Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  The election turned into a popularity contest between Eisenhower and Stevenson, waged before a backdrop of twenty years of Democratic rule. The country was ready for a change, and Eisenhower seemed the ideal candidate to provide that. The most successful military commander of World War II, he never romanticized war. And the Korean War, now entering its third year, loomed large in voters’ minds. The United States Army in the 1950s was a draftee army. There were no college deferments, and young men from all classes of American life were called into service. As a consequence, the reality of the war struck home, and the country wanted out. In a sense, the 1952 election paralleled the election in 1868, which brought Grant to the White House. In 1868 the American frontier was ablaze with armed conflict as the Indian tribes resisted the settlers’ advance. Grant, who had conquered Lee and defeated the rebellion, was seen as the savior of westward expansion, and he carried all of the frontier states handily. In 1952, the issue was Korea, and who better to lead the United States to victory than the man who had defeated Hitler and the Third Reich.

  The Republicans framed the issues in the campaign as Korea, Communism, and Corruption—K1 C2 in the formulation of Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota. But of the three, it was the continuing stalemate in Korea that energized the electorate. Since June 1950, the United States had suffered well over a hundred thousand casualties, including more than twenty-five thousand men killed in action, and the Truman administration appeared to have no plan for ending the conflict. By October the war had become a partisan issue. President Truman, speaking in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 16, challenged Eisenhower to offer a plan for settling the war as a means for saving American lives.61 Eisenhower responded the following week with a dramatic pledge to go to Korea. Speaking on October 24 at Detroit’s Masonic Temple over a nationwide television hookup, Eisenhower said his administration would give top priority to ending the war. “That job requires a personal trip to Korea. I shall make that trip. Only in that way could I learn how best to serve the American people in the cause of peace. I shall go to Korea.”62

  Eisenhower’s pledge electrified the nation. “For all practical purposes, the contest ended that night,” wrote the Associated Press.63 Note that Eisenhower had not tipped his hand. He had not said what he would do once he had gone to Korea. Truman responded angrily that if Ike had a plan he should tell him now. “Let’s save a lot of lives and not wait. If he can do it after he is elected, we can do it now.”64

  Eisenhower spent election day at 60 Morningside Drive. “When I got there, he was up on the top floor painting,” Herbert Brownell recalled. “I had never seen a candidate do that on election day.” Eisenhower, who evidently had been thinking about it, asked Brownell to become White House chief of staff. Brownell declined. “I told him that my principal interest in life was to be a lawyer and I wanted to continue in the law.”

  “You want to be a lawyer?” asked Ike.

  “Yes,” Brownell replied.

  “How about being Attorney General?”

  “I was quite overwhelmed. I went back to my office to see how much money I had. Well, I figured I had just enough to last four years. So I went back up to Columbia and told General Eisenhower I would take it.”65

  The election results were a foregone conclusion. Stevenson conceded shortly after midnight. Quoting Abraham Lincoln, he reminded his supporters of the little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. “He said he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”66

  Eisenhower carried all but nine of the forty-eight states, with 442 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 89. More than 61 million Americans went to the polls—13 million more than in 1948—and Ike won 55 percent. Final results showed Eisenhower with 33,936,137 votes to Stevenson’s 27,314,649. More significantly, Eisenhower had cracked Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic coalition. Catholics, particularly those from Eastern Europe, defected to the GOP in large numbers, as did farmers and many blue-collar workers. And the fast-growing suburbs were rapidly becoming Republican. Stevenson carried only the Deep South, plus Kentucky and West Virginia. In Kentucky, his margin over Ike was 700 out of the almost 1 million votes cast. The election of 1952 was an electoral revolution. After twenty years in the political wilderness, the Republicans—with Eisenhower indisputably in command—had stormed back into power, taking the House of Representatives and the Senate as well on Ike’s coattails.67

  “Congratulations on your overwhelming victory,” President Truman wired Ike on Wednesday, November 5. “The Independence [the presidential airplane] will be at your disposal if you still desire to go to Korea”—a final partisan jab that Truman could not resist.68 m

  “I deeply appreciate your courteous and generous telegram,” Eisenhower replied. “I am most appreciative of your offer of the use of the Independence but assure you that any suitable transport plane that one of the services could make available will be satisfactory for my planned trip to Korea.” Eisenhower said he would arrange the matter with the secretary of defense [Robert Lovett], and departed that evening for a ten-day holiday at the Augusta National.69

  * * *

  a In the postwar period, General George Marshall was the most prominent member of the Roosevelt administration remaining in public life and became a whipping boy for the ultraconservative wing of the Republican party for the loss of Eastern Europe to the Communists. But his biggest failing in their eyes was the subsequent loss of China, where he had served as President Truman’s special envoy after he stepped down as chief of staff in November 1945. As Republican critics would have it, Marshall had “sold out” Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang to Chairman Mao and the Communists.

  b Eisenhower was baptized into the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., on February 1, 1953. He is the only president who did not belong to a church at the time of his election. The New York Times, February 2, 1953.

  c On September 15, 1950, Senator William Jenner of Indiana, speaking on the Senate floor during the debate to amend the National Security Act, had called General Marshall “a front man for traitors … a living lie … an errand boy, a front man, a stooge, or a co-conspirator for this administration’s crazy assortment of collectivist cutthroat crackpots and Communist fellow traveling appeasers.”

  Senator Joseph McCarthy took up the cry, and on June 14, 1951, also on the Senate floor, called Marshall “part of a conspiracy so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man, a conspiracy of infamy so black that when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.”

  96 Congressional Record 14914–14917, 81st Cong., 2d sess.; 97 Congressional Record 6602, 82nd Cong., 1st sess.

  d Eisenhower harbored no resentment toward Kempton. After the news conference, when Hagerty led the reporter over for an introduction, Ike beamed his brightest smile and greeted Kempton warmly. Lyon, Eisenhower 449.

  e In Miami, Eisenhower spoke to a mass rally in Bay Front Park, site of the February 1933 assassination attempt against president-elect Franklin Roosevelt in which Chicago’s mayor, Anton Cermak, was killed.

  f Stevenson had a fund of $18,150 from a thousand donors—surplus campaign contributions from his 1948 gubernatorial campaign—that he used as governor to augment the salaries of state employees. See Arthur Edward Rowse, Slanted News: A Case Study of the Nixon and Stevenson Fund Stories 8 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

  g On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt kicked off the Democratic presidential campaign with a speech to the Teamsters Union at the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C. “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or my sons,” said FDR. “No, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie … his Scotch soul was furious.” The hilarious reception of Roosevelt’s remarks drove the Republicans to despair. 13 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 290 (New Yor
k: Harper and Brothers, 1950).

  h When Eisenhower eventually released his financial records they showed that he had earned $888,303.99 since 1942, including $635,000 for Crusade in Europe, but his total tax bill had been less than 25 percent. Stevenson, whose ten-year income was almost exactly half a million dollars, had paid 42 percent in taxes. “I am not conscious of any public interest in my personal finances,” said Ike testily. The New York Times, October 15, 1952.

  i Despite his public embrace of Nixon in Wheeling, Eisenhower remained skeptical of his running mate’s finances. After the emotional rally concluded, Ike invited Dick and Pat back to his railroad car and grilled them harshly about redecorating charges Pat had incurred when decorating the Nixon house. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon 107–8 (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978).

  j In November, Eisenhower carried Wisconsin with 61 percent of the vote. McCarthy defeated his opponent, Thomas E. Fairchild, 870,444 to 731,402. Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections 509 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1975).

  k Welles had represented President Roosevelt at the Jasper, Alabama, funeral of House Speaker William Bankhead in September 1940. On the return trip to Washington by rail, Welles had propositioned each of the porters working in his Pullman car for oral sex. The porters refused and filed affidavits pertaining to Welles’s overtures with their employers. Those affidavits were subsequently made available to the Republican National Committee. Jean Edward Smith, FDR 473.

  l As a result of my many interviews with General Clay, President Truman’s comment to Merle Miller, the personal wartime observation of Professor Garrett Mattingly that he related to Professor Henry Graff, and the McCarthy incident in the 1952 election, which has been variously reported, I am convinced that Eisenhower wrote to Marshall in the heady aftermath of victory in Europe seeking to divorce Mamie and marry Kay, and that General Marshall stomped on the idea. I also believe that much of the bitterness that developed during the 1952 campaign between Eisenhower and President Truman was attributable less to political partisanship than to Ike’s knowledge that he was hostage to the possible release of General Marshall’s letter.

  m In 1947, Mr. Truman’s presidential plane, a Douglas C-54 that Truman called The Sacred Cow, was replaced by a larger C-118. Truman yielded to stuffed-shirt criticism and christened the new plane the Independence, which supposedly was more in keeping with the dignity of the office. When he became president, Eisenhower replaced the C-118 with a Lockheed Constellation that he called the Columbine, after the state flower of Colorado.

  TWENTY

  Eight Millionaires and a Plumber

  Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  —DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,

  April 16, 1953

  Dwight D. Eisenhower is the only president in the twentieth century to preside over eight years of peace and prosperity. When he left office in 1961, his popularity ratings were as high as when he was inaugurated. As with the election campaign, the chain of command during the Eisenhower years was clear. Ike made the final decisions, and he enjoyed doing so. His serene self-confidence combined with his global experience fitted him uniquely to lead the nation into the postwar era. And he remained lucky. On the first ballot in Chicago, for instance, Brownell and Clay went all out and were still nine votes shy of the nomination. Unexpectedly, Minnesota switched from Stassen to Ike and he was over the top: “Divine Destiny”—in the memorable phrase of George Patton.

  Like a true professional, Eisenhower made things look easy. He was a master of the essentials. He appeared to be performing less work than he did because he knew instinctively which matters required his attention and which could be delegated to subordinates. His experience as supreme commander taught him to use experts without being intimidated by them. He structured matters so that he always had the last word, and in a curious way that encouraged his subordinates to do their best. The lines of authority were clear, the national interest was broadly defined, and there was no buck passing.

  The selection of his cabinet provides a perfect example of Eisenhower’s ability to delegate. The morning after the election, before leaving for Augusta, Ike met with Clay and Brownell to consider the matter. He had already decided that Brownell would be his attorney general, but the other positions were unfilled. Brownell and Clay had made the tactical decisions that helped him get elected, and Eisenhower trusted their judgment. They knew the political landscape better than he, and not surprisingly he turned to them for the selection of his cabinet. “We were told to consult with a representative of the Taft forces [Thomas Coleman, Republican national committeeman from Wisconsin],” Clay recalled, “but he wasn’t much interested and never showed up. So Brownell and I were a committee of two.”1

  General Eisenhower didn’t give us any instructions. In the Army, you rarely know the people you are assigned to work with beforehand. General Eisenhower was remarkably gifted in bringing people from a variety of backgrounds together and forging them into a successful team. He wanted people who were exceedingly competent and on whom he could rely to run their departments. And he relied on Mr. Brownell and me to assemble them. We didn’t go into this extended search in which you have elaborate committees and staff people play such an important role. Brownell and I knew most of these people first-hand.2

  For secretary of state, Brownell and Clay turned to John Foster Dulles. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Dulles was not a shoo-in. Both Clay and Eisenhower favored their old friend John J. McCloy. But McCloy’s Republican credentials were tarnished.a He had served both FDR and Truman as the assistant secretary of war (there was only one assistant secretary in those days), and Truman had appointed him to head the World Bank, and then to succeed Clay as American high commissioner in Germany. Brownell, strongly supported by Dewey, urged that McCloy be bypassed at least initially in favor of Dulles. Brownell and Dewey accurately pointed out that Dulles had helped rescue the Republican party from its isolationist past (he had been Dewey’s foreign affairs adviser in both the 1944 and 1948 campaigns), and that his service should be rewarded. Later, if Ike wished to appoint McCloy, he could do so. Clay and Eisenhower recognized the wisdom of that argument and chose Dulles.3

  With Dulles, one took the bitter with the sweet. He was a committed internationalist and an accomplished lawyer (a senior partner at Sullivan and Cromwell) who had helped frame the plank in the 1944 Republican platform calling for an independent Jewish state in Palestine. Both his grandfather John W. Foster and his uncle, Robert Lansing, had served as secretary of state (under Benjamin Harrison and Woodrow Wilson, respectively).

  Dulles was also an extremely devout Christian who saw the world through the eyes of an Old Testament prophet. Most who knew him considered him a pompous prig devoid of a sense of humor. “Dull, duller, Dulles,” as the British often put it.b He was given to sweeping pronunciamentos with little footing in reality, and was fiercely determined to roll back the iron curtain by any means available. His advocacy of apocalyptic policies such as massive retaliation and brinkmanship frightened America’s allies. Eisenhower was not reckless, and Dulles provided him with a stalking horse behind which to maneuver. As Murray Kempton put it, Ike would not have trusted Dulles “with a stick of dynamite to blow up a duck pond,” but found him useful for clearing minefields.4

  The remaining cabinet positions were also filled while Eisenhower was at Augusta. Clay and Brownell flew down to Georgia on Sunday, November 9, 1952, in a Continental Can plane, and landed at a private airstrip to avoid reporters. Clay was attending the annual meeting of the elite Business Advisory Council at Sea Island, while Brownell joined Ike at the Augusta National. At Sea Island, Clay met informally with his fellow corporate executives and discussed openly the names of possible appointees. “I remember having a drink with Lucius and Sidney Weinberg [of Goldman Sachs],” said Paul Cabot, head of the
First Boston Corporation. “Lucius had a definite opinion about everyone. No qualifications whatever. Finally, I blew up. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, Lucius, there is a word “maybe” in the English language. Don’t you ever use it?’ ”5

  After Dulles’s selection as secretary of state and Brownell as attorney general, the two principal positions to be filled were Defense and Treasury. Clay seized on two fellow members of the Business Advisory Council who were with him at Sea Island. For secretary of defense, he tapped Charles E. Wilson, the bluff, outspoken head of General Motors who was known as “Engine Charlie” to distinguish him from the other Charles E. Wilson, who headed General Electric (“Electric Charlie”). Wilson was rumored to be the highest-paid executive in the United States with salary and bonuses exceeding $500,000 annually. (The salary of a cabinet officer in 1953 was $22,500.)