Thursday, March 15, 2018

I Like Ike: The Age Of Eisenhower


Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of William I. Hitchcock's The Age of Eisenhower: American and the World in the 1950s.

Academic historians are giving the presidential performance of Dwight D. Eisenhower a well-deserved second look, and the results show the contemporary political pundits who derided him were either biased or blind to his accomplishments.

A 2017 poll of presidential historians ranked Gen. Eisenhower fifth, behind Lincoln, Washington and the two Roosevelts.

William Hitchcock, of the University of Virginia, spent eight years of meticulous research in newly accessible archives to produce a splendid biography that belies the image of Mr. Eisenhower as a benign do-nothing president who was more interested in golf than governing.

Mr. Eisenhower had already achieved fame as the conqueror of Germany, a feat that made him the most popular person in America.

As a military man, he had no interest in — or need for — further acclaim. Thus powerful Republicans expended much energy in convincing him to seek the presidential nomination in 1952. (Disclosure: My father was in the Texas delegation whose vote helped him defeat the early favorite, Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio.)

The slogan “I Like Ike” echoed around the country, and he won handily on a pledge to “fix the mess in Washington” resulting from 20 years of Democratic rule. He cited “unchecked inflation, a spike in taxes, and the spreading tentacles of a grasping bureaucracy.”

You can read the rest the review via the below link:

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