Remembering Ike
On March 28, 1969 (44 years ago today), Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, died at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. at the age of 78.
Eisenhower was president for two terms from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
Following his presidency, Eisenhower retired to the place where he and his wife Mamie had spent much of their post-war time, a working farm adjacent to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 1967, the Eisenhowers donated the farm to the National Park Service.
A tribute to Eisenhower's presidency is contained in the 2012 biography written by Jean Edward Smith entitled Eisenhower in War and Peace in the preface at pages xiv-xv:
Eisenhower had a textbook view of presidential power. As more than one scholar has observed, he may have been the last President to actually believe in the Constitution. For Ike, Congress made policy and the President carried it out. He took his constitutional responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" at face value. In 1957, when a United States District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, ordered the desegregation of Central High, Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to enforce the court's order. If he had not acted, and if he had not used overwhelming force to ensure compliance with the district court's order, desegregation in the South would have been set back at least a generation. "Sending in the troops was the hardest decision I had had to make since D-Day," Eisenhower said afterward. "But Goddamn it, it was the only thing I could do.
Eisenhower was a progressive conservative. He believed traditional American values encompassed change and progress. He looked to the future, not the past, and his presidency provided a buffered transition from FDR's New Deal or the Fair Deal of Harry Truman into the modern era. "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would never hear of that party again," Ike wrote his brother Edgar. "There is a tiny splinter group that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt and a few other Texas millionaires. But their number is negligible and they are stupid."
When the economy turned down after the Korean War, Eisenhower initiated the interstate highway program and constructed the St. Lawrence Seaway, not only revolutionizing the American transportation system, but opening the Great Lakes to ocean traffic. Neither program affected the federal budget. The interstate system - the cost of which eventually exceeded the total expenditures of the New Deal from 1933 to 1941 - was funded entirely by increased gasoline taxes, and the seaway through the sale of interest-bearing bonds issued by the U.S.-Canadian Seaway Development Corporation. The National Defense Education Act, which Eisenhower signed into law in 1958, broke the long-standing taboo against direct federal aid to education and has done more to change the face of American universities than any measure since the enactment of the GI Bill during World War II.
As president, Eisenhower restored stability to the nation. His levelheaded leadership ensured that the United States would move forward in measured steps under the rulle e of law at home and collective security abroad. His sensible admonition upon leaving office to be wary of the military-industrial complex was the heartfelt sentiment of a president who recognized the perils of world leadership. Eisenhower gave the country eight years of peace and prosperity. No other president in the twentieth century can make that claim.
Eisenhower was president for two terms from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
Following his presidency, Eisenhower retired to the place where he and his wife Mamie had spent much of their post-war time, a working farm adjacent to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 1967, the Eisenhowers donated the farm to the National Park Service.
A tribute to Eisenhower's presidency is contained in the 2012 biography written by Jean Edward Smith entitled Eisenhower in War and Peace in the preface at pages xiv-xv:
Eisenhower had a textbook view of presidential power. As more than one scholar has observed, he may have been the last President to actually believe in the Constitution. For Ike, Congress made policy and the President carried it out. He took his constitutional responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" at face value. In 1957, when a United States District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, ordered the desegregation of Central High, Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to enforce the court's order. If he had not acted, and if he had not used overwhelming force to ensure compliance with the district court's order, desegregation in the South would have been set back at least a generation. "Sending in the troops was the hardest decision I had had to make since D-Day," Eisenhower said afterward. "But Goddamn it, it was the only thing I could do.
Eisenhower was a progressive conservative. He believed traditional American values encompassed change and progress. He looked to the future, not the past, and his presidency provided a buffered transition from FDR's New Deal or the Fair Deal of Harry Truman into the modern era. "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would never hear of that party again," Ike wrote his brother Edgar. "There is a tiny splinter group that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt and a few other Texas millionaires. But their number is negligible and they are stupid."
When the economy turned down after the Korean War, Eisenhower initiated the interstate highway program and constructed the St. Lawrence Seaway, not only revolutionizing the American transportation system, but opening the Great Lakes to ocean traffic. Neither program affected the federal budget. The interstate system - the cost of which eventually exceeded the total expenditures of the New Deal from 1933 to 1941 - was funded entirely by increased gasoline taxes, and the seaway through the sale of interest-bearing bonds issued by the U.S.-Canadian Seaway Development Corporation. The National Defense Education Act, which Eisenhower signed into law in 1958, broke the long-standing taboo against direct federal aid to education and has done more to change the face of American universities than any measure since the enactment of the GI Bill during World War II.
As president, Eisenhower restored stability to the nation. His levelheaded leadership ensured that the United States would move forward in measured steps under the rulle e of law at home and collective security abroad. His sensible admonition upon leaving office to be wary of the military-industrial complex was the heartfelt sentiment of a president who recognized the perils of world leadership. Eisenhower gave the country eight years of peace and prosperity. No other president in the twentieth century can make that claim.