The American Story

by David M. Rubenstein

  JES: It happened before that, at the Potsdam Conference right outside Berlin, in 1945. Truman and Eisenhower and Bradley went for a tour around Berlin to look at the ruins from the war. It was during that ride around Berlin that Truman said, “If you would like the Democratic nomination in 1948, I will step back and become vice president again.” Bradley couldn’t believe it at the time. Eisenhower mumbled and said he really wasn’t interested. Later on, Truman offered it to him once more, and Eisenhower again said no, he didn’t want it.

  DR: He didn’t take the job. But he later leaves the military and takes a job as president of Columbia University.

  JES: Columbia had offered him the presidency, to succeed Nicholas Murray Butler, who had been president for forty years. Eisenhower saw President Truman, who urged him to take it and said he would relieve him as chief of staff in late 1947, which he did.

  Before reporting to Columbia he wrote his book Crusade in Europe. And then after Crusade in Europe was completed, he became the president of Columbia.

  DR: He did that job for a few years and then rejoined the military. He went back to Europe?

  JES: Yes. In late 1950, after NATO had been established, President Truman asked him to go back to organize the ground forces for NATO, and Eisenhower agreed to do that. He left Columbia in January of 1951 to become the first commanding officer of the NATO military forces, in order to organize them and get them together. Field Marshal Montgomery was his deputy. It was sort of a repeat of World War II. Eisenhower was still president of Columbia but was on leave.

  DR: It’s hard to imagine today somebody being on leave from an Ivy League university and going over and being in the military. But that’s a separate issue.

  JES: That’s true. But let me say a word about Eisenhower as president of Columbia, because Eisenhower did an excellent job and he’s not generally given credit for it. Nicholas Murray Butler, who had been president for forty years, hadn’t raised any money for the last ten. In the 1940s, Columbia was the only major university whose endowment went down, because Butler was living on it.

  Eisenhower not only balanced the budget, he organized the first fund drive that Columbia had ever had. He raised $3 million for Columbia in 1947. Multiply that by twelve to put it into today’s dollars.

  And Eisenhower as president of Columbia defended academic freedom. He defended the right of Communists to speak on campus. “We’re not going to erect an intellectual iron curtain,” he said. He defended the faculty and the faculty’s right to hire whom they wanted and did an excellent job as president.

  DR: When he goes back to Europe to be the NATO commander, his friend Lucius Clay, who had worked under him as a general in World War II, had gone into investment banking. Clay said, “Why don’t you consider running for the Republican nomination?” instead of the Democratic nomination. What was Eisenhower’s response?

  JES: The crucial point is that Tom Dewey lost the election in ’48. If Dewey had won the election in 1948, Eisenhower would simply have remained as president of Columbia. But having run twice, Dewey was not going to get the nomination in ’52, which meant that the Republican nomination was open. Eisenhower was aware of that.

  Clay and Governor Thomas Dewey and Herbert Brownell in New York were really behind the campaign to get Eisenhower to announce that he was willing to become a candidate for the Republican Party. And that was very difficult.

  In November of 1951, President Truman offered him the Democratic nomination once again, for the 1952 election. Eisenhower again said no, he really didn’t want it.

  It was at that point that Clay and Dewey and Brownell began to work for Eisenhower, but they could not get him to say that he wanted to be a candidate. The problem was that Senator Robert Taft was running now, having run in 1940, 1944, and 1948. He was running for the fourth time in the Republican primary and was amassing a very significant number of votes. And Clay and Dewey and Brownell could not get Eisenhower to announce.

  DR: He decided to give his assent if somebody wanted to move his nomination forward. Is that how it happened?

  JES: At the time of the New Hampshire primary, in order to enter a candidate, the candidate had to be a member of that party. Eisenhower would not announce that he wanted to be a candidate. General Clay told Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. to go ahead and file for Eisenhower, announce that he’s a Republican. Lodge thought that Clay had talked to Eisenhower and cleared it, which he had not.

  After it was done, Clay wrote to Eisenhower, and Eisenhower said, “That’s okay.” He didn’t object to it—which, again, was one of those indications that it was okay with Ike.

  But they really couldn’t get Eisenhower to announce. He carried all sixteen delegates in New Hampshire in the primary, but Taft was still rolling up delegates throughout the Middle West and was really on his way to the nomination, and still they could not get Eisenhower to announce.

  Finally, the Republican National Committee announced that General MacArthur was going to give the keynote address at the Republican Convention. Clay told Dewey, “Write to Eisenhower. Tell him that MacArthur is going to give the keynote and that we are afraid that he will mesmerize the delegates and he will be nominated by acclamation.” Dewey’s letter was hand-carried over to Paris, where Eisenhower was, by a TWA airline pilot. That’s the way they communicated.

  The day after Eisenhower received Dewey’s letter, he announced that he was leaving NATO, coming back, and would announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination. It was his animosity toward MacArthur, which Clay of course knew about, that did it.

  DR: When he announced, Taft was still way ahead, but Eisenhower obviously got the nomination. How did he decide who would be his vice president?

  JES: Let me say a word about the nomination. When the roll call was called, Eisenhower was not over the top. He was leading Taft, but he was not over the top.

  Minnesota had voted for Harold Stassen, its favorite son. Warren Burger, the Warren Burger [who went on to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court], was waving the Minnesota standard. Joe Martin, presiding officer of the convention, recognized Minnesota. Governor Edward Thye of Minnesota then switched from Stassen to Eisenhower and put him over the top in the first ballot.

  Ike turned down a chance to run for president in 1948 but was persuaded to stand as the Republican nominee four years later.

  That evening in Eisenhower’s suite at the Blackstone Hotel, Ike was having dinner with Herbert Brownell and Clay. Brownell asked him, “General, have you given any thought to whom you would like to be your vice-presidential candidate?” Eisenhower said, “Isn’t that up to the convention?” Brownell and Clay looked at each other and rolled their eyes, and Brownell said, “Yes, yes, that’s up to the convention, but I’m sure they will look to you for guidance.”

  Eisenhower nodded and nodded and he said, “Well, I think C. R. Smith, the head of American Airlines, is a terrific executive; and Charles Wilson of General Electric, General Electric Wilson is a good executive. They’d both make good vice presidents.”

  Brownell and Clay are looking at each other again, and Brownell said, “Yes, General, they’re all good, but we really need a candidate whose name would be recognizable to the delegates on the floor. If you haven’t thought about it any, General Clay and I believe that we should go with Richard Nixon. Nixon is young, he’s from California. He was in the navy. He’s had good public relations lately.”

  Eisenhower said, “Well, I think I’ve met him. Clear it with the Taft people, and if they say okay, that’s fine.” That’s how Nixon got the nomination. I might add that it was Herbert Brownell who told me that story.

  DR: Then Nixon ran into a problem: he had a political fund paying some of his expenses. Eisenhower was nervous that they wouldn’t win, and he wanted Nixon to resign from the ticket. How did Nixon outmaneuver Eisenhower on that?

  JES: Just before Nixon was to go on television that evening, Governor Dewey called Nixon and said, “Eisenhower wants you, at the end of your
speech, to take yourself off the ticket—to resign.” Nixon hemmed and hawed. Eisenhower legitimately thought that Nixon was going to take himself off the ticket that night. They had brought Senator William Knowland back from Hawaii to make him the replacement if they took Nixon off the ticket.

  Eisenhower was watching the speech with a yellow pad and a pencil, and when it got to the end and Nixon didn’t take himself off the ticket, Eisenhower broke his pencil on the pad. He was really annoyed at that point that Nixon hadn’t taken himself off the ticket.

  You may recall that Nixon said, “I’ll leave it up to the Republican National Committee. If you think I should withdraw from the ticket or stay on the ticket, contact the Republican National Committee.” He was going over Ike’s head, he thought, by saying that. Eisenhower was really annoyed at him at that point and stayed annoyed at him for a long time.

  DR: He stays on the ticket, and they get elected in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson. As president, Eisenhower puts together a cabinet known as “eight millionaires and a plumber.” Who were they, and how did they get picked?

  JES: On Election Day, Herbert Brownell came to see Eisenhower, who was still at Morningside Heights in New York City being the president of Columbia. During the conversation with Brownell, Eisenhower asked him if he wanted to be attorney general. Brownell said yes. Eisenhower went down to Augusta, Georgia, to the golf course and left it up to Clay and Brownell to pick the rest of the cabinet.

  Clay wanted John McCloy to be secretary of state, but Dewey and Brownell argued that they really owed John Foster Dulles, so Dulles was made secretary of state. But all the other cabinet officers were picked by Brownell and Clay, and Eisenhower went along with them. At the end, they realized they didn’t have a Democrat in the cabinet, and so they got Martin P. Durkin, who was head of the plumbers’ union, to become secretary of labor.

  DR: Eisenhower played a lot of golf and was criticized at the time for it. Today, we wouldn’t criticize a president for that. Was he a good golfer?

  JES: Eisenhower had a thirty-six-hole workweek at one point. He wasn’t a great golfer, but he was a good golfer and he was very consistent.

  DR: Let’s talk about the Interstate Highway System for a moment. Eisenhower’s idea for this may have come to him when he was a young man. Where did he get the experience that made him think that an interstate highway system was necessary?

  JES: Immediately after World War I, the army decided to send a convoy from the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, across country. It had never been done before. Eisenhower was one of six officers who volunteered for the convoy.

  It took them sixty-two days—sixty-two days, think about it—to go from the Ellipse here in Washington to San Francisco. Eisenhower was aware of the need for public transportation, for a highway system.

  In Germany, Eisenhower saw the autobahns that Hitler had built and recognized the need for something similar in the U.S. After the Korean War, the economy turned down, and Eisenhower also needed something to spur the economy on. He appointed Lucius Clay—Lucius Clay again—who put together a committee of five people. They devised the Interstate Highway System. At the end of the process, Clay recommended that they pay for it by simply raising the tax on gasoline, which they did.

  DR: Let’s talk about the U-2. The U.S. had a special spy plane, the U-2, and Eisenhower personally approved the missions every time. The last one that he approved turned out to be the one that was shot down. Can you go through the importance of that mission?

  JES: The U-2 came in in the mid-fifties and did an excellent job. I’ll give you an example. At the time of the Suez Crisis, U-2 flights determined that the Russians were not moving any troops into that area. So it served a useful purpose, but it kept on and on and on and it had outlived its usefulness, and Soviet antiaircraft fire improved in the process.

  Finally, in 1960, just prior to the Paris Summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, the CIA recommended sending one final U-2 flight across the Soviet Union—this is on the eve of the summit—and Eisenhower approved it.

  It was a serious mistake. The U-2 was shot down. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive. The episode really aborted the Paris Summit, which would have been very successful had it not been for that.

  Khrushchev and the Russians throughout gave Eisenhower lots of slack so that he could blame CIA director Allen Dulles and the CIA for this. Eisenhower, in some ways to his credit, declined to do that, and took personal responsibility for it. He had plenty of opportunity to simply say that this was something that they didn’t need to know anything about. But he did not do that.

  DR: Eisenhower had some health problems in his first term. He had a heart attack. He had some intestinal issues. Did he ever consider not running for reelection? Did he ever consider not keeping Nixon on the ticket?

  JES: He considered not running for reelection in 1955 when he had a very serious heart attack out in Denver. He recovered satisfactorily from the heart attack and concluded that there was no one else suitable for the Republican nomination.

  He believed that Lucius Clay and George Humphrey, the secretary of the treasury, were both capable but had no political support. All the other Republican candidates, he felt, were not up to it, and so he decided to run for reelection.

  DR: Did he want to keep Nixon as vice president?

  JES: He tried to drop Nixon. He had a conference with Nixon and told him he thought he really ought to become secretary of defense or secretary of the treasury, so he would get some administrative experience. Nixon did not do that, and Eisenhower was not ready to formally drop Nixon.

  DR: Nixon runs for president in 1960 against John Kennedy. At a press conference, Eisenhower is asked: “Can you name some great things that Nixon did during his term as vice president for eight years?” What does Eisenhower say?

  JES: Eisenhower says, “Well, give me a week and I will think about it and I’ll let you know.” That was not a mistake.

  DR: When Eisenhower retires, he decides he doesn’t want to be called “Mr. President” the rest of his life. He wants to be called something else. What?

  JES: He wanted to be called “General of the Army.” It’s one of those permanent ranks that you never retire from. If you’re made general of the army, a five-star rank, you stay a general of the army until you die. And Eisenhower, after he left the presidency, wanted to become general of the army again. He had resigned when he announced his candidacy for the presidency. President Kennedy was a little surprised at that, but the Democrats passed the appropriate legislation to reinstall Eisenhower as general of the army.

  DR: Golfers are sometimes known to pray for their shots. Was Eisenhower known for being a religious person?

  JES: Eisenhower’s family was very religious. He had five brothers who lived past infancy. Their parents were fundamentalists. They were originally River Brethren, a fundamentalist sect from Germany that settled on the Susquehanna River, then moved out to Kansas.

  His parents were extremely religious. His father read the Bible at mealtimes, and in the evening the children were required to do so. Interestingly, none of the children carried those religious beliefs into their adult lives.

  Eisenhower is the only person ever elected president of the United States who did not belong to a church at the time. MacArthur once asked Eisenhower, “Ike, why don’t you go to church on Sunday?” Eisenhower said, “Because when I was a cadet at West Point, they made me go every Sunday, and I’m not going back.”

  And Eisenhower did not go back. He did not belong to a church, and he did not go to church.

  After he was elected and during the election campaign, many in the Republican Party suggested that he join the church. Eisenhower declined to do so. But finally, Clare Boothe Luce, after he was elected, talked Ike into joining the church, and he joined the Presbyterian Church. [Luce was an author, journalist, and political figure who became U.S. ambassador to Italy during Eisenhower’s presidency.]

  Now, I don’
t mean that Ike was an atheist or antireligion. He just didn’t want to belong to a church.

  DR: When Nixon ran in ’68, was Eisenhower reconciled to him at that point? Did he support him?

  JES: Eisenhower was in the hospital at the time. Yes, he supported Nixon. His grandson had married Nixon’s daughter. The animosity had passed. But Eisenhower was never really a fan of Richard Nixon.

  11 RICHARD REEVES

  on John F. Kennedy

  “A great test of a president, it seems to me, is whether he brings out the best or the worst in the American people. Kennedy brought out the best.”

  BOOK DISCUSSED:

  President Kennedy: Profile of Power (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

  I believe that I have read at least one biography of each of our forty-five U.S. presidents, but I think I have read every single biography written about President John F. Kennedy.

  Perhaps that is because he was the president on whom I first focused some real attention. He gave his inaugural address while I was in the sixth grade. My teacher went through that compelling speech with my class, line for line and word for word. I realized that it was truly poetry in prose form, and a call to public service.

  The speech inspired my own interest in public service and in becoming a lawyer—which I thought would be a helpful prerequisite to public service—and in also working someday at the White House as an advisor. (To the good fortune of the American people, I never saw myself as a candidate for public office.)

  Toward that end of being an advisor, I thought some of the Kennedy eloquence and commitment to public service would rub off on me if I initially practiced law at the firm where Ted Sorensen, Kennedy’s counsel and speechwriter, was a partner. None of the eloquence rubbed off, but my ability to perform public service was no doubt aided by Sorensen’s support, as I moved to Washington to work first in the Senate and then in the White House for President Jimmy Carter.