Why We Liked Ike
PARMET, HERBERT S.
Why We Liked Ike The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader By Fred I. Greenstein Basic. 286 pp. $16.95. Reviewed by Herbert S. Parmet Professor of history, Queensborough College; author,...
...diffusion, sources and sinks...
...and Barry Goldwater simultaneously emerged from obscurity to protest their party's "Babylonian captivity...
...Moving vehicles also enhance both turbulence intensity and mixing...
...He also made the decade seem placid, particularly in retrospect—though here he is greatly aided by the distorting experience of the turbulent '60s...
...on the contrary, he was viewed as a threat to the President's juggling act...
...Chock's model is the first to predict this occurrence...
...The Army-McCarthy struggle, naturally, elicited Ike's most fervent behind-the-scenes industry...
...For a straight roadway, a long averaging time allows one to assume spatial uniformity in the direction parallel to the road, and to ignore the spatial derivatives in that direction...
...But the equation is useful only if we have information about the wind and temperature fields in the atmosphere...
...All of these, we are told, "played directly into his continuing efforts to enhance the chief of state role by encouraging public support for the President and the Presidency...
...Chock received his Ph.D...
...He also sought to have the GOP leadership in the Senate formally condemn the proceedings...
...As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Free University of Brussels, he did research work on the dynamics of critical phenomena...
...The conservation-of-mass equation for the mean concentration of any species, C, is Lixalrart Advrrlmn IJ.NuMim Surer* Sink* where Ui is the mean wind velocity and Ki, is the eddy diffusivity tensor...
...in Chemical Physics from the University of Chicago...
...Moreover, each new study has brought further confirmation from the files that, far from being the "Eisenhower doll" of folklore, Ike really was the Chief Executive for eight years...
...His temperate leadership blessed the 1950s, fostering a sense of peace at home and abroad...
...General Motors disparate dissenters as Robert Welch, Clarence Manion, Dan Smoot, T, Coleman Andrews, William F. Buckley Jr...
...This he cannot stand...
...In any case, we are beyond being surprised that our 34th President could read, write and think independently...
...Eddy diffusivity was assumed to be the sum of ambient and traffic contributions...
...Vehicles act as an obstacle to the mean wind, causing it to slow and move upward as it approaches the vehicles and downward as it leaves the road...
...In these high shear regions, large eddies are generated and turbulent mixing is intense...
...It was established that the increase in the mean vertical wind component due to the exhaust heat was (B/U),'-' where U is the crossroad wind component...
...Many elements of the hidden-hand approach were certainly involved, but the chapter, the most interesting one in the book, is not entirely convincing...
...Since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, only Ike actually completed two full terms in office...
...The peak concentration is on the downwind roadside...
...To determine how this modifies the eddy diffusivity tensor, Kij, Dr...
...Greenstein perceptively notes Ike's extraordinary force of will: "Compartmentalizing public and private elements of his personal makeup required considerable effort, self-discipline, and a conception of his duties in which eschewing expression of impolitic impulses was taken for granted as an obligation of responsible leadership...
...The equation includes terms for advec-tion...
...Greenstein infers that, through Hagerty, Eisenhower provided ammunition for Edward R. Mur-row's celebrated televised assault on Tailgunner Joe...
...The thesis is substantiated in five well-written, intelligently organized chapters that show Eisenhower's deft behind-the scenes manipulations...
...This equation applies when the length scale of mixing is small compared to that of the variation of the mean concentration...
...Though these piecemeal maneuvers were better than total inaction, Greenstein is constrained to admit that "the many loyal and secure members of the Federal establishment who looked to the President as a defender against McCarthy investigations" were often left out in the cold...
...While seeming not to work at the Presidency, he in fact "pushed and disciplined himself relentlessly...
...Sherman Adams was not the most powerful man in Washington...
...As his prime case study of Ike in action, Greenstein uses the President's scheme for coping with McCarthy?dramatically vindicated, he avows, by the Senator's fall in 1954...
...Now Fred I. Greenstein's appropriately titled book, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, reaffirms the conclusion of numerous previous historians and biographers...
...His full record and legacy deserve greater scrutiny before we rush forward to the canonization of Dwight D. Eisenhower...
...When the wind and traffic are in the same direction, the high shear region occurs in the median of the road...
...Distance from the road (m) Figure I: Obserird (solid lines) and predicted (dashed lines) tracer concentrations near ground level as a /unction of distance from the edge of the road...
...An introductory footnote lists seven books that have reappraised the Eisenhower Presidency...
...Chock was able to specify Kij and the mean crossroad and vertical wind components, and solve the equation numerically...
...THE MAN BEHIND THE WORK Dr...
...The ranking Republicans refused to back the President against their colleague from Wisconsin, and White House Press Secretary Jim Hag-erty's diary—cited by Greenstein—records Ike's irritation...
...BY USING the conservation-of-mass equation, one can describe the dispersion of gaseous molecules in the atmosphere...
...On the home front, strontium 90 was polluting our air...
...David Chock is a Senior Staff Research Scientist in the Environmental Science Department at the General Motors Research Laboratories...
...The gray lines in Figure 1 show a comparison of the models predictions with the tracer data for the case illustrated by Figure 2. Notice that the peak concentration can actually occur on the upwind roadside, due to the exhaust transport by these large eddies...
...Green-stein agrees with the consensus that Ike does not rate as a "political genius," but appreciates his skill...
...To test the model, half-hour measurements of a tracer gas were used to map out experimentally the exhaust dispersion under various meteorological conditions...
...He obstructed McCarthy's evidence-gathering by exercising Executive privilege...
...A President's personality is, after all, inseparable from his handling of the office...
...Yet somehow the United States survived, and so did Ike...
...The Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation decision provoked massive resistance intheformof arson, lynchings and the formation of middle-class White Citizens' Councils that paralleled the Ku Klux Klan...
...The experiment, which duplicated a heavily traveled, level roadway, was conducted under meterological conditions minimizing dispersion...
...The case where the wind speed is low and the wind direction is nearly perpendicular to the roadway is represented by the black lines in Figure 1. Both the model and the experiment show the same dispersion pattern...
...Greenstein" s most thoughtful evaluations are in his last chapter, entitled "Lessons for Other Presidents...
...Instead of "The buck stops here," Ike's motto was "Gently in manner, strong in deed...
...From his Oval Office bunker he called the shots that were so often attributed to others, thus preserving his personal dignity and popularity...
...When the wind is nearly parallel to the road, the situation is much more complicated...
...But as Greenstein then goes on to demonstrate, the President in fact pursued a different course and dealt individually with each new problem posed by McCarthy's activities...
...Can demagogues always be counted on for timely self-destruction...
...He administered three balanced budgets and served as board chairman of the national corporation without soiling his hands...
...He cautions future Chief Executives against trying to duplicate the wonders Eisenhower was able to work on the strength of his personal assets...
...There is little systematic bias with respect to wind direction...
...The buoyancy flux, B, is proportional to the heat emission rate of the vehicles...
...He identifies five Eisenhower strategies: hidden-hand leadership, instrumental use of language, avoidance of personal public attacks on other political actors, close private examination of the personalities of allies and rivals, and shrewd delegation of his own authority...
...Foreign policy was not carried in the hat of John Foster Dulles...
...In light of this new model, exhaust dispersion near a roadway can now be predicted with reliability," says Dr...
...And Richard Nixon was not Eisenhower's indispensable "boy...
...The truth is, we know from the diaries, Ike's intention was simply "to ignore him...
...Internationally, he "moderated the harsh side of his Cold War view by taking the lead in making peace initiatives...
...author, "Eisenhower and the American Crusades" Dwioht D. Eisenhower has been re-evaluated during the past decade as indisputably the most successful postwar American President...
...Although the times were not exactly hyper, they certainly were frightening...
...Near a road, this condition is met if the averaging time for the concentration and wind velocity is much longer than the time interval of vehicular passage...
...Still, the biographer fails to make clear precisely how the "hidden hand" would have won the day had not McCarthy committed the blunder of seeking an all-out confrontation with the Army and Joseph Welch...
...Just below the "passive-negative" surface seen by detractors like political scientist James David Barber was concealed an activist...
...Senator Joe McCarthy found Ike's election no reason to abandon his role as savior of internal security...
...Black lines indicate the case in which the wind is perpendicular to the road: gray lines, when the wind is nearly parallel to the road and opposing the upwind-lane traffic Figure 2: This representation of a roadway viewed from above shows the location of large vortices formed by local wind sltear when the wind opposes the upwind-lane traffic...
...Chock invoked a "second-order closure" assumption, which relates eddy diffusivity to Reynolds stresses and the gradients of mean wind velocity and mean temperature...
...On policy issues, Eisenhower compromised expediently...
...Eisenhower himself once remarked: Any man who could become Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, lead nato, get himself installed as president of a major university, and go on to the White House had to be a pretty good politician...
...The input information for K ij and the mean crossroad and vertical wind components near a roadway became available as a result of a large-scale experiment conducted by the General Motors Research Laboratories...
...Whatever the merits or shortcomings of The Hidden-Hand Presidency, however, one puts it down with a powerful sensation of deja vu...
...Advection is the transport of air parcels by the mean wind...
...His current research interests include the phenomena of atmospheric transport and reactions, and the statistical study of time-series data...
...and he retained enough public confidence to have gone on to a third had not age, health and the 22nd Amendment intervened...
...Numerous questions concerning Ike in both the domestic and the international arena have yet to be adequately considered...
...In addition, vehicles release heat, which causes a net upward motion...
...In explaining this feat, Greenstein focuses on the President's political methodology...
...Chock...
...Figure 2 shows that when the wind and traffic flow on the upwind lanes oppose each other, a high shear region occurs immediately upwind of the first traffic lane...
...The experiment has provided an understanding of the influence of moving vehicles on mechanical turbulence and buoyancy near a roadway...
...diffusion is due mainly to turbulent mixing...
...He did additional postdoctoral work in the fields of solid-state physics and fluid dynamics...
...Toward the end of the decade thunder began to roll from the Republican Right, as such The Dispersion Analysis Exhaust dispersion near a roadway is influenced by the turbulence and heat generated by moving vehicles...
...In nondefense areas he tailored "his strongly felt conservatism to profess the extent of domestic liberalism necessary to win his party middle-of-the-road support...
...Findings at the General Motors Research Laboratories have provided a new understanding of the dispersion process...
...This figure went unperceived, writes Greenstein, "because he chose not to publicize his activities, and in part his activities did not always fit the popular conception of an activist...
...But the author offers not a hint about what they say, and for all the academic apparatus bolstering his pronouncements, he never mentions them again...
...Greenstein argues that Eisenhower had a "basic strategy" from the outset that he hoped would defuse the impact of the junior senator from Wisconsin...
...Even his much-maligned vacations were functional, "prescriptions for winding down a man whose drive and intensity needed to be kept in check...
...To determine the traffic contribution, the length scale of the traffic-induced turbulence was assumed to be comparable to vehicle height-1.5 m. USING THE vast data base compiled during the experiment, Dr...
...Under all combinations of wind speeds and directions, the predictions based on the model compare favorably with the measured tracer concentrations...
...Greenstein's work, despite its scholarly trappings, is essentially derivative, loading on additional details to what we have been reading about Ike since the early '70s...
...His thesis concerned the quantum mechanics of molecules and molecular crystals...
...Moving vehicles affect the mean crossroad and vertical wind components in the following ways...
...As Murray Kempton pointed out 15 years ago, he was so good he made it all seem easy...
...This is of importance for environmentally sound road planning, and opens the door to the investigation of dispersion on city streets, where the presence of tall structures introduces even further complexity...
...He is leader of the GM atmospheric modeling group...
...Greenstein himself notes that it is time "to learn more about this unexpectedly fascinating Presidency...
...The durability of the "balance of terror" was untested, and one incident after another—Diem Bien Phu, Berlin, Hungary, Suez, Formosa, the U-2 debacle, the abortive Paris summit conference—appeared to verify the imminence of a nuclear holocaust...
...Eisenhower's America was anything but cool, calm and collected...
...Even though almost all were the products of research that yielded essentially the same view of Eisenhower, the inescapable implication is of Greenstein avoiding any acknowledgment that these sources contributed to his "new" view...
...Chock joined the corporation in 1972...
...Specifically, our ability to predict vehicular exhaust concentrations near a road depends on knowledge of the effects of vehicles on these fields...
...His responses ranged from appeasement—especially when trying to prove the Administration's zeal in scouring for internal security "risks"—to what Greenstein calls the "positive approach," the "indirect defense accomplished through condemnation of unfair tactics...
...David Chock was responsible for the design of the experiment and the analysis of the data...
Vol. 65 • December 1982 • No. 23
