That night there was a state dinner at the Elysée. I talked with Madame de Gaulle, a woman of great strength and character. Her main concerns were her husband and her family. She observed, “The presidency is temporary—but the family is permanent.”
The next day de Gaulle and I met in the Grand Trianon Palace at Versailles. “Louis XIV ruled Europe from this room,” he said as we stood at one of the huge windows looking out over acres of formal gardens.
We talked about the tragic effect World War II had had on the great nations of Europe. He compressed volumes of history into a single sentence when he said, “In the Second World War, all the nations of Europe lost. Two were defeated.”
I turned our conversation to China. As we talked, I could see that his thinking paralleled my own. “I have no illusions about their ideology,” he said, “but I do not feel that we should leave them isolated in their rage. The West should try to get to know China, to have contacts, and to penetrate it.”
“In looking down the road,” I said, “as I pursue my talks with the Soviets, I too might want to keep an anchor to windward with respect to China. In ten years, when China has made significant nuclear progress, we will have no choice. It is vital that we have more communications with them than we have today.”
“It would be better for you to recognize China before you are obliged to do so by the growth of China,” he agreed.
We returned to Paris from Versailles late in the afternoon, and that night I was host for a return dinner in de Gaulle’s honor. He confirmed his acceptance of my invitation to visit the United States, and we agreed that a working visit similar to this one would be the most useful. We settled on January or February 1970 as the best time.
In his toast that night de Gaulle said, “As I am learning to know you better—and by this visit you have given me that opportunity which I consider historic—I appreciate more the statesman and the man that you are.”
I felt that the new entente cordiale between the Presidents of France and the United States expressed by his words would alone have made the European trip worthwhile.
We discussed Vietnam at our meeting on my last day in France. America had become deeply involved in Vietnam despite de Gaulle’s warnings and without seeking his advice, so I opened the session by asking, “Mr. President, what would you do regarding Vietnam?”
He paused for a long time before he spoke. “What is it you expect me to do, Mr. President?” he asked. “Do you want me to tell you what I would do if I were in your place? But I am not in your place!”
He said that he believed the only way to end the war was by conducting negotiations on political and military issues simultaneously and by establishing a calendar for the departure of our troops. “I do not believe that you should depart with undue haste.”
He leaned forward and placed his large hands flat on the table and said, “I recognize that France had some part in this as she did not give the Vietnamese freedom early enough and thus enabled the Communists to pose as the champions of national independence, first against us and then against you. But you Americans can make this kind of settlement because your power and wealth are so great that you can do it with dignity.”
When he suggested that direct conversations with the North Vietnamese would be the best way to make progress, I indicated great interest in attempting this. De Gaulle said nothing more and our meetings drew to a close, but I felt confident that the message would be passed to the North Vietnamese Embassy.
Our last stop was at the Vatican, where I met with Pope Paul VI. We discussed the whole range of world issues and problems, but he was particularly interested to learn about my plans concerning Vietnam. He talked about the importance of resisting the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. He recalled how the Communists had murdered Christians and suppressed religion after they took over. North Vietnam in 1954, and with emotion in his voice he agreed that America should continue to hold the line against the Communists in South Vietnam.
I felt that the European trip had accomplished all the goals we set for it. It showed the NATO leaders that a new and interested administration which respected their views had come to power in Washington. It served warning on the Soviets that they could no longer take for granted—nor take advantage of—Western disunity. And the TV and press coverage had a positive impact at home, instilling, however briefly, some much needed pride into our sagging national morale.
EISENHOWER
President Eisenhower’s rapidly failing health cast a sad shadow over the early days of my presidency. He had been in Walter Reed Hospital since April 1968, and there was little hope that he would ever leave it.
When I visited him before my trip, he had asked me to extend his regards to some of his old friends, particularly de Gaulle. “I don’t think we handled him right, now that I look back on it,” he had said. “Roosevelt and Churchill were too inconsiderate of him. They treated his pride as if it were just vanity, and they never saw that a few gestures of recognition might have made him less antagonistic toward us.”
When I went to see him after I returned from Europe, I was so shocked at the deterioration of his condition that later I made a note, “Looked like a corpse—waxen face.” As soon as he saw me, however, he brightened, raised his hand, and called out, “Hi!”
Even though it was visibly painful for him to talk, he insisted on having a conversation. “You know, the doctors say I’m getting better,” he said. Always the optimist, perhaps he believed it.
I told him that the leaders of Europe had sent their regards to him, and I said, “You were absolutely right about de Gaulle.” I told him that the Pope had said he was praying for him and hoping that a miracle might occur and bring about his complete recovery.
Shortly after noon on Friday, March 28, I had walked back from an NSC meeting to the Oval Office with Haldeman, Kissinger, and Mel Laird. While we were talking, Dr. Walter Tkach, the White House physician, entered the room. Standing near the door he said, “Mr. President, President Eisenhower just died.” I knew that he had been sinking fast, but the news hit me so hard that I could not speak. A wave of sadness swept over me, and I could not hold back tears.
Mamie met us at the door of the presidential suite when we arrived at Walter Reed. I embraced her and told her how we all shared her loss. Julie and David had been there when he died. David was pale and shaken, and I could see that Julie had been crying.
When I got back to the White House, I decided to go to Camp David to write the eulogy I would deliver in the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday.
I talked with Mamie briefly on the telephone about plans for the funeral service, and then she said, “Maybe you would like to know the last thing Ike said to me before he died. You know how weak he was, but he was wide awake. He knew I was sitting there, and he said, ‘I have always loved my wife. I have always loved my children. I have always loved my grandchildren. And I have always loved my country.’ ” I wrote down the words because I knew that I would want to use them in the eulogy.
Perhaps the best description I can give of Dwight Eisenhower is that he had a warm smile and icy blue eyes. It was not a case of being outwardly warm and inwardly cold. Rather, beneath his captivating personal appearance was a lot of finely tempered hard steel. He had exceptional warmth; but there was always a reserve, even an aloofness, that balanced it. Masses of people all over the world thought they knew him, but the people closest to him, his friends and colleagues who loved or admired him, understood that even they did not really know him well.
While most people probably remember him for his engaging, outgoing personality, I remember him for his decisive leadership. He was at his best in times of crisis and when he had to deal with great issues. It has become popular to think of the 1950s in nostalgic terms as a time of domestic apathy and international stability. But in fact, Eisenhower became President just as America and the world had reached a turning point in history, when the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the rise of Soviet militancy had f
orever changed the nature of international relations.
One of the questions Eisenhower had to address was whether we would utilize our nuclear advantage and fight a total war or confine ourselves to applying only limited military strength. I made a diary dictation describing Eisenhower’s decisive approach to this question at an NSC meeting on March 25, 1954:
At the NSC meeting this morning there was a discussion of what the strategy of the United States should be in the event of a major war with the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had a division on this point. The President took over in as emphatic a manner as I have ever seen him use. He stated that he felt this was a problem for the Commander in Chief primarily. He said that the only policy we could follow once war was started against us was to win victory. That under no circumstances could we hold back punches because of some feeling that total victory might bring greater problems than if victory were obtained through limited war. He said, in effect, that there was no possibility of a limited-war concept in view of the type of enemy we had and the type of weapons with which we have to reckon. He said we are talking about sizes of bombs and potential destructive power in fantastic amounts and that the casualties would reach 7 million one day, 8 million another possibly. He said in other words they would be in “Amos and Andy” figures.
He softened it to an extent by suggesting that the Joint Chiefs talk to him about it privately at any time to attempt to convince him, if they wanted, that his view was wrong. At the present time, he was convinced that this is the only sound position to take.
The only qualification he made was that we might consider not using our strongest weapon if we felt from a military standpoint the reaction would be so great as to make that use unadvisable. For example, he told of how the allies had discovered thousands of tons of much more deadly gas than anybody had believed existed when they overran the German positions in World War II. The Germans had not used it because they realized they were more vulnerable to gas in their constricted positions than were the Allies.
He also objected to a paragraph which said that we should insist on countries in effect being free and democratic after the war. He pointed out that in the next war every country would come out a dictatorship inevitably and would have to remain a dictatorship for some time. He, of course, said they would try in the United States to return to a free economy as soon as possible but that it would be more difficult in the future than it had been in the past wars.
While he had an engaging, outgoing personality, he also had a very definite sense of dignity. He was not the kind of man who appreciated undue familiarity. I remember the chilling looks he gave to those who tugged at his sleeve or slapped him on the back. In this respect he could not have been more different from Lyndon Johnson, who seemed unable to carry on a conversation without nudging or poking or even shaking the other person. General Jerry Persons, who had been with Eisenhower during the war years and then served as his Director of Congressional Relations before succeeding Adams as chief of the White House staff in 1958, told me of an occasion in 1959 when Eisenhower called him in shortly before Johnson was due to arrive for a meeting. “I want you to stand between Lyndon and me,” Eisenhower told him. “My bursitis is kicking up, and I don’t want him to grab me by the arm.”
What seemed most characteristic of Eisenhower was his determined optimism. He was constantly waging a battle for high spirits on his staff. Hardly a meeting went by without some exhortation to cheerfulness. “Long faces don’t win hard battles,” he once told the Cabinet. “Why can’t our people have a grin on their face instead of always a frown?” he asked during a meeting with legislative leaders. Yet though he enjoyed a good joke, he saw little humor in the weighty problems of his office, and he did not particularly like it when others introduced humor into serious discussions.
One afternoon early in his administration, a legislative leadership meeting debated whether to prepare the public for the horrors of nuclear war. Eisenhower strongly felt that something had to be done to develop civil defense and national preparedness. At one point, Senator Eugene Millikin, a conservative Republican from Colorado, recalled what a Colorado governor once said when confronted with some excessively dire predictions regarding his policies: “Well, if things are so bad maybe what we ought to do is paint our asses white and run with the antelope.” Everyone laughed, but Eisenhower’s laughter was not very enthusiastic. As we returned to the discussion, he said, rather shortly, “Well, maybe we won’t even have time to paint our asses white if they begin to drop the bombs and we are not prepared for it.”
Eisenhower often said that he himself never read newspaper editorial columns or looked at the political cartoons; in fact he was extremely sensitive about them, as evidenced in a diary note I made in June 1954, when Eisenhower gave vigorous expression to his views about press criticism:
At the legislative leaders meeting on Monday morning, June 21, Jerry Persons brought up an article which had been written by Drew Pearson to the effect that the President was not going to support Bridges and several other senators.
The President blew his top and said that he wished that everybody in his whole organization would quit reading the columnists and quit reporting such incidents to him.
Eisenhower was not used to being criticized, and he found criticism hard to take. He never forgave Truman for his widely quoted quips about his lack of political experience during the 1952 campaign. “Why, this fellow don’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday,” Truman once said.
At one point during the administration we were planning a big bipartisan rally to build support for the mutual security program. I suggested that Truman, who supported the program, be invited to appear on the platform. A cold, hard look came over Eisenhower’s face, and he said that he would not appear on the same platform with Truman no matter what was at stake.
As a political leader, Eisenhower knew that he was much stronger than his party. He felt that by doing a good job he could pull his party up; and he did not want his party to drag him down. The serious erosion of Republican strength during the years of his presidency was in some measure the result of this hands-off, arm’s-length attitude. Yet he knew better than most politicians how to move people, how to rally the nation to his support, and how to inspire their faith and win their trust—and these are the essence of politics.
Contrary to the generally held view that Eisenhower was a staid standpatter, he actually welcomed and encouraged new and even unorthodox ideas.
Early in 1954 I made a diary note of a conversation I had with Persons in which I was especially struck by his description of Eisenhower’s style:
He said that the difficulty with some of the people around the President is that every word that the President spoke they took as gospel. Jerry said that those who worked with him before knew that they should not do this and that the President many times would take a very forward position and finally settle upon one which was not so far out front.
“Yep,” he said, “Ike sure likes to hit those fungoes out there and see what happens to them!”
To many, Dwight Eisenhower seemed a rather kindly and benign grandfather, but his own view of himself and his conception of the presidency were quite different. He saw himself in very active terms as the man responsible for doing the right thing for America.
The last time I saw Eisenhower was two days before his death. His doctor greeted me outside the entrance to the presidential suite. “How’s he doing?” I asked.
“I’m afraid there’s not much hope, Mr. President,” he replied.
I talked with Eisenhower for about fifteen minutes before the doctor came in to indicate that I should leave. Eisenhower obviously did not want me to go. But I could see that he was tiring fast, so I shook hands with him and walked quickly to the door.
It struck me that this was probably the last time I would see him alive. I turned impulsively and tried to keep the emotion out of my voice as I said: “General, I just want you to kno
w how all the free people of Europe and millions of others in the world will forever be in your debt for the leadership you provided in war and peace. You can always take great pride in the fact that no man in our history has done more to make America and the world a better and safer place in which to live.”
His eyes were closed as I spoke, but after a brief moment he opened them and lifted his head from the pillow. With an unusual formality he said, “Mr. President, you do me great honor in what you have just said.”
Then he slowly raised his hand to his forehead in a final salute.
OPERATION BREAKFAST
We had wondered whether a new President and a serious new peace overture would produce a breakthrough that would end the Vietnam war. The North Vietnamese gave us the answer in February when they launched a small-scale but savage offensive into South Vietnam. It was a deliberate test, clearly designed to take the measure of me and my administration at the outset.
My immediate instinct was to retaliate. Kissinger and I agreed that if we let the Communists manipulate us at this early stage, we might never be able to negotiate with them from a position of equality, much less one of strength. Johnson had made this mistake and had never been able to recover the initiative.
This view was shared by General Creighton Abrams, the U.S. Commander in Vietnam, and by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker in Saigon. When the Communists stepped up their offensive, both Abrams and Bunker recommended B-52 bombing runs against their supply lines in the Cambodian sanctuaries.
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