Unearthing the Real Ike

...then in the long run we are sunk...

...Ike was a general, of course, but his refusal to bail out the French at Dien Bien Phu led opponents of the Vietnam War to cast him in retrospect as an "antimilitarist in the White House": He was a powerful force for peace and sanity guiding with a barely visible hand—while surrounded by would-be bomb-throwers like Nixon and Dulles, who began urging military intervention in Indochina as early as 1954...

...Thanks to Ambrose, it will be easy to find the real Ike...

...Supreme Court handed down its 1954 Brown v. Topeka decision, Ike merely commented that the desegregation of public schools was now the law of the land...

...These minor quibbles do not detract from the author's achievement...

...Either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them any more," was Ike's characteristic rejoinder...

...Nixon's defection, writes Ambrose, was "the deepest wound of all...

...And contrary to a widespread impression, the White House was not run by assistants...

...Occasionally he was agitated enough to contemplate a realignment of our parties...

...En route to such conclusions, Ambrose has virtually guaranteed that it will be a very long time before anyone succeeds in climbing to the next plateau of biographical research on Dwight David Eisenhower...

...Virtually nothing uncovered contradicts the President's claim that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles "never made a serious pronouncement, agreement, or proposal without complete and exhaustive consultation with me in advance and, of course, my approval...

...After almost two decades of research, Ambrose suggests that Ike deserves to be ranked among the greats— of those who served in this century, behind only Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt...

...As with civil rights, the President's public stance consisted largely of ducking and weaving, hemming and hawing...

...Ike's most outstanding quality, as Ambrose sees it, was his deft management of crises—from Dien Bien Phu to Little Rock to Sputnik...

...At least among academics, the recent revisionist trend has had its effect...

...On two issues, in particular—civil rights and Joe McCarthy—he confirms received opinion by admitting that Ike did not so much lead as attempt to reconcile his personal views with the demands of growing national sentiment and political expediency...

...The "sum total of Eisenhower' s program" to help blacks consisted of appeals to Southern governors chosen by practically all-white electorates "for some sign of progress...

...Ambrose has written a substantial book that constitutes by far the best and most authoritative Eisenhower biography available, and others will draw upon his own evidence to challenge his lofty ranking...

...That is a doubtful conclusion...

...Ambrose reaffirms Eisenhower's stature...

...Finally, despite the author's comprehensiveness, he mysteriously skirts the question of Ngo Dinh Diem's coming to power in Vietnam, a legacy that surely weighed heavily on Kennedy...

...Ambrose near the end of his comprehensive and approving life of our 34th Commander-in-Chief...

...American responses all over the world were his, "no one else's...

...During the' 50s Capitol Hill Republicans, riding the national mood, wanted to raise military outlays and to perform whatever budgetary surgery might be needed on foreign aid instead...

...At a 1957 press conference he cautioned that "any modern political philosophy [has] to study carefully the needs of the people today, not of 1860...

...Defense spending did...

...In fact, the threat from the GOP's Right-wing was one of the major reasons Eisenhower agreed to run in the first place, and its opposition grew steadily...

...No other President in the 20th century could make that claim...

...Ambrose explores in detail the path leading to the celebrated Farewell Address, which pointed to the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex...

...Consequently, Richard Nixon's attempt to match John Kennedy's call for a defense build-up during the 1960 campaign worsened Eisenhower's already frosty relationship with his Vice President...

...Readers can rank Ike themselves...

...What better way to recall the poisonous atmosphere of the period than to point out that of the 221 Republican Representatives in the 83 rd Congress, 185 sought membership on the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...He thought for himself, and was hardly the "captive hero" of liberal columnist Marquis Childs' imagination...

...Army...

...Ike "kept all the power in his own hands," says the author, who confesses that even he—a scholar steeped in Ikeiana for most of two decades—was impressed by "how completely Eisenhower dominated events...

...Then too, his Administration bungled the diplomatic aftermath of the Cuban Revolution...

...author, "Eisenhower and the American Crusades," "JFK" "Eisenhower gave the nation eight years of peace and prosperity," declares StephenE...

...His role in the McCarthy affair is equally familiar...

...For one thing, it is rather hard to give such a high standing to someone who flunked the two great moral tests of his White House years: civil rights and Joe McCarthy...

...Once more we are left to ruminate on the possible consequences had the junior Senator from Wisconsin been wise enough to avoid challenging the U.S...

...The forces that would ultimately spawn the Reagan Revolution were admittedly flexing their muscles in the '50s, but the President worked to keep the Yahoos at bay...

...These and other insights provide a clearer view of Eisenhower...

...The golfer not only read, he also wrote...

...Nonetheless, Ambrose manages to enlighten us by making an incisive point: It "was not the things Eisenhower did behind the scenes but rather his most public act"—the assertion of executive privilege during the Army-McCarthy hearings—"that was his major contribution to McCarthy's downfall...

...When the U.S...

...McCarthyism and race relations, however, did not evoke the real Eisenhower...

...He sided with the conservatives seeking to prevent a takeover by the reactionaries...

...Furthermore, he said, "I believe that unless a modern political group does look these problems in the face and finds some reasonable solution...

...To Eisenhower, though, cutting back defense spending was a prerequisite for all major goals: reducing the deficit, taxes and unemployment, as well as promoting trade and world peace...

...No wonder millions of Americans felt that the country was damned lucky to have him...

...Arthur Schlesinger Sr.'s 1962 survey asking historians to rank past Presidents placed Ike 22nd, saved from the very bottom of the "average" category by Andrew Johnson...

...Although Ambrose clearly thinks well of his subject, he delineates rather than celebrates Eisenhower's Presidency, thus preserving his credibility...

...Twenty years later, when Robert K. Murray and Tim Blessing tabulated the results of their own canvass, the man formerly best known for his golf landed in 11 th place, high in the ranks of "above-average" Chief Executives...

...In addition, this study of Eisenhower's Presidency is especially timely because there could be no more emphatic demonstration of how much the Republican Party has changed...

...Even more seriously, at the end of eight years in office, his cherished designs for detente lay in ruins, partly because one of our U-2 spy flights—a program he had personally authorized—was shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960, prompting Nikita Khrushchev to cancel Ike's scheduled trip to Moscow...

...He leaves no doubt that the President was not merely the innocent reader of a controversial script sneaked in by political scientist Malcolm Moos...

...For his work is enriched by access to revealing sources, so that not the least of its virtues are gems of new information shaped by the talents of a judicious and meticulous historian into a smooth, essentially chronological narrative...

...Eisenhower felt it was a "cold rejection of everything he had stood for and fought for over the past seven and a half years...