What I Like About Ike

I'm pretty sure my parents dragged me to the Eisenhower museum once, halfway through a long drive across Kansas. It was mind-numbingly boring, the way museum visits are to young kids. I was completely unaware that the modern, high-speed expressway that had whisked us from Hays to Abilene was the result of his Interstate Highway System.


Years later, I would continue to feel unmoved as I drove on I-70 near Abilene, past road signs that advertised the Eisenhower Library & Museum. Wasn't Ike that old general who had presided over the Cold War era that gave rise to McCarthyism? In my mind he was linked to a bland, paternalistic culture that idealized white, middle class society but condoned the segregation and discrimination of African Americans.

Indeed, Eisenhower has been criticized for not openly condemning McCarthy's tactics, even though he deplored them. And he was fairly complacent about segregation, having been a baby when Separate but Equal became law. But a closer look at Eisenhower's words and actions show that he had respect for our constitution and democracy, and sought to uphold our ideals in a way that I admire.

During the McCarthy period, Ike 's own brother Milton urged him to publicly lash out at the witch-hunting senator, whom they considered an "evil man", but Ike felt that would only be getting down into the gutter with him. Instead he chose to work behind the scenes and make indirect statements.

One such statement defended libraries, after McCarthy had attacked the State department's overseas libraries for containing materials written by communists and their "fellow travelers." McCarthy harassed the libraries so much they burned some of their books, to remove evidence of them.

Eisenhower said, in a commencement address to Dartmouth:

"Don't join the book burners. "Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend your own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship."

Eisenhower was a Republican who was wary of big government, but he believed that government had a role in providing a safety net for Americans. "Government, through social security and by fostering applicable insurance plans, must help protect the individual against hardship and help free his mind from anxiety," he said. He continued all the major New Deal programs still in operation, and expanded Social Security, extending benefits to an additional ten million workers. He rolled the added Social Security programs into a new cabinet-level agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Eisenhower's record on civil rights is mixed. He was not gung-ho about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka U.S. Supreme Court decision, because he thought it was a terrible mistake to rush to de-segregate schools, when they were the most sensitive place to integrate. He preferred beginning with public parks, motels and cafes. However, once the Court handed down its decision, Eisenhower was swift in ordering District of Columbia officials to make Washington a model for the rest of the country in integrating black and white public school children.

In his essay on Eisenhower, Stephen Ambrose writes:

There is no doubt of Eisenhower's dislike for Brown. But there is also no doubt of his sense of duty and responsibility. Whatever one thought of Brown, he told (his childhood friend Swede) Hazlett, "I hold to the basic purpose. There must be respect for the Constitution-- which means the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution-- or we shall have chaos. We cannot possibly imagine a successful form of government in which every individual citizen would have the right to interpret the Constitution according to his own convictions, beliefs, and prejudices. Chaos would develop. This I believe with all my heart-- and shall always act accordingly."


Eisenhower abhorred the thought of using force, and told the press he couldn't imagine needing to use the army to enforce integration. However, when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus refused to integrate, and surrounded his school with the Arkansas National Guard, Eisenhower would stand for none of it. He placed the Arkansas National Guard under Federal control and sent Army troops to escort nine black students into an all-white public school. The integration spurred violence, and Eisenhower and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus engaged in tense arguments. But Eisenhower made clear his determination to uphold the Supreme Court's ruling.

Ambrose writes:

"This was the great moral and character test of the Eisenhower presidency. He met it head-on. Despite his own feelings about the mistakes being made in implementing Brown, and his horror at the thought of using American troops in American cities, he called out the 101st Airborne and sent it to Little Rock."

This calls to mind another point Ambrose made in his essay: "It is easy to be virtuous when virtue is rewarded, as it was in the Army; not so easy when virtue is ignored and partisanship is rewarded, as in politics...."

Eisenhower had been Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe and had successfully invaded France and Germany in 1944. Yet it wasn't jingoism and blind patriotism he urged upon us, as he left office, but an "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" who would demand its leaders use great caution in using our power and influence. He warned us about the dangers of the militaryindustrial complex --a phrase he coined in his farewell speech --and his words are as relevant today as they were in 1961:

"There is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties...

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications....

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist...

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Eisenhower did not glorify war. He called modern warfare "preposterous" and spoke of his contempt for it. “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”

Eisenhower also appreciated not only the cost of war, but the toll it took on our ability to fight poverty: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Eisenhower displayed a deep appreciation for his responsibilities as leader of the free world, even though he may not have planned for them earlier in his life:

"When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish."