The presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower began on January 20, 1953 at noon Eastern Standard Time, when he was inaugurated as the 34th President of the United States, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican, took office as president following a landslide win over Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election. This victory upended the New Deal Coalition that had kept the presidency in the hands of the Democratic Party for 20 years. Four years later, in the 1956 presidential election, he defeated Stevenson in a landslide again, winning a second term in office. He was succeeded in office by Democrat John F. Kennedy after the 1960 election.
A self-described "progressive conservative", Eisenhower was able to secure several victories in Congress, even though Democrats held the majority in both the House and the Senate during all but the first two years of his presidency. Eisenhower continued New Deal programs and expanded Social Security. He also spurred development of the Interstate Highway System in 1956, and after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the establishment of NASA, with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) mandate. In the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower convinced Britain and France to end their occupation of the Suez Canal. Eisenhower signed the first significant civil rights bills of the 20th century, and he sent federal troops to Arkansas to enforce a court ruling mandating school desegregation.
Six months into his first term, the U.S. agreed to an armistice that ended the Korean War. Yet even though at peace, defense spending remained high, as the administration made vigorous efforts to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He authorized covert Central Intelligence Agency actions to overthrow unfriendly governments or protect reliable anti-Communist ones, and he implemented a national security policy that relied on strategic nuclear weapons to deter potential threats, both conventional and nuclear, from Warsaw Pact nations.
Eisenhower was the first U.S. president to be constitutionally limited to two terms under the 22nd Amendment. Voted Gallup's most admired man twelve times, he achieved widespread popular esteem both in and out of office. Since the late 20th century, consensus among Western scholars has consistently held Eisenhower as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Election of 1952
Dwight Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio were the two front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination going into the 1952 Republican presidential primaries. Also contending for the nomination were Governor Earl Warren of California, and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota. In January 1952, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. announced that Eisenhower's name would be entered in the March New Hampshire primary, even though he had not yet officially entered the race. The result in New Hampshire was a solid Eisenhower victory with 46,661 votes to 35,838 for Taft and 6,574 for Stassen. However, from there until the convention the primaries were divided fairly evenly between him and Taft, and when the delegate selection process was finished the race for the nomination was still too close to call.
Taft led the conservative wing of the party, centered in the Midwest, that rejected many of the New Deal social welfare programs created in the 1930s, and generally held a non-interventionist foreign policy stance, believing that America should avoid alliances with foreign powers. Taft had been a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1940 and 1948, but had been defeated both times by moderate Republicans from New York:Wendell Willkie in 1940, and Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. Taft blamed these successive loses on the New York GOP's undue influence over the national party.
Dewey, the party's presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948, led the moderate wing of the party, centered in the Eastern states. They tended to be interventionists who felt that America needed to fight the Cold War overseas and confront the Soviet Union in Eurasia; they were also willing to accept most aspects of the social welfare state created by the New Deal. Dewey, who declined the notion of a third run for president, and other Eastern moderates were determined to use their influence to ensure that the 1952 presidential ticket reflected their views. To this end, a draft Eisenhower organization was assembled, beginning in September 1951. Two weeks later, at the National Governors' Conference meeting, seven Republican governors endorsed his candidacy. Despite these events, Eisenhower remained silent on the matter.
Foreign policy concerns are what gave impetus to Eisenhower's ultimate entry into the race. He was troubled by Taft's non-interventionist views, especially his opposition to NATO. Eisenhower wholeheartedly supported NATO, which he considered an important deterrence against Soviet aggression. He was also motivated by the corruption that had crept into the federal government during the later years of the Truman administration; believing that the time had come to "clean out the courthouse."
When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, Illinois, most political experts rated Taft and Eisenhower as neck-and-neck in the delegate vote totals. Eisenhower's managers, led by Dewey and Lodge, accused Taft of "stealing" delegate votes in Southern states such as Texas and Georgia. They claimed that Taft's leaders in these states had unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters and put Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the pro-Taft delegates in these states and replace them with pro-Eisenhower delegates; they called this proposal "Fair Play." Although Taft and his supporters angrily denied this charge, the convention voted to support Fair Play 658 to 548, and Taft lost many Southern delegates. Eisenhower also received two more boosts, firstly when several uncommitted state delegations, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, decided to support him, and secondly when Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower, whose moderate policies he much preferred to those of Taft. The removal of many pro-Taft Southern delegates and the support of the uncommitted states decided the nomination in Eisenhower's favor, which he won on the first ballot. Afterward, Richard Nixon was nominated by acclamation as his vice-presidential running mate. Nixon, whose name came to the forefront early and frequently in pre-convention conversations among Eisenhower's campaign managers, was selected because of his relative youth (39 years old) and solid anti-communist credentials.
Delegates to the 1952 Democratic National Convention, also held in Chicago, nominated Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson for president on the third ballot. Senator John Sparkman of Alabama was selected as his running mate. The convention ended with widespread confidence that in Stevenson, the party had selected its ablest candidate, one who would make a powerful presidential contender.
Republican strategy during the fall campaign focused on Eisenhower's unrivaled popularity. Ike traveled to 45 of the 48 states; his heroic image and plain talk excited the large crowds who heard him speak from the campaign train's caboose. In his speeches, Eisenhower never mentioned Stevenson by name, rather, he relentlessly attacked Truman, emphasizing three Truman administration failures: Korea, Communism, and corruption. In addition to the speeches, he got his message out to voters through 30-second television advertisements; this was the first presidential election in which television played a major role.
Stevenson concentrated on giving a series of thoughtful speeches around the nation; he too drew large crowds. Although his style thrilled intellectuals and academics, some political experts wondered if he were speaking "over the heads" of most of his listeners, and they dubbed him an "egghead," based on his baldness and intellectual demeanor. His biggest liability however, was the incumbent president, Harry Truman. Even though Stevenson had not had been a part of the Truman administration, voters largely ignored his record and burdened him with Truman's. Historian Herbert Parmet says that although Stevenson:
tried to separate his campaign from Truman's record, his efforts failed to dispel the widespread recognition that, for a divided America, torn by paranoia and unable to understand what had disrupted the The anticipated tranquility of the postwar world, the time for change had really arrived. Neither Stevenson nor anyone else Could have dissuaded the electorate from its desire to repudiate 'Trumanism.'
A potentially devastating allegation hit when Nixon was accused by several newspapers of receiving $18,000 in undeclared "gifts" from wealthy California donors. In reality, contributions were by design only from early supporters and limited to $1,000, with full accountability. Eisenhower and his aides considered dropping Nixon from the ticket and picking another running mate. Nixon responded to the allegations in a nationally televised speech, the "Checkers speech," on September 23. In this speech, Nixon denied the charges against him, gave a detailed account of his modest financial assets, and offered a glowing assessment of Eisenhower's candidacy. The highlight of the speech came when Nixon stated that a supporter had given his daughters a gift--a dog named "Checkers"--and that he would not return it, because his daughters loved it. The public responded to the speech with an outpouring of support, and Eisenhower stayed with him.
In the end, the burden of the ongoing Korean War, Communist threat, and Truman scandals, was too much for Stevenson to overcome. On election day, Eisenhower won a landslide victory, winning 55.2 percent of the popular vote and 442 electoral votes. Stevenson received 44.5 percent of the popular vote and 89 electoral votes.
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Election of 1956
In July 1955,TIME Magazine lauded the president for bringing "prosperity to the nation," noting that, "In the 29 months since Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, a remarkable changes has come over the nation. Blood pressure and temperature have gone down; nerve endings have healed over. The new tone could be described in a word: confidence." As the country had been enjoying a period of relative prosperity and confidence during Eisenhower's first term, and as his Gallup poll approval rating ranged between 68 and 79 percent, few doubted that he would be reelected in 1956.
In September 1955, the president suffered a serious heart attack. For several months, as he recuperated, there was speculation about whether Eisenhower be able to run for another term. By the beginning of 1956, however, the president had resumed a full schedule, and after his doctor pronounced him fully recovered in February 1956, Eisenhower announced his decision to run for reelection. Given Eisenhower's enormous popularity and resilience, he was renominated with no opposition at the 1956 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California.
During the President's illness, talk of "dumping" Vice President Nixon from the 1956 ticket arose within the party leadership. The campaign was led by Harold Stassen, who worked in vain, through to the convention, to coax someone to come forward and challenge Nixon. In March 1956, Eisenhower publicly announced that Nixon would again be his running mate. He also remained highly popular among the Republican leadership and rank-and-file voters. The movement collapsed completely during the convention, and Stassen later seconded Nixon's nomination, which he won unanimously.
At the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Adlai Stevenson was renominated on the first ballot, despite a strong challenge from New York governor W. Averell Harriman, who was backed by former president Truman. Stevenson announced that he would leave the choice of the candidate for vice president to the convention; he gave no indication of who he would prefer to have for a running mate. Delegates chose Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee on the second ballot.
Stevenson proposed significant increases in government spending for social programs and treaties with the Soviet Union to lower military spending and end nuclear testing on both sides. He also proposed to end the military draft and switch to an "all-volunteer" military. Eisenhower publicly opposed these ideas, even though in private he was working on a proposal to ban atmospheric nuclear testing. Eisenhower held a commanding lead in the polls throughout the campaign, and his margin widened as he dealt with international crises in the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the days before the election.
On election day, Eisenhower won by an even greater margin than he had four years earlier. He won 457 electoral votes to Stevenson's 73; he also won the popular vote 35.6 to 26 million. Compared to the 1952 election, Eisenhower gained Kentucky, Louisiana, and West Virginia from Stevenson, while losing Missouri. Eisenhower's Republican base had grown thanks to the growth of suburbs. He maintained his 1952 gains among Democrats, especially white urban Southerners and Northern Catholics. In interviews with pollsters, his voters were less likely to bring up his leadership record. Instead what stood out this time, "was the response to personal qualities-- to his sincerity, his integrity and sense of duty, his virtue as a family man, his religious devotion, and his sheer likeableness."
Administration
Cabinet
Regarding Eisenhower's administrative style as president, historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote,
The President organized his administration somewhat like a military staff. Men below him were supposed to work out in detail what needed to be done; the President had to make the ultimate decision, but he disliked doing any preliminary thinking about it himself. Contradictory recommendations would come to him on defense and other matters from two or three different departments, each already watered down while passing up from lower echelons. The President, who studied no problem deeply himself, would return the differing recommendations and offer an all-round agreement on which to base his decision; thus almost every decision was a compromise, and often a wishy-washy compromise.
Eisenhower delegated the selection of his cabinet to two close associates, Lucius D. Clay and Herbert Brownell Jr.; Brownell, a legal aid to Dewey, became attorney general. John Foster Dulles, an attorney who also had close ties to Dewey, became the secretary of state. A conscientious "student of foreign affairs," Dulles had previously had a part in developing the both the United Nations Charter and the Treaty of San Francisco. He traveled nearly 560,000 miles (901,233 km) during his six years in office.
Eisenhower sought out leaders of big business for many of his other cabinet appointments. Charles Erwin Wilson, the CEO of General Motors, was Eisenhower's first secretary of defense. In 1957, he was replaced by president of Procter & Gamble president, Neil H. McElroy. For the position of secretary of the treasury, Ike selected George M. Humphrey, the CEO of several steel and coal companies. His postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield, and first secretary of the interior, Douglas McKay, were both automobile distributors. Additionally, former senator, Sinclair Weeks, director of the National Association of Manufacturers. Several businessmen named to cabinet-level posts--Wilson, Humphrey, along with Harold E. Talbott (Eisenhower's first Air Force secretary) and Robert Tripp Ross, (a deputy assistant secretary of defense)--came under U.S. Senate scrutiny due their investments and possible conflicts of interest while in office; Talbott and Ross later resigned as a result.
Other Eisenhower cabinet selections were made to cover various "political bases." Ezra Taft Benson, a high-ranking member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was chosen as secretary of agriculture; he was the only person appointed from the Taft wing of the party. Oveta Culp Hobby became the first secretary of the newly created Department of Health, Education and Welfare; she was the second female cabinet secretary (after Frances Perkins). Martin Patrick Durkin, a Democrat and president of the plumbers and steamfitters union, was selected as secretary of labor. As a result, it became a standing joke that his first Cabinet was composed of "nine millionaires and a plumber."
Vice-presidency
Eisenhower, who disliked partisan politics and politicians, left much of the building and sustaining of the Republican Party to his Vice President Nixon. Additionally, shocked at how ill-prepared Vice President Truman had been on major issues such as the atomic bomb when he acceded to the presidency, Eisenhower therefore made sure to keep Nixon fully involved. He gave Nixon multiple diplomatic, domestic, and political assignments so that he "evolved into one of Ike's most valuable subordinates." The office of vice president was thereby fundamentally upgraded from a minor ceremonial post to a major role in the presidential team. Nixon went well beyond the assignment. "Nixon threw himself into state and local politics, making hundreds of speeches across the land. With Eisenhower uninvolved in party building, Nixon became the de facto national GOP leader."
Judicial appointments
Eisenhower appointed five Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Earl Warren - Chief Justice (to replace Fred M. Vinson), recess appointment October 1, 1953, nominated January 11, 1954 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate March 1, 1954. Warren had been the Republican nominee for vice president in 1948. He was appointed to chair what became known as the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
- John Marshall Harlan II - Associate Justice (to replace Robert H. Jackson), nominated January 10, 1955 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate March 16, 1955.
- William J. Brennan - Associate Justice (to replace Sherman Minton), nominated January 14, 1957 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate March 19, 1957.
- Charles Evans Whittaker - Associate Justice (to replace Stanley Reed), nominated March 2, 1957 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate March 19, 1957.
- Potter Stewart - Associate Justice (to replace Harold Burton), nominated January 17, 1959 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate May 5, 1959.
Eisenhower also appointed 45 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 129 judges to the United States district courts.
Press corps
On January 19, 1955 Eisenhower became the first president to conduct a televised news conference. His press secretary, James Campbell Hagerty, is the only person to have served in that capacity for two full presidential terms. Historian Robert Hugh Ferrell considered him to be the best press secretary in presidential history, because he "organized the presidency for the single innovation in press relations that has itself almost changed the nature of the nation's highest office in recent decades."
Continuity of government
A group comprised of three federal government officials and six private U.S. citizens was secretly tasked by the president in 1958 to serve as federal administrators in the event of a national emergency, such as a nuclear attack. Eisenhower discussed the issues with each appointee and then personally sent letters of confirmation. The selection and appointment of these administrator-designates was classified Top Secret. In an emergency, each administrator was to take charge of a specifically activated agency to maintain the continuity of government. Named to the group were:
- Theodore F. Koop, Vice President of CBS - Emergency Censorship Agency
- Frank Stanton, President of CBS - Emergency Communications Agency
- John Ed Warren, Senior Vice President of First National City Bank - Emergency Energy and Minerals Agency
- Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture - Emergency Food Agency
- Aksel Nielsen, President of Title Guaranty Company - Emergency Housing Agency
- James P. Mitchell, Secretary of Labor - Emergency Manpower Agency
- Harold Boeschenstein, President of Owens-Corning Fiberglass - Emergency Production Agency
- William McChesney Martin, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors - Emergency Stabilization Agency
- Frank Pace, Executive Vice President of General Dynamics - Emergency Transport Agency (resigned January 8, 1959)
- George P. Baker, Dean of Harvard Business School - Emergency Transport Agency (after January 8, 1959)
Foreign affairs
New Look policy
The administration's initial national security policy, referred to as New Look, was unveiled on October 30, 1953. The product of a series of meetings with senior cabinet-level officials, consultations with National Security Council personnel (Project Solarium), and a comprehensive defense review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it reflected Eisenhower's desire for a sustainable long-term U.S. national security policy, and also his belief that the mission of the military was to "get ready and stay ready." National Security Council document upon which the policy was built, NSC 162/2, emphasized reliance on strategic nuclear weapons to deter potential threats, both conventional and nuclear, from the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. Nuclear weapons were seen as the most economically feasible means to deter the Soviet advantage in Europe infantry and tanks. The U.S. military developed a strategy of nuclear deterrence based upon the triad of: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), strategic bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower insisted on having plans to retaliate, fight, and win a nuclear war against the Soviets, although he hoped he would never feel forced to use such weapons.
Proposed Bricker Amendment
In February 1951 (during the 82nd Congress), and then again in January 1953 (during the 83rd Congress), Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio, introduced similarly worded joint resolutions to amend the U.S. Constitution by limiting the president's treaty making power, and his power to enter into executive agreements with foreign nations. These measures are collectively known as the Bricker Amendment. Fears that the steady stream of post-World War II-era international treaties, pacts, covenants, and executive agreements entered into by the U.S. government were supplanting the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and undermining the nation's sovereignty, united isolationists, conservative Democrats, most Republicans, along with numerous professional groups and civic organizations behind the amendment.
Eisenhower was opposed to the amendment, believing that it would weaken the president and would hamper the handling of the nation's foreign affairs to such a degree, that it would be impossible for the U.S. to exercise leadership on the global stage. Although the amendment started out with 56 co-sponsors, it went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate in 1954, 42-50, with 4 not voting. A watered down version went down to final defeat lager that year after it missed the required two-thirds majority in the Senate by one vote. This episode proved to be the last hurrah for the isolationist Republicans, as younger conservatives increasingly turned to an internationalism based on aggressive anti-communism, typified by Senator Barry Goldwater.
Containing the Soviet Union
He continued the basic Truman administration policy of containment of Soviet expansion, and strengthening of the economies of Western Europe. He added more emphasis on the American (and British) nuclear deterrent forces against a major invasion. He wanted the Allies to provide local security. His goal was troop reductions in Europe, reduction of military expenditures, and a sharing of labor with European nations. Europeans, however, never quite trusted the idea of nuclear deterrence and were reluctant to shift away from NATO into a proposed European Defence Community (EDC). The result was that EDC plans were dropped and American ground troops remained stationed in Europe.
Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, and Georgy Malenkov took leadership of the Soviet Union. Malenkov proposed a "peaceful coexistence" with the West, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed a summit of the world leaders. Fearing that the summit would delay the rearmament of West Germany, and skeptical of Malenkov's intentions and ability to stay in power, the Eisenhower administration nixed the summit idea. In April, Eisenhower delivered his "Chance for Peace speech," in which he called for an armistice in Korea, free elections to re-unify Germany, the "full independence" of Eastern European nations, and United Nations control of atomic energy. Though well received in the West as the marking the beginning of dialogue between the Western bloc and the Eastern bloc, the Soviet leadership viewed Eisenhower's speech as little more than propaganda. In 1954, a more confrontational leader took charge in the Soviet Union in the form of Nikita Kruschev. Eisenhower became increasingly skeptical of the possibility of cooperation with the Soviet Union after it refused to support his Atoms for Peace proposal, which called for the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the creation of nuclear power plants.
As the ground war in Korea ended, Eisenhower sharply reduced the reliance on expensive Army divisions, and favored much cheaper nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Historian Saki Dockrill argues that his long-term strategy was to promote the collective security of NATO and other American allies, strengthen the Third World against Soviet pressures, avoid another Korea, and produce a climate that would slowly and steadily weaken Soviet power and influence. Dockrill points to Eisenhower's use of multiple assets against the Soviet Union:
Eisenhower knew that the United States had many other assets that could be translated into influence over the Soviet bloc--its democratic values and institutions, its rich and competitive capitalist economy, its intelligence technology and skills in obtaining information as to the enemy's capabilities and intentions, its psychological warfare and covert operations capabilities, its negotiating skills, and its economic and military assistance to the Third World.
The Pentagon in August 1954 wanted Eisenhower to endorse a rollback strategy in Asia against Soviet advances. In response, he added a paragraph to a National Security Council Planning Board's guidelines paper that included, "while the time of a significant rollback was far in the future, nevertheless we should watch any opportunies and prepare plans for an earlier contracting of Soviet power." Eisenhower, while accepting the doctrine of containment, sought to counter the Soviet Union through more active means as detailed in the State Department memorandum NSC-68. His covert action policy was laid out in NSC 162/2. The Eisenhower administration developed the tactic of covert action, used by the Central Intelligence Agency to interfere with suspected communist governments abroad. An early use of covert action was against the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. The Shah of Iran and pro-monarchy forces ejected him from power in the complex 1953 Iranian coup d'รฉtat (Operation Ajax). The CIA also supported the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'รฉtat by the local military that overthrew president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmรกn. The U.S. complaint was that he was veering toward the Soviet Union. Critics have produced conspiracy theories about the causal factors, but according to historian Stephen M. Streeter, CIA documents show the United Fruit Company (UFCO) played no major role in Eisenhower's decision, that Soviet influence was also minimal, and that the Eisenhower administration did not need to be forced into the action by any lobby groups. Streeter Identifies three major interpretive perspectives, "Realist," "Revisionist," and "Postrevisionist':
In 1953 Eisenhower opened relations with Spain under dictator Francisco Franco. Despite its undemocratic nature, Spain's strategic position in light of the Cold War and anti-communist position led Eisenhower to build a trade and military alliance with the Spanish through the Pact of Madrid, ultimately bringing an end to Spain's isolation after World War II, and bringing about the Spanish Miracle.
Far East: China, Korea, Vietnam
During his campaign, Eisenhower said he would go to Korea and promised to end the stalemated Korean War. In practice, most fighting had been suspended since 1952. However, there was no agreement on the status of prisoners of war who refused to return to their homes in North Korea or China. Eisenhower demanded a solution, and decided to warn China that he would use nuclear weapons to resolve the problem. China came to terms, and an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953 as the Korean Armistice Agreement. Historian Edward C. Keefer says that in accepting the American demands that POWs could refuse to return to their home country, "China and North Korea still swallowed the bitter pill, probably forced down in part by the atomic ultimatum."
Defense treaties with South Korea and the Republic of China (Formosa/Taiwan) were signed, and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) alliance in an effort to halt the spread of Communism in Asia was formed.
Eisenhower deepened U.S. commitments to the containment of Chinese expansion in Southeast Asia. In 1954, he sent Dulles to Geneva as a delegate to the Geneva Conference, which ended the First Indochina War and temporarily partitioned Vietnam into a Communist northern half (under Ho Chi Minh) and a non-Communist southern half (under Ngo Dinh Diem). Neither the United States government nor Ngo Dinh Diem's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the Viet Minh proposal that Vietnam eventually be united by elections. The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan", with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation. South Vietnam became an independent nation; the French left, and Eisenhower offered military, economic, and technical assistance.
Suez crisis
In 1956, Eisenhower warned Britain and France not to use force to regain control of the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized. He repeatedly told British Prime Minister Anthony Eden that the U.S. would not tolerate an invasion. Regardless Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to seize the canal, which was then blocked for years by Egypt. He used the economic power of the U.S. to force his European allies to back down and withdraw from Egypt. It marked the end of British and French dominance in the Middle East and opened the way for greater American involvement in the region. When the Hungarian Revolution broke out in November 1956, he condemned it but refused to use military force against the Soviet repression.
Eisenhower Doctrine
In response to the power vacuum in the Middle East following the Sinai Crisis, the Eisenhower administration developed a new policy to guide U.S. intervention to stabilize the region against Soviet threats or internal turmoil or revolution. Given the collapse of British prestige and the rise of Soviet interest in the region, the president informed Congress on January 5, 1957 that it was essential for the U.S. to accept new responsibilities for the security of the Middle East. Under the policy, known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, any Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression. The Soviet Union was the target. Eisenhower found it difficult to convince leading Arab states or Israel to endorse the doctrine's purpose or usefulness. Nonetheless, he applied the doctrine in 1957-58 by dispensing economic aid to shore up the Kingdom of Jordan, by encouraging Syria's neighbors to consider military operations against it, and by sending U.S. troops into Lebanon to prevent a radical revolution from sweeping over that country. As a result of the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Middle East became entrenched as a Cold War battlefield.
Ballistic missiles
Fearful that the Soviet Union would deploy a long-range ballistic missile before the U.S., in January 1956 the United States Air Force began developing the Thor, a 1,500 miles (2,400 km) Intermediate-range ballistic missile. The program proceeded quickly, and beginning in 1958 the first of 20 Royal Air Force Thor squadrons became operational in the United Kingdom. This was the first experiment at sharing strategic nuclear weapons in NATO and led to other placements abroad of American nuclear weapons. The Thor missile deployment carried the code name "Project Emily." In 1959, the secretary of the Air Force issued implementing instructions to deploy the first nuclear tipped medium-range ballistic missile, the PGM-19 Jupiter. Beginning in 1961 and continuing through 1963, two Jupiter squadrons were assigned to Italy, and one to Turkey.
France also sought American help in developing nuclear weapons; Eisenhower rejected the overtures for four reasons. Before 1958, he was troubled by the political instability of the French Fourth Republic and worried that it might use nuclear weapons to its colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria. De Gaulle brought stability to the Fifth Republic in 1958, but Eisenhower knew him too well from the war years. De Gaulle wanted to challenge the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on Western weapons. Eisenhower feared his grandiose plans to use the bombs to restore French grandeur would weaken NATO. Furthermore, Eisenhower wanted to discourage the proliferation of nuclear arms anywhere.
The administration decided the best way to minimize the proliferation of nuclear weapons was to tightly control knowledge of gas-centrifuge technology, which was essential to turn ordinary uranium and to weapons-grade uranium. American diplomats by 1960 reached agreement with the German, Dutch, and British governments to limit access to the technology. The four-power understanding on gas-centrifuge secrecy lasted until Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan took the Dutch centrifuge technology to Pakistan in 1975 and thence to North Korea and Libya. Eisenhower warned against an arms race in outer space in his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, September 22, 1960:
The emergence of this new world poses a vital issue: will outer space be preserved for peaceful use and developed for the benefit of all mankind? Or will it become another focus for the arms race--and thus an area of dangerous and sterile competition? The choice is urgent. And it is ours to make. The nations of the world have recently united in declaring the continent of Antarctica "off limits" to military preparations. We could extend this principle to an even more important sphere. National vested interests have not yet been developed in space or in celestial bodies. Barriers to agreement are now lower than they will ever be again.
Critics at the time, led by Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy levied charges, which became a campaign issue in 1960, to the effect that there was a "missile gap", that is, the U.S. had fallen militarily behind the Soviets because of their lead in space. Historians now discount those allegations saying the U.S. remained ahead in most important areas, although they agree that Eisenhower did not effectively respond to his critics. Public opinion was now engaged and Congress allotted billions of dollars toward not only defense, but education. America's defensive game of catch-up carried on through the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Space program
The United States was the dominant world power in the early 1950s. Lockheed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability. By 1955, with both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were building ballistic missiles that could be utilized to launch objects into space. That year, in separate announcements four days apart, both nations publicly announced that they would launch artificial Earth satellites within the next few years. The July 29, announcement from the White House stated that the U.S. would launch "small Earth circling satellites" between July 1, 1957, and December 31, 1958, as part of the American contribution to the International Geophysical Year.
Americans were astonished when October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit To many, this accomplishment suggested that the Soviets had made a substantial leap forward in technology, which was interpreted as a serious threat to U.S. national security. While Eisenhower initially downplayed the gravity of the Soviet accomplishment, public fear and anxiety about the perceived technological gap grew, and he came under heavy criticism. Americans rushed to build nuclear bomb shelters, while the Soviets boasted about its new superiority as a world power, and of communism over capitalism. Economist Bernard Baruch wrote in an open letter to the New York Herald Tribune titled "The Lessons of Defeat": "While we devote our industrial and technological power to producing new model automobiles and more gadgets, the Soviet Union is conquering space. ... It is Russia, not the United States, who has had the imagination to hitch its wagon to the stars and the skill to reach for the moon and all but grasp it. America is worried. It should be." The president was, as British prime minister Harold Macmillan observed during a June 1958 visit to the U.S., "under severe attack for the first time" in his presidency.
The launch spurred a series of federal government initiatives ranging from defense to education. Renewed emphasis was placed on the Explorers program (which had earlier been supplanted by Project Vanguard) to launch an American satellite into orbit; this was accomplished on January 31, 1958 with the successful launch of Explorer 1. In February 1958, Eisenhower authorized formation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), within the Department of Defense to develop emerging technologies for the U.S. military. On July 29, 1958, he signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established NASA as a civilian space agency. He also ordered that military test pilots be the source of the first astronaut recruits. The selection of military test pilots as the basis of the United States' astronaut corps gave NASA an advanced starting point for recruits who were already experienced pilots and had special government clearances.
NASA as created by Congress was substantially stronger than the administration's original proposal. NASA took over the space technology research started by DARPA, as well as the Air Force's manned satellite program, Man In Space Soonest, which was renamed as Project Mercury. The project's first seven astronauts were announced on April 9, 1959.
Less than a year after the Sputnik launch (in September 1958), the president signed into law the National Defense Education Act, a four-year program that poured billions of dollars into the U.S. education system. In 1953 the government spent $153 million, and colleges took $10 million of that funding; however, by 1960 the combined funding grew almost six-fold as a result. Meanwhile, during the late 1950s and into the 1960s, NASA and the Department of Defense were developing multiple communications satellite research and development programs; as were various private sector corporations, such as American Telephone and Telegraph.
Summit conferences
Eisenhower hoped that after the death of Stalin in 1953, it would be possible to come to an agreement with subsequent Russian leaders to halt the nuclear arms race. However his efforts to reach a disarmament agreement throughout his presidency aimed mainly to gain military and diplomatic advantage over the Soviets. He never agreed to any proposal unless he thought it would yield such advantage to the U.S. Several attempts at convening a summit conference were made.
The final attempt failed in 1960 when Nikita Khrushchev withdrew following the May 1 downing of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union. The U-2 flight had been authorized to gain photo intelligence before the scheduled East-West Paris summit conference between President Dwight Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, Harold Macmillan and Charles de Gaulle.
The Eisenhower Administration, thinking the pilot had died in the crash, authorized the release of a cover story claiming that the plane was a "weather research aircraft" which had unintentionally strayed into Soviet airspace after the pilot had radioed "difficulties with his oxygen equipment" while flying over Turkey. Further, Eisenhower said that his administration had not been spying on the Soviet Union; when the Soviets produced the pilot, Captain Francis Gary Powers, the Americans were caught misleading the public, and the incident resulted in international embarrassment for United States prestige. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a lengthy inquiry into the U-2 incident. During the Paris Summit in 1960, President Eisenhower accused Khrushchev "of sabotaging this meeting, on which so much of the hopes of the world have rested". Later, Eisenhower stated it had all been ruined because of that "stupid U-2 business".
Cuban Revolution
In January 1959, the Cuban Revolution ousted President Fulgencio Batista, a U.S. ally. The new regime, led by Fidel Castro, quickly recognized the Communist Party of Cuba, sparking U.S. fears that Castro would align with the Soviet Union. When Castro visited the United States in April 1959, Eisenhower refused to meet with him, delegating the task to Nixon. Under Eisenhower, the CIA established a training camp in Nicaragua that trained Cuban dissidents. Shortly after Eisenhower left office, President John F. Kennedy would use this group to launch the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.
International trips
Eisenhower made one international trip while president-elect, to South Korea, December 2-5, 1952, where he visited Seoul and the Korean combat zone. He also made 16 international trips to 26 nations during his presidency. Between August 1959 and June 1960, he undertook five major tours, travelling to Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Southern Asia. On his "Flight to Peace" Goodwill tour, in December 1959, the President visited 11 nations including five in Asia, flying 22,000 miles in 19 days.
Domestic affairs
Nonpartisanship
In domestic affairs, Eisenhower attempted to avoid partisanship whenever possible. When Democrats regained control in the 1954 Senate and House elections, limiting his freedom of action on domestic policy, his largely nonpartisan stance enabled him to work smoothly with the Democratic leaders Speaker Sam Rayburn in the House, and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in the Senate. Biographer Jean Edward Smith describes the relationship between the three:
Ike, LBJ, and "Mr. Sam" did not trust one another completely and they did not see eye to eye on every issue, but they understood one another and had no difficulty working together. Eisenhower continued to meet regularly with the Republican leadership. But his weekly sessions with Rayburn and Johnson, usually in the evening, over drinks, were far more productive. For Johnson and Rayburn, it was shrewd politics to cooperate with Ike. Eisenhower was wildly popular in the country....By supporting a Republican president against the Old Guard of his own party, the Democrats hoped to share Ike's popularity.
Fiscal policy
Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative whose policy views were close to those of Taft-- they agreed that a free enterprise economy should run itself. Throughout Eisenhower's presidency, the top marginal tax rate was 91%--among the highest in American history. When Republicans gained control of both houses of the Congress following the 1952 election, conservatives pressed the president to support tax cuts. Eisenhower however, gave a higher priority to balancing the budget, and believed that taxes could not be cut until it was. "We cannot afford to reduce taxes, [and] reduce income," he said, "until we have in sight a program of expenditure that shows that the factors of income and outgo will be balanced." Eisenhower kept the national debt low and inflation near zero; additionally, three of his eight budgets were in the black.
There were three recessions during Eisenhower's administration--July 1953 through May 1954, August 1957 through April 1958, and April 1960 through February 1961, caused by the Federal Reserve clamping down too tight on the money supply, in an effort to wring out the lingering wartime inflation out of the economy. Real Gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged just 2.5 percent over those eight years. Meanwhile, federal spending as a percentage of GDP fell from 20.4 to 18.4 percent--There has not been a decline of any size in federal spending as a percentage of GDP during any administration since. The stock market performed very well while Eisenhower was in the White House, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average more than doubling (from 288 to 634), and personal income increased by 45 percent.
Immigration
At Eisenhower's urging, Congress passed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which permitted the admission of 214,000 immigrants to the United States from European countries between 1953 and 1956, over and above existing immigration quotas. The formula for computing the quotas had become more restrictive as a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, approved by Congress over the veto of President Truman.
Responding to public outcry, primarily from California, about the perceived costs of services for illegal immigrants from Mexico, the president charged Joseph Swing, Director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, with the task of regaining control of the border. On June 17, 1954, Swing launched Operation Wetback, the roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants in selected areas of California, Arizona, Texas. The U.S. Border Patrol later reported that more than 1.3 million people (a number viewed by many to be inflated and not accurate) were deported or left the U.S. voluntarily under the threat of deportation in 1954. Meanwhile, the number of Mexicans immigrating legally from Mexico grew rapidly during this period, from 18,454 in 1953 to 65,047 in 1956.
"McCarthyism"
Democrats attacked Eisenhower for not taking a public stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist campaigns. Privately he held McCarthy and his tactics in contempt, writing, "I despise [McCarthy's tactics], and even during the political campaign of '52 I not only stated publicly (and privately to him) that I disapproved of those methods, but I did so in his own State." Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to weaken McCarthy, in particular by putting together a task force headed by Herbert Brownell, Sherman Adams, and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. to oversee the defense of the Army, leading to the pivotal Army-McCarthy hearings which led to his downfall in 1954.
Civil rights
On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The president's response was a frosty, "The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional processes in this country; and I will obey." Over the succeeding six years of his presidency, author Robert Caro notes, Eisenhower would never "publicly support the ruling; not once would he say that Brown was morally right[.]" His silence left civil rights leaders with the impression that Ike didn't care much about the day-to-day plight of blacks in America. It also was a source of encouragement for segregationists vowing to resist school desegregation.
In September 1957, Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas after Governor Orval Faubus attempted to defy a federal court order calling for desegregation of Little Rock public schools. The soldiers escorted nine African-American students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine, to Little Rock Central High School. He wrote legislation that would create a Civil Rights Commission in the executive branch and a civil rights department in the Justice Department, along with protecting voting rights; Nixon stepped in to break a filibuster in the Senate, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. That act, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1960, constituted the first significant civil rights acts since 1875.
While Truman had begun the process of desegregating the Armed Forces in 1948, actual implementation had been slow. Eisenhower made clear his stance in his first State of the Union address in February 1953, saying, "I propose to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation in the District of Columbia, including the Federal Government, and any segregation in the Armed Forces." He moved quickly to end resistance to desegregation by using government control of military spending to compel compliance from military officials. "Wherever Federal Funds are expended," he told reporters in March, "I do not see how any American can justify a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds." Later, when Secretary of the Navy Robert B. Anderson stated in a report, "The Navy must recognize the customs and usages prevailing in certain geographic areas of our country which the Navy had no part in creating," Eisenhower responded saying, "We have not taken and we shall not take a single backward step. There must be no second class citizens in this country."
During the Cold War racism in America was a prime Soviet propaganda theme, and proved to be an impediment to American efforts to defeat communism. During his second term, as the events in Little Rock were unfolding--as the Soviet newspaper Izvestia was writing of Little Rock police "who abuse human dignity and stoop to the level of animals"--Eisenhower recast racial integration as a national security issue.
Interstate highway system
One of Eisenhower's enduring achievements was the Interstate Highway System, which congress authorized through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. A key motivation for developing the system was defense against the possibility of a large-scale foreign nuclear attack on America's cities. In pressing for its passage, lobbyists from numerous organizations argued that highways would be essential evacuation routes in wartime, and would encourage population and industrial decentralization away from the vulnerable cities. Other supporters emphasized the civilian economic aspects, as well as the pump-priming impact of such a large construction project.
The president's support for the project was influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country as part of the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. He was assigned as an observer for the 62-day mission, which encountered numerous avoidable delays. Additionally, Eisenhower gained an appreciation of the Reichsautobahn system, the first "national" implementation of modern Germany's Autobahn network, as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. As a result, he recognized early-on that the proposed system would provide key civilian evacuation corridors, and ground transport routes for military supplies and troop deployments in case of an emergency or foreign invasion.
Eisenhower appointed his friend, retired general Lucius Clay, to lead a presidential commission to study highway design proposals. In January 1955 they recommended a 10-year construction program costing $101 billion to build 41,000 miles of divided highways that would link all medium and major cities. Clay talked Eisenhower out of using toll roads. After compromising with Democrats in 1956, the system was financed by a trust fund based on gasoline taxes of four cents a gallon and taxes on tires. The Federal share of the funding was 90%; the states built, owned and maintained the highways. Clay stated:
It was evident we needed better highways. We needed them for safety, to accommodate more automobiles. We needed them for defense purposes, if that should ever be necessary. And we needed them for the economy. Not just as a public works measure, but for future growth.
In long-term perspective the interstate highway system was a remarkable success, that has done much to sustain Eisenhower's positive reputation. Although there have been objections to the negative impact of clearing neighborhoods in cities, on the whole the system has been well received. The railroad system for passengers and freight declined sharply, but the trucking expanded dramatically and the cost of shipping and travel fell sharply. Suburbanization became possible, with the rapid growth of easily accessible, larger, cheaper housing than was available in the overcrowded central cities. Tourism dramatically expanded as well, creating a demand for more service stations, motels, restaurants and visitor attractions. There was much more long distance movement to the Sunbelt for winter vacations, or for permanent relocation, with convenient access to visits to relatives back home. In rural areas, towns and small cities off the grid lost out as shoppers followed the interstate, and new factories were located near them. Demographers report that counties with interstate access have an advantage in in-migration and employment growth.
Labor unions
Labor unions were a whole high-profile target of Republican activists throughout the 1940s and 1950s, especially the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Both the business community and local Republicans wanted to weaken unions, which played a major role in funding and campaigning for Democratic candidates. Union membership peaked in the 1950s at about a third of the labor force. The strategy of the Eisenhower administration was to consolidate the anti-union potential inherent in Taft-Hartley. Pressure from the Justice Department, the Labor Department, and especially from congressional investigations focused on criminal activity and racketeering in high-profile labor unions, especially the Teamsters Union. Republicans wanted to delegitimize unions by focusing on their shady activities. A select Senate committee, the McClellan Committee, was created in January 1957 to study improper practices in the field of labor-management relations. Its hearings targeted Teamsters president James R. Hoffa as a public enemy. Bobby Kennedy played a major role working for the committee as its chief counsel. Public opinion polls polls showed growing distrust toward unions, and especially union leaders--or "labor bosses," as Republicans called them. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition, With the aid of liberals such as the Kennedy brothers, won new Congressional restrictions on organized labor in the form of the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959). The main impact was to force more democracy on the previously authoritarian union hierarchies. However, in the 1958 elections, taking place during a sharp economic recession, the unions fought back especially against state Right to Work laws and defeated many conservative Republicans.
States admitted to the Union
Two new states were admitted to the Union while Eisenhower was in office:
- Alaska - January 3, 1959
- Hawaii - August 21, 1959
Health issues
Eisenhower began chain smoking cigarettes at West Point. He stopped in 1949. He was the first president to release information about his health and medical records while in office. However people around him covered up medical information that might hurt him politically by raising doubts about his good health. On September 24, 1955, while vacationing in Colorado, he had a serious heart attack. Dr. Howard Snyder, his personal physician, misdiagnosed the symptoms as indigestion, and failed to call in the help that was urgently needed. Snyder later falsified his own records to cover his blunder and to protect Eisenhower's need to portray he was healthy enough to do his job. The heart attack required six weeks' hospitalization. Nixon, Dulles, and Sherman Adams assumed administrative duties and provided communication with the President. His cardiologist Paul Dudley White recommended a second term as essential to his recovery. His health was generally good in his second term.
End of presidency
The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1951, and it set term limits to the presidency of two terms. Eisenhower became the first president constitutionally limited to two terms. Eisenhower offered Nixon lukewarm support in the 1960 Republican primaries, but Nixon's successful cultivation of party elites ensured that he faced only a weak challenge from Governor Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination. In the general election, which pitted Nixon against Democrat John F. Kennedy, Nixon wanted to win on his own, and did not take up Eisenhower's offers for help. When asked by reporters to list one of Nixon's policy ideas he had adopted, Eisenhower joked, "If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember." Kennedy's campaign used the quote in one of its campaign commercials. Eisenhower and Nixon in fact had become unequal friends, who learned it from each other and respected each other. Eisenhower, the oldest president at age 70, was succeeded by the youngest elected president; Kennedy was 43.
On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised Address to the Nation from the Oval Office. In his farewell address, Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War: "We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method ..." and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
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