhower wrote. “I merely want to make the point that I am wary of slogans, and if I have a real conviction I am not to be deterred from expressing it merely because I am afraid of how it will read in the headlines.” Lodge had suggested no such thing, but Ike, sensitive at the outset to being above politics, insisted that he did not “intend to tailor my opinions and convictions to the one single measure of net vote appeal.”
Those were the grumblings of a man new to campaigning for office. By contrast, Eisenhower’s primary opponent was a seasoned, experienced politician with a deep, loyal base of supporters. Indeed, despite Ike’s great appeal as an American hero and strong showings in the early primaries, smart political money that summer favored Robert Taft, who had a narrow lead in delegates and thorough command of the party apparatus. The son of a president and chief justice—William Howard Taft being the only man ever to hold both those offices—Robert Taft was a leader of the U.S. Senate and an ideological archetype, a sharp critic of labor unions and the New Deal, an isolationist so committed to American nonintervention that he opposed war against Nazi Germany until the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. Clever, vindictive, and tough, double chinned and yet curiously dapper, Taft possessed “the almost evangelical loyalty of his followers.” His reach through the party ranks was unequaled. Taft allies picked the convention’s key speakers and even controlled the seating, relegating rivals to distant corners of the hall. Not for nothing was he known as “Mr. Republican.”
That gave Taft a strong advantage on an obscure rules matter that ultimately proved decisive: the seating of delegates from Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia, where competing slates of Eisenhower and Taft delegates were vying for voting slots at the convention. The conflict grew from the general’s late entry into the campaign and the efforts by the Taft forces to impose caucus rules intended to favor their candidate. In Texas, for instance, the Taft-sponsored rules held that only Republicans who had been registered as Republicans in 1948 were permitted to participate in the 1952 delegate-selection process. That had the effect of excluding new party members drawn to Eisenhower’s candidacy. The result was a strongly pro-Taft slate. Eisenhower’s supporters responded by electing a slate of their own, and the two camps stomped into their respective corners. The question before the Republican Party was which delegation to seat—and whether the contested delegates would be allowed to vote on that contentious question.
Eisenhower had the support of an intelligent campaign apparatus, led by Brownell. Having helped persuade Ike to run—and convinced of his electability—Brownell now plotted the strategy to secure the nomination. His role was largely unappreciated at the time, as he stayed out of public view for most of the campaign, careful to avoid pricking the animus of those who blamed Dewey for letting the party down in 1944 and 1948, when Brownell managed his campaigns. This time, Brownell formulated his strategy from the stacks of the New York Public Library, poring over records from earlier Republican conventions, including the complete transcript of the 1912 contest that pitted Theodore Roosevelt against Taft’s father in a debate over delegates.
Brownell emerged with a proposal that was part legal brief and part public relations strategy. Its central argument was that Taft’s strength among Republican stalwarts might earn him the nomination but would almost surely fail in the general election. Republicans savored a return to power, and Brownell knew that the choice was between pragmatism and idealism: a vote for Taft was an opportunity to assert old values; one for Eisenhower was a chance for victory. Brownell wooed wavering delegates with the promise of the White House and simultaneously challenged Taft’s tactics as suppressive and unfair. He wrote what he brilliantly branded the “Fair Play Amendment” and arranged for Governor Arthur B. Langlie of Washington, an Eisenhower supporter, to submit it to the convention.
Party rules at the time called for all delegates to be provisionally seated while rules matters were debated. The Fair Play Amendment, however, forbade contested delegates to vote on their own seating. Taft supporters argued it was unfair to change long-standing rules. Brownell countered that it was unfair to allow contested delegates to seat themselves. Taft controlled the relevant rules committee but hurt himself by refusing public and press access to the committee’s hearings in the days leading up to the convention. When Brownell and Ike’s supporters theatrically showed up outside the door, the newsman John Chancellor joined the group. He knocked on the door and was denied entrance, too. On July 2, with the convention’s opening less than a week away, the committee voted to recommend the seating of Taft’s Georgia delegates, a victory for Taft, of course, but one that reinforced the Eisenhower campaign’s claims of “stolen” delegates and party secrecy. In Fraser, Colorado, where Eisenhower spent the day fishing (catching ten trout, the legal limit), he announced: “I’m going to roar out across the country for a clean, decent operation. The American people deserve it.” In politics, as in war, he was a quick study.
That was where matters stood on the eve of the Republican convention. And with that technical debate the first order of business, the delegates began to assemble. They streamed to Chicago by car and train—a few lucky ones made the trip by plane—arriving to brass bands and banners. They swarmed bars and restaurants and filled the lobbies of the city’s grand hotels, reuniting with old friends and trading rumors and strategies with journalists and colleagues. They presented their credentials at the counters of the Congress, the Blackstone, and the Conrad Hilton. At the Hilton, the Eisenhower forces had already pulled a fast one. Brownell realized at the last minute that the Eisenhower campaign had no place for its headquarters. Luckily, Brownell’s clients included the American Hotel Association. He rang up two associates from the Hilton chain, and they found space. Although Ike and Mamie stayed at the Blackstone, their headquarters were two floors above Taft’s—at the Hilton.
As the delegates arrived, they got the first whiff of the week—Chicago’s convention hall was a little too close to its stockyards for many tastes. But to win the White House, the Republican Party would need the cattle states, which had defected to Truman in 1948. The rest of the map was tantalizing but murky. Could southern states committed to the Democratic Party since Lincoln be drawn across the aisle? Could California, which slipped away to the Democrats in 1948 despite Governor Earl Warren’s place at the bottom of that ticket, be coaxed back into its traditional alignment? Delegates buzzed over those questions late into the night, seduced by the enormity of their opportunity. For decades, Republicans had gathered, often in Chicago, to pick a nominee. This year, they knew they had the chance to pick a president.
There were warnings and conflicting signals. In the week leading up to the convention, the New York Times editorial page featured a provocative series. The headline said it all: “Mr. Taft Can’t Win,” in parts 1, 2, and 3, no less. “We conclude this series,” the paper’s editorial board wrote on July 3, “with the argument that the Taft record and campaign are of such a character that the Senator is not likely to pick up the independent or Democratic votes which the Republicans must have to succeed. General Eisenhower, on the other hand, is in a position to attract precisely that additional support that can spell the difference between Republican victory and one more bitter, frustrating and ruinous Republican defeat.”
In raw terms, however, Taft held the advantage. He came to Chicago with a lead in delegates: the Associated Press calculated that Taft had 530 of the 604 needed to win; Eisenhower had 427; Warren 76; Harold Stassen 25; and a few other candidates divided up the balance. Taft contested the AP’s calculations; his campaign publicly insisted it had 600 delegates, on the verge of locking matters up.
To the attentive ear, however, there was a note of desperation in the Taft camp. On July 5, reeling from the charges that his campaign was stealing delegates, Taft complained of “libel” and “vituperation,” shrill notes that hardly conveyed confidence. Even his rejection of the AP delegate count seemed fishy; no matter how often he insisted that the matter was all but won, the press refused to accept his analysis and continued to cover the race as a hot contest.
At 11:30 a.m. on Monday, July 7, the Republican national chairman, Guy Gabrielson, banged the convention to order and turned immediately to the issue of delegate seating. Brownell had laid the groundwork for this debate well, framing it as one of fairness and openness against secretive party bosses. When Taft forces sought to allow delegates to be provisionally seated and cast ballots for themselves, Langlie countered with the Fair Play Amendment, after which Taft allies parried with an amendment to Langlie’s proposal. On the floor, there was bedlam as delegates argued over the intricacies of an issue that all understood could decide the nomination. Finally, the questions were put to votes, and on the key question Eisenhower won by 658 to 548. Taft’s floor managers suddenly understood Eisenhower’s strength and did not protest when the Fair Play Amendment itself was put before the convention. It was accepted on a voice vote. Although the full convention had yet to consider the seating of each of the contested delegations, the rules, which had once favored Taft, now gave the edge to Eisenhower.
Ike stayed away from the convention floor but monitored the roll call from his hotel suite, where he relaxed in a robe and slippers. He won a bet on the final vote and collected $1 from an aide. Mamie shrugged off a painful tooth infection for long enough to speak briefly with reporters. She too cheered the results, which she described as “encouraging,” and promised she would campaign with her husband if he were nominated: “I go everyplace I can with him. I’ve been following him for 36 years.”
Fights over procedure gave way to a less consequential but more histrionic event, Douglas MacArthur’s keynote address. It had been arranged by Taft and was intended to stir conservatives who violently opposed his firing by Truman the year before. But MacArthur—he who spoke of himself in the third person—often misunderstood his effect on those around him, allowing his stentorian voice and self-regard to overwhelm his better sense. Thundering from the podium, he declaimed that the Truman administration had “brought us to fiscal instability, political insecurity and military weakness.” The Democratic Party, MacArthur charged, had “become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state.” It was, one perceptive New York Times analyst noted, “a stirring oration for a lost cause.” MacArthur’s time was up.
That pattern—delegate fights on the floor that formed the convention’s real business while odes to a bygone Republican philosophy emanated from the podium—continued the next day. Herbert Hoover recalled the party’s history from the dais as Herbert Brownell molded its future on the floor. Hoover complained of Democratic misrule and urged the rapid buildup of the U.S. Air Force. Meanwhile, Brownell sold Eisenhower’s case to delegates, concentrating on those pledged to other candidates on the first ballot but who would be up for grabs if there was a second. Ike did his part, meeting with two hundred delegates that day in his fifth-floor suite at the Blackstone; some wore their Taft buttons, but they came to meet the general anyway.
The following morning, the seating of the contested delegations finally came before the full convention. The results quickly established Ike as the front-runner. The Georgia slate that favored Eisenhower by fourteen to three was seated over the objections of Taft’s managers; having lost that key test, they folded on Texas, where a slate favoring Ike by thirty-three to five was approved. For the first time, Eisenhower moved ahead of Taft in the AP poll. The general told Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, “I’m going to win.” Supporters began speculating on the choice of a vice president. In Washington, Truman, who believed Taft the easier candidate for Democrats to beat in November, announced that he was “worried” about the turn of events in Chicago. “It looks like my candidate is going to get beat,” he joked.
The seating issue ended all hopes for Taft. Illinois placed his name in nomination, California nominated Warren, Maryland did the honors for Eisenhower, Minnesota tapped Stassen, and then Oklahoma nominated MacArthur. At the end of the first ballot, Ike led with 595 votes, just 9 short of victory. Stassen then declared that Minnesota would switch to Eisenhower, and the race was over. The final tally was 845 for Eisenhower, 280 for Taft.
In the ensuing bedlam, Ike left his hotel to cross the street and see Taft personally, a thoughtful gesture intended to emphasize Republican unity. As he elbowed his way through the lobby of the Hilton, Eisenhower was surrounded by Taft supporters, many of them fighting tears. He mumbled sympathies and proceeded upstairs, where he found the defeated candidate staggered by the vote but willing to pose together for the press. It wasn’t exactly a picture of a unified Republican Party, but it would do.
Ike wasted no time moving forward: he hired Tom Stephens to serve as his appointments secretary and James Hagerty to serve as press secretary. Both would remain at his side for the next eight years.
The convention’s other piece of business was the selection, nomination, and confirmation of a vice president. Although the selection would prove immensely important, Eisenhower essentially turned it over to his top political aides. “He expressed surprise,” Brownell later wrote, “that for all practical purposes he could select his running mate by letting the delegates know his personal choice.” Learning this, Eisenhower ruled out several men in whom he had great confidence—his campaign manager, Henry Cabot Lodge, was running for the Senate; Brownell himself had no interest in the post, nor did Tom Dewey, who would have been a difficult sell to the convention in any case—but then wrote down the names of others who would be acceptable to him. They were Congressmen Charles Halleck and Walter Judd; Colorado’s governor, Dan Thornton; Washington’s governor, Arthur Langlie; and California senator Richard Nixon.
In 1952, Nixon was a fresh, up-and-coming senator, seasoned in the tricky politics of mid-century California. A native of Yorba Linda, a Navy veteran, and a lawyer, Nixon was a perennial outsider, a scrapper who worked hard for his achievements and resented those to whom they came more easily. He had established his national reputation in the prosecution of Alger Hiss, a debut that would stamp him to some as a brave and principled anti-Communist and to others as a snarling pugilist. He was young—Ike thought him forty-two, only to discover later that Nixon was just thirty-nine—with lovely daughters and a striking wife, whom he had courted in Nixon’s dogged fashion, first by driving her on dates with rivals, eventually wearing down her resistance and winning her hand. And though he traveled with a chip forever on his shoulder, he could be charming in his fashion and politically savvy in the extreme.
Through the weeks leading up to the convention, he had done his best to assist Eisenhower while, as a delegate from California, formally pledged to support Warren. Nixon circulated a “poll” to constituents seeking their advice on what to do if and when Warren should fall short of his presidential ambitions. He worked the California delegation to woo its members to Eisenhower even as the Warren train sped to the convention. When the delegation arrived, the buses sent to pick them up were draped with “Eisenhower for President” banners. Those machinations would seal Warren’s lifelong enmity, and Warren and Nixon would circle each other for the rest of their careers.
Ike knew of Warren’s suspicions about Nixon. On July 8, the second day of the convention, Warren sent an emissary to the general’s hotel room and asked for an audience. Admitted, the man reported that, according to Warren, “we have a traitor in our delegation. It’s Nixon … He has not paid attention to his oath and immediately upon being elected, started working for Eisenhower and has been doing so ever since. I have word he is actively in touch with the Eisenhower people.” Warren asked Eisenhower to rein Nixon in and to halt his interference in California’s politics. Ike assured Warren’s messenger that he was not behind any machinations, an assurance dutifully reported to an unconvinced Warren.
Nixon himself stewed over what to do if offered the vice presidency. Late into the night, he and his wife, Pat, sat up in their hotel room, debating whether he should accept. To do so, both realized, would derail his immediate plans for the Senate but establish him as a national figure. At 4:00 a.m., they phoned Murray Chotiner, Nixon’s Machiavellian campaign manager, and summoned him to their hotel room. Chotiner urged him to accept. “There comes a time,” he said, “when you have to go up or out.” When Chotiner left an hour later, Richard and Pat Nixon were still debating.
Neither Nixon’s ambivalence nor Warren’s discomfort affected Eisenhower’s appraisal of the young senator. He was impressed by Nixon’s handling of the Hiss case and untroubled by Warren’s allegations. Moreover, Nixon nicely balanced the Eisenhower ticket. His youth was a welcome contrast to Ike’s age (at sixty-two, Eisenhower stood to become the oldest man ever elected to the presidency), and his California base represented an important addition to Ike’s Midwest and eastern sources of support. So Eisenhower told Brownell that should top Republicans agree on Nixon, he would be happy to have him on the ticket.
Meeting in Brownell’s office, the group considered first Taft and then William Knowland, the senior senator from California. They were “knocked down.” Then Dewey, who saw early promise in Nixon, formally suggested the young senator. Paul Hoffman, the chief organizer of independents and Democrats for Ike, agreed: “Nixon fills all the requirements.” With that, the group fell in line. Brownell reported the recommendation to a pleased Ike. The convention ratified the choice, and the Republican ticket for 1952 was formed.
Securing the nomination was the hard part of Eisenhower’s work. His crossover appeal to Democrats was already well known. However bereft Taft’s supporters were, it was unlikely that they would abandon their party in the general election. And whatever risk there might have been to the Republican base ended a few weeks later when Democrats, also meeting in Chicago, chose a ticket topped by the elegant and eloquent Adlai Stevenson.
Stevenson’s acceptance was delivered with the rhetorical gifts that endeared him to American liberals. The presidency, he declared, was vast in its burdens, inspiring in its possibility. “Its potential for good or evil, now and in the years of our lives, smothers exultation and converts vanity to prayer.” His speech continued, rich and vivid, winding through scripture and policy toward a graceful conclusion. “Help me to do the job in these years of darkness,” Stevenson told his audience. “And we will justify our glorious past and the loyalty of silent millions who look to us for compassion, for understanding, and for honest purpose.”
Listening from Denver, Ike was among those “impressed by his speaking style and polish.” Ike’s friend George Allen was not so moved. “He’s too accomplished an orator,” Allen argued. “He will be easy to beat.” What Allen sensed—and what the Eisenhower campaign then proceeded to exploit—was Stevenson’s inexperience in the area of foreign affairs and his intellectual distance from America’s working people. He was stirring, yes, but also aloof and cerebral. For Stevenson, the campaign was an opportunity to educate; for Eisenhower, it was a battle to win. So while Stevenson formed arguments and theses, Ike turned to short advertisements and jingles. It struck some as trite, but by Election Day no adult American had not heard “I like Ike.” The 1952 campaign not only created a winner; it changed the character of American politics.
Stevenson, meanwhile, immediately compromised his appeal by choosing the Alabama senator John Sparkman as his vice president. Sparkman was a segregationist intended to shore up southern support (Ike’s roots in Texas and Kansas made him a serious threat to Democratic dominance of the South), but his presence on the ticket undermined Stevenson’s lofty liberalism and emphasized the profound Democratic split between its labor, intellectual, and segregationist bases.
Ike allowed himself the luxury of avoiding most public campaigning for the month of August, deciding that he could only hold up for eight or nine weeks. He spent August laying plans, venturing out on a light speaking schedule, and experimenting with television. The early efforts were unimpressive: Ike looked old on camera, and he struggled with the teleprompter. Aides advised more makeup and a sunlamp; the teleprompter was scrapped. Eisenhower took most of it in stride, marveling at the machinery of getting votes. Looking over one memo outlining arrangements for an upcoming trip, he arched an eyebrow: “Thirty-five pages to get me into Philadelphia. The invasion of Normandy was on five pages.”
Truman’s ascension to the presidency had been historically abrupt. He barely knew FDR, then had to step into Roosevelt’s gigantic shoes with World War II still on. Wishing that on no man, Truman made what he considered a good-faith effort that summer to ease the transition for his successor. He cabled Eisenhower on August 12 in Denver, inviting Ike to join him at the White House for a briefing by the CIA and then lunch with the cabinet, a courtesy Truman was extending to both candidates so that they would be “entirely briefed.” Truman’s motives were sound, but he must have recognized that it would be difficult for Eisenhower to accept. Ike was running to end Democratic control of Washington, and his candidacy was predicated on his grasp of international affairs. To be briefed suggested that he needed briefing, and by those whose judgment he disparaged. Moreover, Ike had his own access to foreign policy information: the head of Central Intelligence, General Bedell Smith, was Ike’s colleague during World War II.
So, to Truman’s astonishment, Eisenhower turned him down. “It is my duty to remain free to analyze publicly the policies and acts of the present administration whenever it appears to me to be proper and in the country’s interests,” he wrote to Truman, releasing the letter to the press and public. Ike did, however, accept Truman’s offer of regular CIA reports, stressing that he wanted it “understood that the possession of these reports will in no other way limit my freedom to discuss or analyze foreign programs as my judgment dictates.”
Truman was furious. He responded by hand: “I am extremely sorry that you have allowed a bunch of screwballs to come between us. You have made a bad mistake and I’m hoping it won’t injure this great Republic.” A calmer exchange of notes soothed feelings somewhat, but the rupture was now there.
Ike moved quickly to make sure he would have the material that Truman offered without the strings that Truman’s offer implied. He chastised Smith for briefing Stevenson: “To the political mind it looked like the outgoing Administration was canvassing all its resources in order to support Stevenson’s election.” Smith responded by making sure Ike received weekly briefings, some by Smith himself.
Once the campaign began, Eisenhower discovered what all generals, and most politicians, learn—that planning is essential but that plans rarely play out as intended. Two weeks after Labor Day, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket confronted its first crisis. Rumors that Nixon’s supporters had supplemented his government salary with a fund for political expenses murmured around the edges of the race, and Nixon addressed them quietly, discussing the matter with a friendly reporter, Peter Edson. Edson’s report blandly described the money as an “extra expense account” and made clear that donors did not receive favorable treatment in return for their contributions. The New York Post took a far different approach. The headline on its September 18 story read: “Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.” Traveling through California by train that day, Nixon tried to ignore the story and then to suggest that the allegations were the work of Communists. None of that succeeded. The bottom line—that he supervised $18,000 raised from donors for his benefit—was true. And it was particularly damning given that it undercut a principal theme of the Republican campaign: that lassitude in Washington had given rise to Democratic corruption.
Eisenhower was supportive but reserved. Carefully preserving his own options, he drafted a note to Nixon. “In the certainty that the whole affair comprises no violation of the highest standards of conduct, a critical question becomes the speed and completeness of your presentation of fact to the public,” Ike wrote, dictating to an aide in the parlor car of their campaign train. As Nixon surely recognized, any hint that he had violated “the highest standards of conduct” would supply Ike with the excuse to dump him. Moreover, Eisenhower explained that he would be unable to speak to Nixon that day—their train schedules made it impossible. That, too, preserved Ike’s distance.
Within twenty-four hours, many leading Republicans were insisting that Eisenhower drop Nixon from the ticket. Tom Dewey warned Nixon that his supporters were abandoning him; some suggested that he be replaced by Bill Knowland or Earl Warren. Warren, never a Nixon fan, declined to comment. Ike summoned Brownell from New York to meet his train in St. Louis; Brownell joined Adams, who counseled patience and urged Ike to wait until Nixon could explain himself.
Eisenhower, meanwhile, maintained his silence. When reporters probed for his reaction, he responded that while he generally had confidence in Nixon, he had not been able to reach him to discuss the revelations—a statement also well short of an endorsement. For two days, Eisenhower allowed Nixon to dangle. On September 20, the two finally spoke by phone. Eisenhower still refused to commit, insisting, “This is an awful hard thing for me to decide.”
That was more than Nixon could take. Days of building anxiety exploded. “Well, General, I know how it is,” Nixon said. “But there comes a time in matters like this when you’ve either got to shit or get off the pot.”
Eisenhower absorbed that impertinence but still refused to give Nixon what he wanted. Instead, Ike proclaimed that Nixon would have to fight for himself. Eisenhower would not damage his candidacy even if it meant destroying Nixon’s. Coolly, he said, “If the impression got around that you got off the ticket because I forced you to get off, it’s going to be very bad. On the other hand, if I issue a statement in effect backing you up, people will accuse me of wrongdoing.”
So Nixon booked television time for September 23, determined to make his best case for himself and to save his place on the ticket. The speech, which he delivered from the El Capitan Theatre in the heart of Hollywood, was maudlin yet masterful. “My fellow Americans,” he began, faltering slightly at first, gaining confidence as he spoke. “I want to tell you my side of the case.”
The fund was not a secret. It was not used to pay him directly, but rather for “political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.” Its donors neither asked for nor received any special treatment. By modern standards, Nixon’s fund was picayune; even by the laws of the day, it was commonplace and legal. Indeed, Stevenson himself helped pay for his political activities with a similar account. But Nixon did not wish to rest on mere legalities.
Instead, he explained that he’d declined to supplement his income by putting his wife, Pat, on the payroll, notwithstanding that Sparkman employed his wife—“That is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that,” Nixon hastened to add—and even though Pat was eminently qualified. “She is,” he boasted, “a wonderful stenographer.” He had submitted the records of his funds to an independent audit, which had come back clean. He was a poor kid, served his country, ran for Congress, and saved a little money. He laid out his mortgage debt and his insurance policies. Pat, he noted, did not have a mink coat, but she did have “a respectable Republican cloth coat.”
He finished with the passage that would secure Nixon’s speech in history:
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers.
And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.
Nixon and his family were under assault by critics who would take their dog. He had volunteered his whole financial history, and he urged the other candidates to do the same. Eisenhower, whose tax treatment of his book income was sufficiently exotic to raise questions, jabbed his pencil into his pad when Nixon laid down that challenge.
Nixon’s great strategic stroke was urging listeners to register their views with the Republican National Committee, effectively taking the matter out of Eisenhower’s hands. And in overwhelming numbers, they did. Among those who urged Eisenhower to welcome Nixon back into his graces was Edgar, never shy about telling his little brother what to do. “If you don’t unqualifiedly endorse Nixon after that talk last night,” Edgar cabled, “you might as well fold your tent and fade away.” Nixon had peered over the edge of the abyss. Exhausted and relieved, he crawled back.
Eisenhower asked Nixon to join him in Wheeling, West Virginia, and when Nixon’s plane arrived, he was surprised to discover Ike waiting for him. “Why not?” Eisenhower asked. “You’re my boy.” If that was demeaning by design or merely by reflex, it was, at least, affirmation that Nixon’s career survived. Speaking with reporters, Eisenhower expressed his confidence in the vice presidential nominee. A memorandum summarizing the campaign records the significance of Ike’s comments: “This apparently settles the Nixon fund affair.”
Ike’s campaign strategy called for a sweep of the country. Over the objections of many advisers, he had vowed to campaign from coast to coast—reaching into areas such as the South, where Lucius Clay advised him to make an effort and where he felt an affinity with residents despite the region’s wariness of Republicans that dated to Lincoln. He traveled 51,376 miles in total, 20,871 of that by rail. By the Republican National Committee’s count, Eisenhower visited 232 towns in forty-five states. One day he was celebrating the dedication of an FM radio station; the next he was reassuring Westerners of his commitment to federal dam projects. He offered praise for postal workers, pledged to support Republican rejection of compulsory health care, and delivered strongly worded, if somewhat unfocused, criticism of the incumbent administration, which, he charged, had “bungled us perilously close to World War III.”
During September, though, his speeches took on flourishes of elegance. He began quoting from Ecclesiastes. “There is a time to keep and a time to cast away,” he said, first in Indianapolis on September 9, then more often and more prominently as he warmed to that remark. He spoke moderately to organized labor in New York City on September 17, refusing to overturn the Taft-Hartley Act, which set the terms of labor-management relations strongly in favor of management, but promising that he would consider amending it. He incisively addressed southern Democrats in Columbia, South Carolina, on the thirtieth: “My only appeal to you, my only appeal to America, is that of Governor Byrnes, to place loyalty to the country above loyalty to a political party.”
Just as Eisenhower was becoming more nuanced in handling political affairs, he also began to master political debate. When Truman suggested that Eisenhower had been naive about the threat of Soviet Communism during the Potsdam Conference, Ike sharply retorted that Truman’s mismanagement of foreign affairs was to blame for the Korean War, already by then responsible for 120,000 dead, wounded, or missing Americans. From early pledges of fidelity to a Republican platform he had done little to shape, he sketched a broader, more moderate template. He saw a limited role for the federal government in education and supported unemployment benefits, aid to widows, and help for children living in poverty. He belittled federal assistance that infantilized Americans—one favorite line of attack was to quote a federal manual that advised readers how to wash their dishes—but did not reject federal help for the needy or even some of the New Deal’s hallmark programs. Speaking in Memphis on October 15, Eisenhower allowed that the Tennessee Valley Authority had done much good for that part of the country. He even gingerly waded into the topic of civil rights, noting that Democratic lip service to racial equality was undermined by the party’s political factionalism; the hollowness of the Democrats’ commitment to that idea, he emphasized, was illustrated by the persistence of segregation in the District of Columbia after twenty years of Democratic rule of Washington.
Rather than depleting Eisenhower, the campaign seemed to energize him. On October 14, he gave four speeches in a single day, canvassing much of Texas and celebrating his birthday in his home state. He was, he insisted, leading not just a political effort but a “crusade” intended to restore dignity to Americans and strength to those opposing Communism. The use of the word “crusade” also nicely reminded voters of his war record by adopting the title of his memoir. He was, Eisenhower said at the outset and throughout, committed to leading “us forward in the broad middle way toward prosperity without war for ourselves and our children.”
The campaign’s increasing confidence and the candidate’s growing command of both country and idiom did not mean that the effort was without difficulties. Ike’s determination to run nationally created problems in the South, where the candidate felt personally at home but overwhelmingly Democratic audiences were wary. More complicated even than that was Eisenhower’s visit to Wisconsin in early October. There, the fall ballot included Senator Joseph McCarthy, Ike’s fellow Republican and an incipient figure in the nation’s politics and culture.
McCarthy’s campaign of fear and innuendo was in its second year, broadening its reach as he discovered the ease with which he could smear opponents. It had begun, infamously, with his Wheeling, West Virginia, address on February 9, 1950. In it, McCarthy had claimed to have “here in my hand a list of 205 … names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” Two days later, in a letter to Truman, McCarthy appeared to amend that to 57 Communists, but added that he knew “absolutely” of another 300 “certified to the Secretary for discharge because of Communism.”
Those charges were disconcertingly vague. But McCarthy could be specific, too. One of those he attacked was none other than Eisenhower’s mentor General George Marshall, who had gone on to serve as secretary of state and then secretary of defense in the Truman administration. Among his assignments in the postwar years had been a mission to China, where Marshall attempted to negotiate an end to that country’s civil war between the Communist forces commanded by Mao and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army. That war ended in a failure of Marshall’s mission. The Nationalist Party was defeated, and Chiang fled to Taiwan. McCarthy blamed Marshall. As usual, he did not charge directly, but his attack on Marshall was neither subtle nor fair. Addressing the Senate on March 14, 1951, McCarthy coyly declined the invitation to judge whether Marshall was an actual Communist (“I am not going to try to delve into George Marshall’s mind”). He not only mischaracterized Marshall’s efforts in China but also described his work as “the most weird and traitorous double deal that I believe any of us has ever heard of.”
On June 14, 1951, McCarthy additionally alleged that Marshall had sent unprepared American troops to fight in North Africa during World War II—troops that Ike commanded—and that he had even collaborated with Stalin in the surrender of Eastern Europe and China. Even Marshall’s refusal to write a memoir was viewed with suspicion by McCarthy, who suggested that the general was hiding his actions. To McCarthy, Marshall was “part of a conspiracy on a scale so immense … a conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.”
Aside from Eisenhower’s debt to Marshall, he owed his former boss a defense as a matter of decency. At a stop in Green Bay, he appeared with McCarthy after warning the senator that he would publicly remind the crowd of their disagreements. McCarthy predicted Ike would be booed, but Eisenhower’s remarks were warmly received. McCarthy glowered afterward.
That night, Eisenhower was to deliver his major address of the day, a speech in Milwaukee. Unlike his earlier, oblique reference to occasional disagreements with McCarthy, his speech that night included a direct and specific mention of his support for Marshall. McCarthy and Wisconsin’s governor, Walter Kohler, learned of his intentions, and the governor lobbied hard for him to drop the paragraph (McCarthy wisely kept silent). Kohler argued not that Marshall was unworthy of defending but rather that the passage, as written, seemed inappropriate to the rest of the address, which was focused on other topics. As the train rumbled along, Kohler pressed his case with Sherman Adams. Gabriel Hauge, Eisenhower’s lead speechwriter and a man Adams described as a “high-minded and zealous stickler for principle,” objected. But Adams sided with Kohler. “Some adjustments,” he concluded, “had to be made for party harmony.” When Adams made that recommendation to Eisenhower, he brusquely concurred. “Take it out,” he growled.
Unbeknownst to Adams or Eisenhower, however, an early copy of the speech had already been released to reporters, who were all too eager to relay the news of such an open break between two leading Republicans. When Eisenhower delivered the address, attention riveted not on what he said but on what he deleted. Eisenhower’s move emboldened McCarthy and wounded Marshall and naturally raised questions about both his politics and his character: Was he closer to McCarthy than it appeared? Was he willing to cast aside a trusted colleague for the sake of political expediency? The New York Times headlined its editorial “An Unhappy Day,” capturing much of the press reaction. Eisenhower understood his error but responded to the torrent of criticism, much of it from friends, with a mixture of chagrin and defensiveness. After Harold Stassen weighed in, Ike conceded that he agreed “in principle … with the criticism you make on the revisions made in the Milwaukee talk.” He went on, however, to defend the omission by asserting that his staff recommended it, that elsewhere in the talk he implicitly criticized the methods of the Communist hunters, and that there was some evidence that McCarthy’s personal attacks on Marshall were overstated. That was disingenuous. Eisenhower knew he had let down a friend. No amount of hedging could undo the damage. “I am,” the New York Times publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, wrote to Eisenhower, “sick at heart.”
It was, Hauge reflected two decades later, “as bad a moment as he went through in the whole campaign.” John Eisenhower agreed. It was a “terrible mistake, the worst of my dad’s life in politics.” Ike’s staff, perhaps responding to Eisenhower’s disappointment, omitted any reference to the controversy in the file summary of the campaign’s major addresses. According to the file, the speech was devoted to “good government—more specifically, communism and freedom.” General George Marshall’s name does not appear.
Eisenhower’s performance was imperfect, as evidenced by the Slush Fund and Marshall controversies. But he was playing a strong hand, and Stevenson made that advantage even greater by so misplaying his. Through the crucial weeks of October, Stevenson chose to challenge Eisenhower on foreign policy and national security grounds. He accused Eisenhower of isolationism and of aiding Communism by his approach to international affairs. Bolstered by Truman, who emerged late in the campaign to lead the criticism of Eisenhower, the Democrats assailed the general for criticizing the war in Korea and for his skepticism about increases in defense spending. “All this,” said Truman in a nationally broadcast address on October 22, “is the straight isolationist line.”
Eisenhower was the nominee of a divided party. He had never held public office, never articulated a developed and coherent domestic policy. But the Democrats chose to confront him where he was strongest, in his command of international affairs. Predictably, the effort was a bust. Stevenson slid further behind in the polls, and Truman appeared more desperate.
Then, on Friday evening, October 24, Ike sealed the outcome. Speaking to an overflow crowd of some five thousand people at Detroit’s Masonic Auditorium, he promised to forgo politics in “this anxious autumn for America.” He vowed to deliver the “unvarnished truth” in examining America’s place in the world, and he accused the Truman administration of failing to deter or repel Communist aggression. Eisenhower reminded his listeners: “I know something of the totalitarian mind.” He then outlined his bill of particulars and insisted that the first task of the next president was to forgo all diversions and end the Korean War, saying: “That job requires a personal trip … Only in that way could I learn how best to serve the American people in the cause of peace.
Democrats called it grandstanding. Stevenson said he would go, too.
But the prospect of America’s supreme commander—the general who had accepted Germany’s surrender—now personally taking charge of the Korean War was electrifying. Stevenson ended the campaign as he began, with eloquence but without effective counter to the appeal of a general who transcended his party and enjoyed the admiration of the world.
Swede Hazlett dropped Ike a note on the eve of the election. “If you win,” he wrote, “I’ll be bursting with pride; if you lose, I’ll still be bursting with pride, tempered with a modicum of relief that you are to be spared a frightful four years of terrific responsibility.”
On Election Day, Ike spent the afternoon at Columbia—the university lent him his old quarters for the campaign. He worked on a painting and chatted with supporters. He asked Brownell to drop by and, looking ahead, offered him the position of chief of staff, a new post that would carry enormous weight in the Eisenhower White House. Brownell thanked him for his confidence but said he was still enjoying his legal work. “So you want to remain a lawyer,” Eisenhower replied. “Well, how about being attorney general?” After hastily reviewing his personal finances and huddling with his wife, Brownell accepted that evening.
As the returns poured in, the extent of Eisenhower’s triumph became apparent. Turnout was astonishing. Two out of three American adults voted in 1952, and fully 80 percent of those registered cast ballots. Eisenhower received 33.9 million votes, over 11 million more than any previous Republican candidate. He carried every state outside the South and a few border states and made inroads even there, winning Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia and leaving just the core of the Confederacy to vote for Stevenson, a bitter result for the Illinois liberal. Sparkman arguably carried more seats for Stevenson than Stevenson did for himself.
At 2:05 a.m., Dwight Eisenhower addressed two thousand supporters in the grand ballroom of the Commodore Hotel in New York. He was subdued, humbled by the weight of the office he was to assume. He emphasized the importance of national unity and promised an energetic pursuit of a new direction. Dwight Eisenhower was now president-elect of the United States. Back in her hotel room, Mamie wept.