Dwight D. Eisenhower (World leaders past & present)

Rating:
Summary: A good, brief biography of Eisenhower the president
Review: One reviewer complained that this was not a complete biography, and that is certainly correct. It is a biography of Eisenhower as president, in a series devoted to covering the American presidents. That is the focus of the series, and most of the books in this series ought to share that focus. Apart from a biography on William Henry Harrison and Garfield, the emphasis on all these books should be on the presidential career of each individual.

I will confess that I am an admirer of General Eisenhower, but not of President Eisenhower. He certainly did count many achievements to his credit during his two terms of office, but his administrations were marred by some utterly dreadful events, and not a few failures to take strong moral stands by Eisenhower himself. His administration also established several unfortunate precedents, such as overthrowing foreign governments. Wicker focuses more on the failures than the achievements, but the most he can be accused of here is a slight--and I think it is very slight indeed--lack of balance. In the more recent presidents, we tend sometimes to see what we want to see, and many simply do not want to see the failures of his years in office.

The general assessment of Eisenhower as president is that he had some real achievements in foreign policy but fared far worse in domestic policy. On the former, he is credited with keeping the United States out of war (and getting us out of Korea) during the increasing tension of the Cold War. He also, in what I believe was his greatest moment as president on the foreign front, intervened strongly when France and Britain attempted to seize control of the Suez Canal in conjunction with an Israeli invasion of the Sinai. As Wicker correctly points out, however, this has to be balanced with the tragedy of the Gary Powers incident, which sabotaged a probable arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Worse, Eisenhower supported some morally reprehensible covert operations in Iraq (where we deposed a popular leader and replaced him with the Shah), Guatemala (where we deposed a democratically elected government), and in Cuba (where Eisenhower's folks undertook the planning for what later became the Bay of Pigs--Kennedy's greatest failure being not to reject the plan entirely). Eisenhower also is responsible for our initial involvement in Vietnam, which would deepen tragically in the Kennedy and Johnson years.

Wicker does a fine job of covering the domestic issues, although I think he draws back from a rather obvious conclusion (though many other writers do not): Eisenhower, although himself a moral, good individual, was at best morally timid and at worst a moral coward. In the terms used my countless ministers in my own Southern Baptist church, Eisenhower engaged in sins of omission. He lamented the Brown v. Board of Education, and failed to support it or implement it, although he did intervene in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas when our governor Orville Faubus refused to allow the integration of Central High School. But overall, Eisenhower had a dreadful record on Civil Rights, and we know from numerous personal comments--many of which Wicker records--that he was personally not very sensitive on racial matters (and that is putting it somewhat mildly). Also, despite personally deploring Senator Joe McCarthy and his tactics, Eisenhower did not intervene for several years of his presidency and did not condemn McCarthy publicly. Especially tragic was his failure to defend his patron George Marshall, one of America's great public servants (both in running WW II from Washington and later in his tremendous service in the State Department) from explicit charges of treason by McCarthy. On the other hand, Eisenhower did oversee the creation of NASA (though he wouldn't promote it the way that Kennedy did upon becoming president, for whom going to the moon was a mania). Wicker does point out briefly his great achievement in overseeing the building of the Interstate Highway system, and spends rather more time on his largely ineffectual attempt to convince the American populace that no missile or nuclear gap existed between the US and the USSR. Ironically, during the Eisenhower years, it was the Democrats who were pushing for more military spending, with Ike convinced that the US had more than enough to deter and defeat the Soviet Union in any forthcoming war. Significant mention is made of Eisenhower's farewell address, the first significant farewell since Washington's. In that he warned of the expanding influence of the Military-Industrial complex, a warning that we have not yet heeded.

Wicker also does a good job of discussing the bizarre lack of support that Eisenhower gave Nixon, a lack that undermined Nixon's campaign in an excruciatingly tight election that might have cost him the presidency. It remains one of Eisenhower's most perplexing failures. Although I myself would have preferred Kennedy to Nixon, there is good reason to believe that Eisenhower negatively affected the outcome of the election, from a Republican point of view.

This is a good, brief book on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Wicker, although admiring of Ike as a man, is unsympathetic to him as a president. But I would argue that he is fair. If one wants a full-length biography of Eisenhower, one could turn to Stephen Ambrose's two-volume biography, or Carlo D'Este's superb biography of Eisenhower's military career.

Rating:
Summary: Workmanlike
Review: Some might argue that the job Tom Wicker has done here is a perfect fit for the Eisenhower presidency - workmanlike, efficient, strong enough to keep your interest but not compelling enough to make the reader feel like an expert on the President or develop a strong viewpoint about him. ... I would have liked a little more. (Something, for instance, on the Interstate Highway system would have been helpful. Or his views/feelings on postwar culture.)

Rating:
Summary: Not really a biography but a good introduction
Review: Tom Wicker spent thirty years writing on politics for the New York Times. Having worked as a young reporter in the 1950s, he combines memories of actual events with secondary sources to produce a short, lively monograph on Eisenhower's presidency.

Older readers can remember the media Ike: the winning smile, the bumbling answers at press conferences, the incessant golf. The electorate loved him, but contemporary observers were not impressed. They looked on him as a career soldier who despised politics, leaving handling of foreign policy to the slightly frightening John Foster Dulles and domestic policy to no one at all.

Wicker admits that this was once his view but no longer. However, he adds that Eisenhower's growing reputation owes nothing to domestic affairs. Perhaps his major success in this area was the Interstate Highway Bill of 1955, which is still financing our interstate roads. Trivia buffs note: this was the last major Republican program that required new taxes.

Wicker joins two generations of historians in condemning Eisenhower's refusal to speak out against McCarthy or in favor of civil rights. All agree this was politically astute but morally deplorable.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision on segregation came as an unpleasant shock to Eisenhower, but he was in good company. Most northern officials were lukewarm (an admirable exception was attorney general, Herbert Brownell). Holding racial views similar to Lincoln's, Eisenhower disapproved of mistreating Negroes but believed their capacities did not measure up to those of the white race. Wicker's discussion spends more time on Chief Justice Warren than the president, but it's an eye-opener. Legend gives Warren credit for the decision, but this is wrong. He didn't join the court until the case was nearing its end. On his arrival, it was already 5-4 in favor of desegregation. His accomplishment was convincing opponents to switch their votes. Such a controversial decision required unanimity, Warren pointed out. A split Court would encourage southern resistance, bringing disorder to the country and casting doubt on the Court's legitimacy. Good patriots all, they switched, including the hidebound southern racist, Stanley Reed. Does anyone believe this could happen today?

Among America's long line of political scoundrels, Joseph McCarthy stands out for sheer vulgarity. Many supporters in the Senate including Richard Nixon thought he was slightly creepy. That his wild accusations of rampant communist subversion ruined many careers without turning up any new spies was public knowledge. The New York Times and Washington Post pointed this out. Conservative Time Magazine heaped ridicule on him.

But no elected official dared cross McCarthy. Contemptuous in private, Eisenhower took care never to make his feelings public although newspapers regularly found hints between the lines. The Senate censure in 1954 happened only because of McCarthy's increasingly insulting behavior and a modest decline of anticommunist hysteria. It was a slap on the wrist, and McCarthy remained in charge of his committee, so no one can explain why he suddenly fell silent. Wicker has no explanation, and he concludes with the usual regret that Eisenhower failed to take a courageous moral position.

Historians always attack politicians for refusing to take courageous moral positions, forgetting that doing so is invariably disastrous. Perhaps the greatest example is Lincoln's emancipation proclamation in September 1862. Although a feeble antislavery gesture, it was unpopular in the north. Democrats happily pointed out that Lincoln had converted a war for the union into a war for the Negro, and they crushed Republicans in the election two months later.

Foreign policy is almost entirely responsible for Eisenhower's improving reputation. Even those of us who remember the 1950s forget how close World War III seemed. Many national leaders and several of the Joint Chiefs wanted to get on with it as soon as possible. America's foreign policy seemed in the hands of elderly secretary of state John Foster Dulles, a pugnacious, evangelical who had been lecturing foreigners on American virtues since the Wilson administration. He made almost everyone nervous with enthusiastic talk of liberating eastern Europe, regaining China, and using atomic weapons if provoked excessively. It turns out Dulles was firmly under Eisenhower's thumb, and this rhetoric mellowed as years passed. The president himself was far more peaceable than anyone thought at the time. He gets enough credit for ending the Korean war but too little for refusing to strike back at China's threats to Formosa (his military advisors were raring to go). When he aborted the English-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, he was not reading opinion polls. Americans generally approved the invasion.

Most impressive of all, he kept the military firmly under his thumb. Despite the usual 1952 campaign rhetoric about defeating communism, Eisenhower held the defense budget level when he wasn't reducing it. His finest hour (although no one thought so at the time) came after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957. His announcement that orbiting a satellite was not a big deal produced universal dismay. Editorials denounced his short-sightedness; cartoons pictured him with his head in the sand. His poll ratings dropped to their lowest. Despite additional Russian space spectaculars, he did not change his mind, quashing all efforts to launch crash military programs. John F. Kennedy spent much of the 1960 campaign denouncing the administration for underestimating the communist threat, cruelly starving the armed forces, allowing the Russians to achieve military superiority. JFK was a far more aggressive cold warrior than his predecessor.

Like all volumes in the excellent American Presidents series, Wicker's is a quick read: 140 pages. Unlike the others, it's not really a biography. Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment was his meteoric rise to command in WWII after twenty years of obscurity. Winning the presidency was easy by comparison; after all he was the most popular man in the country. Wicker admits this, but he skips over the early life. As an account of his presidency, it breaks no ground but the author's anecdotes and outspoken opinions make it a lively addition to the definitive biographies.