I had an easy and interesting time (yes, they often go together) reading Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World by Evan Thomas. Some notable and some surprising facts and reflections:
Ike’s high school yearbook predicted that he would end up as a history professor at Yale.
As President, Eisenhower harbored two fears. The first was nuclear way. The second was the fate that could befall a nation that devoted all its resources to preparing for war. As he said in his Presidential speech during his term, “the jet plane that roars over your head cost three quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning $10,000 every year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long?”
Today, many in Congress are celebrating adding another $80 billion to a defense budget greater than the next dozen countries in the world. Another person claims there was a “20% reduction” in the military budget during Obama’s tenure. The only way you could get to that number is to count the fact that we have reduced our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Shortly after Stalin’s death, Eisenhower made what he felt to be his first truly important address. He wanted to let the latest National Security establishment know that he was looking for ways to get off road to atomic war with its bleak alternative of turning the country into a garrison state.
Eisenhower was often ill. He had to take sick leaves. It was remarkable to read that right after one of them, “Chastened by the severity of his illness, Ike quit (smoking) cold turkey his four-packs-a-day cigarette habit.” Wow. I thought I had a problem.
The nadir of Eisenhower’s presidency was his “going along” with Kermit Roosevelt’s sadly successful move to displace Mohammad Mossedekh as the Prime Minister of Iran. He also supported the effort to overthrow the government in Guatemala and, later, to launch the Bay of Pigs planning which created the catastrophic scenario which Kennedy inherited. Eisenhower said the biggest regret in his Presidency was the fact that he lied about the U2 incident.
Winston Churchill liked to paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s belief that courage is the greatest virtue, because without it, man can have no other. Eisenhower was not given to such philosophical pronouncements, but it is clear that he valued patience above all else, says Thomas. That wouldn’t be my conclusion. My conclusion would have been he valued “winning” above all else.
A surprising assessment of Eisenhower’s Presidency from Henry Luce: there was some “substance to the charge that Ike had rather reigned rather than ruled.” He tended to assume as you can in the Army, but not in the White House, that an order once given is to be executed. “He has been an easy boss,” Luce said.
Eisenhower responded to Luce with a thoughtful and revealing private response: “I plead guilty to the general charge that many people have felt I have been too easy a boss...I do not mean to defend, merely to explain.” Noting that he was operating with a divided and complex government that required cooperation and compromise, he concluded, “of course, I could have been more assertive in making and announcing decisions and initiating programs. I can only say that I adopted and used those methods in matters that seemed to be most effective. Finally, there is the matter of maintaining a respectable image of American life before the world among the qualities that the American government must exhibit is dignity. In turn, the principal government spokesman must strive to display it. In war and in peace, I have no respect for the desk-pounder, and have despised the loud and slow talker. If my own ideas and practices in this matter have sprung from weakness, I do not know. But they were and are deliberate or, rather, natural to me. They are not accidental.”
What a contrast this personal introspection and statement of principle represent to what we see in and hear from President Trump. More personally, what an apt description it probably is of how many people feel I led P&G.
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