by Jim Newton
Oddly, the heart attack did not discourage him from seeking a second term; indeed, it caused him to consider the question in a new light. Eisenhower now was less inclined to think of whether he wanted to serve a second term and more prone to debating whether he could. As his health improved, he began to debate the idea more seriously. Just a few months earlier, prior to his heart attack, he had often seemed drawn to retirement. Now he worried that no one was well suited to succeed him. The possible Democratic candidates struck Eisenhower as astonishingly unworthy, and he was frustrated that Republican contenders had not developed during his term. He wondered whether New York’s Tom Dewey might at last be acceptable, but Jim Hagerty warned him that a Dewey candidacy would badly split the party. All the other possibilities also posed problems for Ike: Cabot Lodge needed steadying; Bob Anderson was little known outside Washington (not to mention a former Democrat); Sherman Adams and Herb Brownell lacked a political base; Milton Eisenhower had Ike’s thorough approval, but the prospect of one brother succeeding another was too dynastic to fly. Earl Warren was renowned because of Brown, but Eisenhower disapproved of Warren stepping off the Court to pursue the presidency and felt Warren better suited to the Court in any event.
Nixon, the most obvious choice, still presented a question for Ike and his advisers. As Adams faintly put it: “On the whole, he felt that Nixon had made good progress.” Although Eisenhower admired Nixon and considered him a capable vice president by late 1955, he remained convinced that Nixon was unelectable. He searched for a way to ease Nixon off the ticket, weighed the possibility of placing him in the cabinet, and definitely doubted his viability as a candidate for president in his own right.
Ike was growing stronger, tugged as always by his sense of duty. Now another December quietly drew to a close, and after Christmas at the White House, Ike and Mamie flew to Florida to mark the New Year. Ike golfed and walked the beaches. He, along with Mamie and the Snyders—sometimes joined by Milton Eisenhower, Hagerty, or others—ended each evening with a movie. They watched Wichita on December 29 and Angels in the Outfield (Ike’s favorite movie) on December 30, and ended the year with Tall Man Riding on New Year’s Eve. The president retired just after 10:00 p.m.
11
Crisis and Revival
As Eisenhower turned from pondering whether he desired four more years in office to asking whether he was up to it, his family and friends meditated on his stamina. Mamie, once determined to see her husband retire after the first term, now wondered how he would respond to being forced out by illness. She was afraid, as he put it, that “idleness would be fatal for my temperament.” On the other hand, Sherman Adams wondered: “After a close brush with death, would Eisenhower have the courage to face four more years of punishing physical strain in the White House?” Put that way, the question nearly answered itself.
Nearly, but not quite. In early January, while still in Key West, Eisenhower prepared for his annual address to Congress, an exercise that gave him reason to review his record and potential legacy. He took justifiable pride in his achievements. The nation was at peace. Taxes had been reduced. Standards of living were rising. The federal budget, after years of deficits, was balanced. There was, to be sure, work to do—some areas of the country lagged in prosperity, farmers were struggling, the Soviet leaders were forever fomenting trouble—but progress was evident.
Against that backdrop, Eisenhower returned to “the full duties of the presidency” on January 9 and quietly convened his closest confidants and advisers to discuss his future. The gathering was to be kept quiet. Initially scheduled for January 11, it was called off when reporters got wind of it—Hagerty blamed Nixon for the leak—then rescheduled for Friday, January 13. Because Ike did not want anyone to know who was attending, he even took the extra precaution of preparing the place cards himself. Meticulously, he chose the seats for the men whom he most trusted with a matter of such grave personal and political consequence: John Foster Dulles; George Humphrey; Herb Brownell; Arthur Summerfield; Len Hall; Sherman Adams; Jim Hagerty; Howard Pyle, Ike’s deputy assistant for intergovernmental relations; Tom Stephens, his special counsel and appointments secretary; Henry Cabot Lodge; Jerry Persons; and, of course, Milton Eisenhower. Before they talked, they dined. Mamie joined them for dinner, then excused herself, and the men took their places around a table in the president’s second-floor sitting room.
Invited by Eisenhower, Dulles spoke first. He complimented the president’s wisdom and dedication to service and pledged that all those present would “gladly” accept whatever decision he reached. After the meeting, Dulles recorded his comments, drafting a special memo detailing the affair: “As I saw the situation, there was no one person in the world, and perhaps there never had been any person in the world, who commanded the respect of as many people as did the President … I consider this an enormous asset at a time when humanity faces the greatest physical danger through the development of nuclear weapons which could destroy life on this globe.” The work of the administration, Dulles hardly needed to add, was unfinished. “We were groping our way toward some solution of this problem, but had not yet found it. I felt that the President could be a decisive factor at some time within the next two or three years in really making atomic power a servant of humanity, not a threat to its existence.”
There was a pause after Dulles finished speaking, and Tom Stephens piped up. “Well,” he said to Eisenhower, “you ought to make up your mind because I want to be a candidate if you’re not.” That won a grin from Eisenhower and laughter from the others.
When it subsided, Eisenhower randomly called on his other guests. To a man, they reflected on his influence, on the mission still to be undertaken. They wanted him to run, with one lone exception: Milton urged his brother to retire. Still saddened by his wife’s death the year before, Milton was “fearful of the strain that was on” his brother and “deeply concerned about his personal welfare.” Moreover, there was always the chance that his brother might run and lose, tarnishing his legacy. If he retired now, Milton argued, Ike might be able to continue to wield a constructive influence even after leaving the presidency.
On that note, Ike then spoke himself. He too alluded to the dark possibilities created by his heart attack: he brooded on the “disturbing effect of any change in the presidency at other than the appointed four-year intervals” and warned his colleagues that he could not conduct a rigorous campaign as he had in 1952. Still, Eisenhower was impressed by the near unanimity of his advisers, and he promised to consider their advice carefully. “Thank you, gentlemen,” Ike said. He stood up. The others followed.
At 11:15 p.m., the president’s men retired into the night, cold and still in the Washington winter, the burdens of their counsel weighty upon each.
If Ike made up his mind that night—or if he had decided even before summoning that group of advisers—he kept the decision to himself. Questions about his future peppered his press conference on January 19, but he continued to dodge, reporting that he felt fit and up to the job but declining to say whether he was a candidate. He needed time to reflect, he explained, “in order that I may reach a logical decision. I will do it as soon as I can.”
Ike was, however, already contemplating the implications for the rest of his administration. Most pointedly, he recognized the gravity of the position of vice president in the second term of a president whose health was suspect. The consideration that he might die brought to the surface all of Ike’s ambivalence toward his vice president. Asked on January 25 whether he would keep Nixon on the ticket if he ran, Eisenhower professed his “admiration, respect and deep affection” for his vice president but demurred on his role in a second term, saying they had yet to discuss it. Three days later, he had an amiable conversation with Frank Lausche, the Ohio governor who was a Catholic Democrat; the two hit it off, and Ike began to ponder the possibility of a bipartisan ticket for 1956.
That, of course, depended on the sitting vice president vacating the post. Descr
ibing it to associates a few days later, Eisenhower said he had summoned Richard Nixon in early February and put the question to him: “If we can count on me living five years, your [best] place is not serving eight years as vice president because people get the idea the vice president does nothing, but to take one of the big departments—HEW, Defense, Interior—any one of which is entirely possible.” If, however, Nixon bet that Ike was likely to die, “of course that is different.” The decision, Eisenhower added, was up to Nixon.
The proposal put Nixon in an excruciating bind: To leave the vice presidency, as Eisenhower surely knew, would be interpreted as a political demotion and would damage Nixon’s ambition to succeed Ike. But to accept it under conditions that suggested Nixon believed Eisenhower would die before completing his second term cast Nixon’s ambitions in the most ghoulish light. Nixon recognized the dilemma and froze. He sullenly responded that he would do whatever Eisenhower asked him to.
Ike was torn: he believed Lausche would be a more exciting running mate and Bob Anderson a more capable vice president, but he was reluctant to dump Nixon against his will. He dispatched Len Hall to talk the matter over with Nixon, urging him to be “very, very gentle.”
Ike’s mood lightened as he moved past his indecision. Neither a jumpy pulse nor a brief bout of indigestion dampened his ebullience, and those early days of February found him in “radiant spirits,” according to Ann Whitman. A checkup in mid-February pronounced him in good health—his doctor announced that if Ike ran again, he would vote for him. He teased his cabinet with hints that he was a candidate. “Don’t any of you fellows come to me January 1st, saying you have something else you’ve got to do,” he joked on February 13; the group burst into applause. Two weeks later, he told Dulles he was inclined to run, and Dulles urged him to do so. “The state of the world,” Dulles recalled, “was such as to require the President to serve if he felt up to it.” Ike tentatively agreed, though he worried about the chaos that would ensue if he died between the nominating convention and the election. Dulles downplayed that possibility. There was always some risk, he noted, “and that seemed a normal risk to accept.”
Once again, Ike’s reflections turned to Nixon. He told Dulles he was thinking of dropping Nixon from the ticket and replacing him with either Humphrey or Dulles himself. Dulles immediately withdrew his own name, saying he was too old. Ike then suggested Brownell but worried that he lacked popular appeal. As for Nixon, Ike noted that polls suggested he would lose if he ran on his own for the presidency and that he was not sure it was in Nixon’s own interests to remain as vice president. Eisenhower again thought about installing Nixon as secretary of commerce or in another cabinet post, to which Dulles joked that he was angling for a way to replace him, Dulles, as secretary of state. Eisenhower laughed. No, he said, Dulles could not get out of his job that easily. In any case, Ike added that he doubted whether Nixon was qualified for that job. The meeting ended on that inconclusive note, but Dulles was now sure his boss was running. As a result, he “was leaving the room a much happier man than when I came in.”
Having built suspense around his candidacy for so long, Eisenhower milked it a bit more. Appearing before the White House press corps on February 29, he first announced the opening of the annual campaign for the Red Cross, then expressed his pleasure at the visit of Italy’s president, then urged Congress to act quickly on two bills, one to assist farmers, another to capture more water in the Colorado River basin. “My next announcement,” he added, feigning afterthought, “involves something more personal, but I think it will be of interest to you because you have asked me so many questions about it.” After all the consulting and considering, Eisenhower nevertheless managed to mangle his revelation. He couldn’t be sure, he said, that the Republican Party would nominate him or that the American people would elect him, but he asked for television and radio time to explain his decision, and “my answer within the limits I have so sketchily observed, but which I will explain in detail tonight so as to get the story out in one continuous narrative, my answer will be positive, that is, affirmative.” It took a moment for that to sink in, but the reporters recovered and pounced on what Eisenhower had clearly not said: Would he run with Nixon? Eisenhower evaded, proclaiming his deep admiration for his vice president but insisting that it would be improper for him to express his desire to have Nixon on the ticket before the Republican convention. Pressed to say whether he would like Nixon to be that nominee, Eisenhower turned testy. “I will say nothing more about it,” he snapped. “I have said that my admiration and my respect for Vice President Nixon is unbounded. He has been for me a loyal and dedicated associate, and a successful one. I am very fond of him, but I am going to say no more about it.” Nixon would remain in suspense, embarrassed and imperiled, for months.
Eisenhower, on the other hand, slept soundly after announcing his decision. Indeed, ending his deliberations seemed to energize both the president and his administration. He chased a full agenda in 1956, undeterred by those who warned that Congress would resist bold action in an election year. His State of the Union message in January reflected Ike’s abiding insistence on balance: lowered budget deficits in tandem with steps to improve American military security; attempts to strike neutrality in relations between management and workers; the vigorous pursuit of peace by the spread of American ideas (Eisenhower proposed sharply increased funding for the U.S. Information Agency) but also the increased investment in nuclear weapons.
Of the proposals Eisenhower offered in the final year of his first term, however, few would transform the nation more remarkably than one that Congress had ignored the previous year. “If we are ever to solve our mounting traffic problem, the whole interstate [highway] system must be authorized as one project, to be completed approximately within the specified time,” Eisenhower stated. Congress had rejected this appeal in 1955, but Eisenhower made it again and dared Congress to oppose him.
The highway bill offered persuasive evidence of Eisenhower’s remove from partisan orthodoxy. It was the largest public works project in American history, a grand government investment with ramifications that would change the nation’s future. Many of the proposal’s specifics were the work of General Lucius Clay, whom Ike tapped to study the idea. Like Eisenhower’s, Clay’s experience in Germany—he served as commissioner there after the war—exposed him to that nation’s famous autobahn, and he returned with a strong sense of its utility in moving goods as well as troops. Clay had reported back to Ike on January 11, 1955, setting out the broad parameters of a thirty-year plan to upgrade American highways. Ike had been instantly persuaded, expressing his “tremendous enthusiasm” for the Clay Committee’s recommendations.
For a president committed to balanced budgets and private enterprise, the idea was startlingly expansive. Eisenhower, whose 1919 trip across country had left him with a lasting worry about the state of the nation’s highways—and whose contrary experience in Germany during the war had impressed him as it had Clay—set out to construct forty-one thousand miles of American highways, principally to link major cities. It was the “largest public works and engineering task ever conceived as a peacetime operation,” reaching every state and territory of the United States. Or, as Eisenhower observed, enough concrete to build “six sidewalks to the moon.” The benefits were most obviously economic: an open system of roads expedited commerce and tourism. To sell the idea, however, Eisenhower also emphasized the military and civil defense implications of such a system. Troops, of course, could be moved more quickly on highways in the event of attack, as could emergency response crews.
Mindful of the cost—initial estimates put the program’s expense at $27 billion, and it quickly exceeded that—Eisenhower insisted that the project not add to the national debt. To do so would countermand his fiscal efforts, so he initially favored a toll system. He dropped that idea after concluding that tolls would not generate enough revenue and instead proposed a tax on gasoline and oil (Earl Warren, while governor of Cali
fornia, had launched that state’s epic highway system using such a tax). As it debated in early 1956, Congress modified Eisenhower’s proposal but left the financing mechanism substantially intact. Highway user fees, including gas and oil taxes, paid for construction under a system in which states authorized the projects and paid the initial costs of construction, after which they were reimbursed for 90 percent of their costs by the federal government.
Ike’s secretary of commerce, Sinclair Weeks—known to Eisenhower and others as Sinny—steered the lobbying on the bill and patiently guided it to fruition despite a partisan Congress in an election year. The endless debates over financing bored Eisenhower, and he pressed for a conclusion. “I wanted the job done,” he wrote irascibly. Finally, Congress agreed and sent Eisenhower a bill. He signed it on June 29 while at Walter Reed for a checkup. The first project launched under its authority, a stretch of Route 40 in Missouri, started just weeks later. Elsewhere, work also began immediately—indeed, even before the bill took effect, as state governments received word of the money they would be getting and launched projects in anticipation of it.
Ike was forever proud of the highway system and justifiably claimed credit for having modernized the nation with it. “More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America,” he wrote. “Its impact on the American economy—the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up—was beyond calculation.” Indeed, its influence would traverse American society in ways even its creators did not imagine, giving rise to modern suburban life by connecting those residential communities to urban jobs. As an engine of economic and social development, it was rivaled only by the GI Bill; as a physical manifestation of the government’s ability to make change, it had no peer.