In his New Republic review of Jean Edward Smith’s new Eisenhower biography, Rutgers historian David Greenberg rightly take legions of Ike-worshippers to task for sugar-coating Ike’s mixed performance as both a general and a president. As Greenberg notes, Dwight Eisenhower was not the amiable dunce of contemporary caricatures but nor is he the genius and giant he is now made out to be.
Not even his greatest admirers make any great claims for his tactical prowess, while many of his specific decisions during the liberation of North Africa and Western Europe were deeply flawed. (One decision that he got right–and that Greenberg needlessly criticizes him for–was sticking by George S. Patton after the latter slapped a couple of soldiers for alleged cowardice. Ike realized what Greenberg does not: that this was a small price to pay for Patton’s tactical genius.)
His presidency was even more problematic. While one can make the case, as Smith does, that Ike presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, the same might be said for other presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton or, in the case of two who did not serve a full eight years, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. Ike’s achievement was not as unprecedented as Smith makes it out to be, nor did he have the kind of accomplishments that FDR (got the nation through the Great Depression, helped win World War II), Truman (the containment policy) or Reagan (helped end the Cold War) had.
President Eisenhower did deserve credit for ending the Korean War, building the interstate highway system, putting a bipartisan imprimatur on the New Deal, and moving the Republican Party away from isolationism but, as Greenberg argues, he also deserves demerits for not being more out front in confronting Joe McCarthy or Southern segregationists.
My biggest beef with Eisenhower, however, goes unmentioned by Greenberg: His handling of the Suez crisis when he sold out our allies (Britain, France and Israel) to curry favor with a Middle Eastern demagogue (Nasser). That misstep was to have baleful longterm consequences for American policy in the Middle East. Yet the consequences of this and other Eisenhower missteps are ignored or waved away by the legion of revisionists who want to elevate him into the top of the presidential pantheon. In reality, he was a good man, a good general and a good president–but not a truly great man or great leader.
"nor did he have the kind of accomplishments that FDR (got the nation through the Great Depression" n nFDR did not get us "through the Great Depression." This myth has been thoroughly demolished by historians like Amity Shlaes and Burton W. Folsom. He made things much worse—and used the economic crisis as an excuse to use government money to bribe voters.
To FDR's credit his policies had not yet been failure in many places over a long time* so he shold not be condemned for them to the extent that Obama deserves blame for his rigid and absurd paleo-leftwingism. n n*To be sure, the probable result could have been anticipated from a careful study of history and political philosophy, precisely the the sort of study which influenced the drafting of the Constitution, a document the Raw Deal did so much to vitiate.
worse? from 1929 to 1933 the GDP was cut by 50%, from $103.6 billion to $56.4 billion; under Roosevelt it rose to $92.2 billion by 1939–unemployment was 24.9% in 1933–in an American when each unemployed worker often effectively represented an unemployed *family* in an economy based on male single-earner families and had at least struggled back to 17.2 percent. And you are so sure that capital needs full employment even when unfettered from government regulation. You sure about that?
Poor David Thomson… without FDR and his countless initiatives and boundless energy, capitalism might have failed in America. You seem blissfully aware of the enemies within (Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin etc etc) and the enemies without (Soviet Russia chief among them) would would have been delighted to see us fail. n nThere are reasons Ronald Reagan admired FDR above every President since Lincoln. n nCheck them out. You'll learn something. n
Herbert Hoover caused enormous damage to the national economy with his hands-on managerial style. He was an adamant foe of laissez faire capitalism. FDR was Hoover on steroids! Arthur M. Schlesinger,Jr and his ilk are the ones responsible for promoting the fantasy that Roosevelt saved capitalism. New Deal legislation was just a ruse to provide him with money to bribe voters.
Actually government spending increased 3% from Hoover to FDR. These, ah, talking points, and Lord knows we all enjoy talk radio, don't get you from A to B in explaining how capitalism dove off a cliff in the Depression or why corporations and investors are doing so well, and making so much profit, and socking away so much cash in a low employment market. Today. Right now. How does that happen? Maybe they don't need for you to work after all.
"got the nation through the Great Depression" it's hard to take your opinion seriously after reading that ….
I think that he was better than Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. He was not perfect by a long chalk. I would probably say that Ronald Reagan was the best president. Probably he should have just stayed out of the Suez business. I think that Hungary was handled badly. He should not have encouraged them to rise up and then say, "I never asked them to rise". Ronald Reagan has set a very high standard although even he was not perfect and I'm sure that he would have been the first to say so.
There is a side to the Suez Canal crisis that I think Max Boot overlooks, though he is no doubt aware of it. At the time that France and Britain initiated their bombing campaign in the Suez, the Soviet Union had begun a withdrawal of forces from Hungary, faced with the popular and effective Hungarian revolution. The "interference" of the NATO powers in Egypt provided the perfect pretext for the Soviets to send the tanks back into Hungary and brutally suppress the revolution. In light of the Soviets having withdrawn from Austria the prior year, had the Hungarian revolution been successful, there would almost certainly have been similar uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the Eastern Bloc may have been substantially rolled back by 1960. Eisenhower was wise enough to realize that "losing" the Suez was a small price to pay for the potential gains in Central Europe; he wasn't trying to "curry favor" with Nasser. n nBut then the whole story of Dwight Eisenhower is that he was almost always more clever than his critics.
"Maybe they don't need for you to work after all." n nMany of these companies do indeed need less employees—and this is a very good thing! It indicates they have dramatically improved their productivity rates. The creative destruction doctrine of Joseph Schumpter still reigns supreme. In the early part of the 20th Century, roughly half of all Americans were employed in the farm industry. Today the figure is under 3%. This is why food is so inexpensive. n