Faced with a war against communists on the Korean peninsula that could not be won, the American people understandably had a great deal of confidence that the Supreme Allied Commander of World War Two, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, would be a trustworthy person to negotiate a difficult peace. Sixteen years later, facing a war against communists in Vietnam that could not be won, the American people understandably trusted a man who had built his political career on staunch anti-communism to use his “secret plan” to win the peace. It seemed unlikely that Richard M. Nixon would be weak in the negotiations. Whether you were Madly for Adlai or correctly saw Nixon for the man he actually was, in retrospect it’s easy to see why the American people voted the way that they did. I don’t know if we’ll ever feel that way about Donald J. Trump.
People have started comparing our current political environment to 1968 for some obvious reasons. The country seems more divided than it has been at any point since 1968. But the situation actually bears much more resemblance to 1953. That’s the year that the Republicans won the trifecta, and controlled both the White House and Congress for the first time since the rise of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. It’s also the year that Eisenhower brokered the uneasy truce with North Korea that is currently under so much stress.
Looking back sixty-four years, through sixteen presidential elections, it’s easy to see the parallels to today. And we can also see how things worked out then and assess how likely it is that things will turn out as well in our own times.
The truce with North Korea has held and we did our part to make sure that South Korea became a case study of how our values could benefit the people more than the values espoused by Mao and Stalin. It wasn’t a straight line, and South Korea struggled through its own dictatorships and oppression which we enabled and tolerated at the time. But, from where we stand today, we can be proud of what South Korea has become and proud that we sacrificed blood and treasure to make it possible. Eisenhower deserves credit for knowing when to stop fighting and how to negotiate a peace that would have endurance. Only a handful of knowledgable people think our current president is likely to navigate our current crisis with the same deftness, and literally no one thinks Trump carries the respect of the people or commands the deference of Eisenhower.
In Congress, things are also interesting. When Eisenhower became president, the New Deal had been ongoing for twenty years. Then, as now, the rightwing of the country expected that a Republican Congress and a Republican president would be able to roll it all back. But that’s not how things worked out for the 83rd Congress. Eisenhower wasn’t interested in rolling back most of The New Deal, and the most memorable thing that happened in the Capitol came on December 2, 1954, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy was censured by his colleagues. Second to that, the Republicans created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
It’s little wonder that modern day conservatives don’t celebrate the presidency of Eisenhower. But his steady leadership through the height of the second Red Scare on Korea and on domestic legislative policy already stands in stark contrast to the leadership we have right now. The contrast is so great in fact, that it seems almost irrelevant to discuss Eisenhower’s mistakes and shortcomings. Anyone with any sense would trade Trump for Eisenhower in a second.
On the other hand, it all looks very calm and seamless and inevitable from the remove of sixty-four years. In truth, the country and the Republican Party were as divided then as they are now. Back then, the GOP didn’t want to own The New Deal. Today, the Republicans don’t want to own Obamacare:
[Sen. Rand] Paul warned Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if Republicans vote for a replacement plan that keeps core elements of ObamaCare in place, “the Republican name will be on health care and this isn’t going to work.”
“You’re going to end up having Republicans absorb the blame for a terrible health-care system,” he said.
When the American people went to the polls in November 1954, the Republicans lost control of the Senate and did not gain it back until 1981. They lost control of the House and did not gain it back until 1995. They didn’t know how to operate as a majority back then even with a Republican president, and they still don’t know how to do that today. But, in 1954, they had steady leadership at the top. In 2018, the Republicans will have Donald Trump.
For those wishing to turn the despair level up to eleven, recall that Eisenhower also nominated Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart to the Supreme Court.
True story. I went to high school with Earl Warren’s granddaughter. I spent a lot of time in her hot tub and playing on her parent’s pool table.
Cool story bro!
Jesus. That was confused. I went to school with Justice Brennan’s granddaughter, not Earl Warren’s. I’m such a moron.
Well, you might be a moron. But at least you’re not the President, and a moron. That spot is already taken. 🙂
Either way, it’s got to be better than someday hot tubbing with Justice Gorsuch’s granddaughter.
Maybe. For all I know, she’s super cool.
Eh, maybe. Maybe not.
https:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/conservatives-liberals-trump/512987
What difference does it make whose granddaughter that was? The important thing to discuss is whether Eisenhower’s memoirs reveal any of his thinking about nuking the hot tub.
Oh crap. Now I have to write about budget reconciliation rules again?
LOL!
Was that also John Charles Daly’s daughter, then? I loved him as MC of What’s My Line.
And don’t forget that Eisenhower dispatched Chief Justice Warren to go stand in the doorway of that school in Little Rock and shout “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”.
Crank that despair level to an TWELVE.
And Ike was furious at Warren’s decisions after the fact.
Brown v. Board of Education was a unanimous decision.
And Ike was furious.
Trump may well be the Republicans’ asteroid.
Hmm
Eisenhower explored the use of nuclear weapons in Korea.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/08/world/us-papers-tell-of-53-policy-to-use-a-bomb-in-korea.html?mcub
z=1
It never came to that, because Stalin died in March of ’53 and Stalin’s successors wanted to deescalate the War in Korea.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/08/11/trump-threatened-to-nuke-north-kor
ea-did-ike-do-the-same?utm_term=.7ed91abe915f
My memory is Eisenhower mostly ducked confrontation with McCarthy until McCarthy became a spent force, though he certainly Eisenhower had little respect for McCarthy. Famously he failed to defend George Marshall when he campaigned with McCarthy in Wisconsin.
A good defense of Eisenhower wrt to McCarthy is here, but there are others who are as forgiving.
https:/www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/who-stopped-mccarthy/517782
Eisenhower was certainly a better man than Trump, and his speech on the MIC late in his term was more than accurate.
But on Korea Eisenhower, and the world, got lucky.
Otherwise he gave the Dulles bros free reign while he played golf.
Also note that in 1952 the GOP gained a slim majority in the House and were tied in the Senate at 48 to 48. ’54 reversed – plus the ’52 GOP House gains. During the 83rd Congress (1/53-1/55) the GOP gained two seats in special elections and Wayne Morse (R) switched to Independent and caucused with Democrats. The ’54 election restored the Democratic majority by one seat. The House and Senate Democratic majorities increased in the subsequent two election cycles.
No question Ike is far preferable to a Donald, but on Stalin, while he got lucky, he also dropped the ball — or should I say he badly hooked his drive. Or maybe it was a case of not showing up for his scheduled tee time. It was PM Churchill who, shortly after Stalin’s death was announced, notified Ike by telegram that he’d heard the new leaders in Moscow were eager to talk, with the view of a thaw in cold war relations.
Ike responded unfavorably to the possible overture, didn’t bother to pursue it. As a result, we got tremendous continued cold war tensions in the 50s, the era of stifled dissenting voices and Duck and Cover drills in schools.
Re McCarthy, yes, Ike’s decision was to side step and avoid direct confrontation, lest he get into the mud with his opponent (as he once put it to aides encouraging him to confront). There was probably no pol in America better positioned to take on McC directly and end all that hysteria right on the spot than Ike. But he chose the safe route.
Similar re the MIC — has there ever been a president in the post-WW2 era better positioned to directly take on that monster and bring it to heel? Yet he left that to his Farewell Address as he waited 8 years to tell the public about it and as he had one foot already out the door. Lefties get all weepy about that MIC remark, but I tend to weep for the opportunity squandered.
Other than those items, and the ones you mention, plus maybe leaving golf shoe spike marks on the Oval wooden floor, other than those, fine president.
What is interesting about the discussion of foreign policy is how little space is given to the decisions anyone but the US makes.
The War ended – so it had to be something Ike did.
I don’t think the Cold War was really avoidable – so I don’t blame Ike for that.
I have some vague memory that Ike tended to be suspicious of the military budget while he was President – and in fact it was pretty stable when he was President. Of course he was furious at the fictional “missile gap” Kennedy pushed in 1960.
Ike was a conservative in the traditional sense. He believed that American institutions had served America well, and ensuring their legitimacy was important.
I wish modern day conservatives were like him.
It’s easy to look at this period and simplify things too much.
It’s easy to get pissed at the Dulles Brothers and for Ike for following their counsel. But, the greater threat in the 1946-52 period was from isolationists who weren’t committed to establishing a stable and secure Europe. Everything got crazy after China fell. Stalin dying might have changed things more without that. The confrontation in Berlin played a big part, too.
Also of note, the CIA was created during the Do-Nothing Congress. It’s pretty much the only thing they did, and the law wasn’t all bad taken in its entirety, but it opened the door for the Dulles Brothers to conduct our foreign policy in the 1950’s, and it did not turn out well.
Haven’t read the CIA bill in years, but it seems some people in the Agency stretched some allowances and then over time, with no oversight and with supposed trouble areas popping up around the world, became a policy making and enforcing arm unto themselves, contrary to the original intention of just gathering foreign intel for the president.
As you know undoubtedly, a month after Dallas, Truman wrote a most interesting op-ed piece for the WaPo denouncing the CIA along the lines I noted above, and seemed to regret having signed the bill into law.
that’s all true.
I guess my point is that prior to actually taking power unto themselves, the Dulles Brothers were fighting mostly on the correct side of the postwar ideological battle. The problem was that they were fanatical about it.
So, it was good that they were on the winning side but it turned out to be a problem when they got into position to set policy.
Eisenhower often rejected their counsel but he also gave them such a long leash that they didn’t need to ask for permission for much of stupid self-defeating shit that they did.
No, I don’t blame Ike for starting the CW — it had already started 8 yrs before at the end of WW2 under HST. Ike was just far better positioned as a confirmed non-Comsymp and American Hero to take on things like better relations with the post-Stalin Moscow regime, the MIC, McC etc. But he was hardly a bold, activist president willing to shake up the status quo. Yet he could have, for the better.
As for the missile gap that turned out to be non-existent, I’ve read about this and discussed it before. It wasn’t exactly something JFK pulled out of thin air, as there was some rational substance to the charge from at least one prior congressional investigation. He just wasn’t in a position (yet) to determine its accuracy, and didn’t trust the denials coming from the WH, seeing them as politically motivated.
And this isn’t the only way its 1953 all over again, what with Trump normalizing white supremacy, working to make “safe spaces” for those who espouse those views, while demonizing those who push back on it, to the frothing delight of his followers.
The right has always pined for the 1950s, as a “simpler” time. For them, the 1950s aren’t just in sight; its here.
There is no attractive answer. The choices are all bad. Bad for the people of South Korea and Japan, bad for the people of North Korea, bad for our soldiers and our position in the world. The best response at this point is to erect such defenses as we have, be ready to respond with overwhelming force if absolutely necessary, and hope Kim suddenly decides to retire and become a monk. And even that would likely end in millions starving.
We can’t seem to provide food, water and power to 3.5 million American citizens in Puerto Rico. We’re going to manage famine and disease among the 25 million people in North Korea? In light of the Syria debacle is it not worth considering that Kim Jong Un may be the devil we’re better off living with?
If nukes are our bugaboo, and regime change is Kim’s, is there not a possible deal to be had in signing a peace treaty guaranteeing our non-intervention if Kim takes down his nukes?
A problem with the general US foreign policy approach is it’s steeped in a culture of American exceptionalism. This has endured through both republican and democratic administrations alike, although extreme expressions of it tend to perpetuate under GOP leadership. We can thank W Bush for his “toughness” in wanting to rescind the deal we had with NK brokered by Clinton. His “strategy” was steeped in the idea that not talking out of a sense of exceptionalism would somehow scare the hell out of them and result in nuclear nonproliferation, which not only led to a nuclear armed NK but thanks to the “axis of evil” has every right to feel that the only thing standing between its survival and destruction is possessing nuclear weapons. Even with Obama the policy of generally “not talking” until the other side does everything we want didn’t slow the process of proliferation in NK.
And now that same exceptionalist tough guy insanity calls for doing the same thing to Iran, to tear up the nuclear deal we have with them, stop talking and somehow scare them with our exceptionalism into non-proliferation when precedent points to the opposite result. Insanity.
American exceptionalism is damn near as bad as the Asian thing of saving face. Little wonder there are no good options to this standoff.
Call me crazy, but if we had a sane leader, I believe now would be a good time to open up a dialog and talk to North Korea. As a despotic leader, what Kim appears to treasure most is being respected on the world stage. If that’s what it takes, why can’t the use take the same approach to the Korean peninsula as we’ve taken to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, and invite both Kim and the South Korea leader to the white house for talks? Sure, we may have to absorb the indignities of being called running dogs or whatever is the insult de jure of communist dictators these days during the process. But consider: communism wasn’t defeated by St Reagan blustering about tearing down the wall. China, the old USSR, Viet Nam and now Cuba realized the benefits of having capitalist economies, and if feeding the people can ensure stability of a regime more than the cost of fear, while at the same time ratcheting down the tension and injecting a level of common sense, then why not? It all started with recognizing these nations and their leaders, setting ball swinging tough guy insanity aside for pragmatism, and letting business do the rest.
The best chance for something like this happening does not lie with the current president and party. I don’t even see the democratic party with its current leadership creative enough to step out of the box with something like this.
At this point, we have no good options. Unfortunately we do not have a president capable of anything but insanity. If we had, instead of trading insults, what harm could taking do?
We might start by stopping all our needlessly provocative large-scale military exercises w/SK near the NK border. Paranoid types like Kim Jung Un don’t need to have their paranoia justified.
Russian and Chinese leaders have been trying to tell the US about this simple step in the right direction for along time. But our Pentagon apparently calls the shots in DC, and Trump has learned it’s better to go along with the fruit salad boys rather than cross ’em.
As for the Dems, yes they could get more creative, but how about also more courageous? Only 2, plus Bernie Sanders, voted against the recent appalling NDAA Pentagon budget increase in the senate, out of 5 senators total. Sens Gillibrand and Leahy stepped up. Not so the usual rest of the cowardly bunch of them including, sadly, one Elizabeth Warren.
The Dem Pty is still in the thrall of the neocons, worried about being accused of being soft on Un, soft on Putin, soft on the neocon bogeyman du jour.
Perhaps the best thing to do is that which no one ever seems to think is an option: absolutely nothing.
Doing nothing is seriously underestimated.
It probably was the best policy to pursue in the wake of the French collapse in Vietnam, and in other places as well.
Eventually if history is any guide the North Koreans themselves will kill the bastard. I doubt he dies in his bed.
Stalin murdered millions and millions, and he died in his bed. Same with Mao Zedong. So which history are you alluding to?
[Sen. Rand] Paul warned Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that . . .”You’re going to end up having Republicans absorb the blame for a terrible health-care system,” he said.
This is all true. Rand Paul might be the Mouth of Sauron, but he can spot political failure when he sees it. Republicans set themselves up for this failure. They lied incessantly to the people and now it’s all on them.
If they repeal, they can’t replace. That’s fine if you’re an end-days survivalist Libertarian who can look dying children in the eyes and say “I don’t care.” Most Libertarian Republican Politicians have difficulty feigning human empathy in any case.
But, the majority actually WANT heath care, and think that the government should somehow make it possible for them to get affordable care for their families.
Since they are conservatives they are inclined to believe everything they are told and they were told GOP repeal and replace would get rid of the hated Obama-care and substitute it with something that would help them and people like them.
Now it’s not. If they don’t repeal, then they are “sell-outs” and the base will side with Trump, who has already signalled that he will blame McConnell, Ryan and the GOP Congress for this failure. This will cause them to lose further favour with the base.
If they succeed in repeal, they will further enrage everybody else and generate endless negative press and angry demonstrations from constituents who oppose repeal. Furthermore, it will be increasingly difficult to hide the reality that they are taking health care away from their own constituents, who thought that “big government” was providing health care to the undeserving, and wanted that stopped, not THEIR health care.
However, the GOP won power promising to do something only nothing that they can do will satisfy anybody.
Now Obama-care was doomed from the start because the subsidies were too stingy and formed as tax cuts, which made them too week, the mandate was too feeble to entice the young and healthy, and regulation of the insurance industry to ensure compliance and the provision of really good care that covered everything people needed, too expensive.
Every other country that has succeeded in a program like Obamacare (Ex: Switzerland), has MUCH tougher regulations and laws penalizing both insurers and insured alike. Without political good will and a new approach to regulating the insurance industry nothing could have saved Obamacare long term.
Now the GOP bought a stock before it crashed in value. Now they own it. The GOP Congress is caught between the Trumpian base and reality. It is not going to be a good year to be a Republican. Trump will skate off, denying all responsibility as usual, and the press and his loyal base will lay all the blame on their elected representatives in Congress.
In 1953, the Republicans were still sane.
I suspect a defect in this discussion thread, as none of Our Progressive Betters has yet remarked that Barack Obama was an Eisenhower Republican.