Wondering why “American self-confidence is draining away,” the British newspaper The Independent sent reporter Rupert Cornwell to the nation’s geographic center in and around Abilene to try to find out. He writes: “If America is God’s chosen country, then Kansas sees itself as America’s embodiment, spiritual as well as geographic — the repository of its basic virtues of decency and straight dealing, of resilience and common sense.”
Taken by the Kansas story of President Dwight Eisenhower, Cornwell notes that Ross Perot earned 19 percent of the Kansas vote in 1992, and concludes: “Though he ran as a Republican, Eisenhower was affiliated to neither party and courted by both. Is there a new Eisenhower, perhaps from business, not the military, out there somewhere? As I headed home from Kansas, the question wouldn’t go away.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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16 Comments
An Eisenhower in business? That is just laughable.Consider the true nature of the average corporate executive is not someone that got there through hard work, integrity, and doing the right thing, damn the consequences. They got there by climbing over the backs of their fellow employees and at the expense of their peers.Next we’ll have a corporate editorialist trying to sell us on the notion that there are more than 3 breeding pairs of honest lawyers.
Ick. YBS just used the words ‘breeding pairs’ and ‘lawyers’ in the same sentence, and I can’t use soap to wash out my mind.
Sorry CF, for what it’s worth I felt really dirty after I hit the post button. I thought it was for typing the word “honest” next to the word, “lawyer”, but you could be right. In any event I should be censored.
Can Kansas produce another Eisenhower? Do you mean somebody who got out of Kansas as soon as he could, because his/her talents could never be brought to fruition here, ala Walter Chrysler, Amelia Earhart, Nobel Laureates Jack Kilby and Vernon Smith, Phillip Anschutz, et al? Or Lloyd Stearman and Eldon Cessna, who spent most of their working lives in California, the inarguably veritable “Air Capital of the World”?
How interesting heartlander that you would declare California the inarguable “Air Capital of the World” on the very day that the last two 717’s are scheduled to leave and turn the Long Beach Facility into a ghost town.The fact is my friend, the aircraft industry in California is dead.
Why in the world would anyone want a current U.S. business person to be president? The current crop of CEOs are a joke. They take all of the money they can get their hands on all the while providing little in return with the exception of scandles, corruption, layoffs of blue collor workers because of bad decisions their executives had made, and excuses to the fed as to why they cannot honor their employees pension plans. Yea, that’s the type of person I want as president. Isn’t bush bad enough?
k,From your description I would opt for your idea of today’s CEO as President over the present Wannabe-Cowboy in Chief any day!
You’ll be sorry–
Southern California built 100,000 planes in WWWII. That was one-third of all American warplanes. But it wasn’t just the numbers, it was the planes. The P-51 Mustang and P-38 fighters that dominated airspaces in Europe and the Pacific, the Dogulass Dauntless that scored America’s first victory at Midway, the B-25 that took the war to Japan, the B-24 that was America’s most important bomber, the C-47 “Workhorse of the War” cargo plane (and world’s first medivac plane), the long-range PB”Y Catalina seaplane, and others. Howard Hughes’ pre-war H-3 was the PROTOTYPE for ALL WWII fighters used by our enemies as well as ourselves.
The first seaplane was built by New Yorker Glenn Curtiss in San Diego in 1910. The first first monococque fuselage was designed by Jack Northrop at Lockheed in 1918. Charles Lindburgh couldn’t persuade Walter Beech to build him the first solo transatlantic flyer. But T. Claude Ryan in San Diego was willing to experiment, and built the “Spirit of St. Louis”. The first stratospheric flight research was done by Lockheed’s chief test pilot Wiley Post, who discovered the Jet Stream and invented the first high-altitude pressurized suit. Donald Douglas’s DC-3 made passenger transportation cost-effective (before him, mail subsidized passenger service).
Two major airlines were founded in California, TWA and Continental. T. Claude Ryan established the first daily scheduled airline service in 1926.
We can talk about the Lear 23 which was a derivative of the Northrop Sabreliner and Lockheed JetStar, that Bill Lear designed the autopilot system for in Los Angeles, and took advantage of already-done California R&D to build a smaller, cheaper twin-rear engined business jet. Today, Cessna, Lear and Raytheon-Hawker are building derivatives of California rea-mounted executive jets.
The first turbojet engines, breaking the sound barrier, the first hypersonic craft, the Atlas missile that sent America into space, the Saturn booster, the Mercury capsule, the Apollo command module, the Space Shuttle…
Don’t believe me. Check the Collier trophy website. Go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Go to the Air Force Museum. Even go to Seattle’s Museum of Flight. Go to Edward Air Force Base which houses not only the Air Force’s flight-test center, but NASA’s as well. Go to the Navy’s Top Gun School. Go to the winter training center for the Blue Angels.
No other state is close to California in aviation leadership. For example at the Smithsonian, not only are more California air-and-spacecraft exhibited than from any other state, when you walk into the main door, the first plane you see is Paul McCready’s Gossamer Condor, the first human-powered aircraft. Today MacCready builds solar-powered recon planes. Other Californians are building hand-sized recon aircraft.
At the Smitshsonian you can also see Burt Rutan’s Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world, nonstop, unrefueld. Rutan also designed the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, which took Steve Fossett on the first solo transglobal, nonstop, unrefueld flight. Rutan also sent the first non-government-project man into space (SpaceShip One).
Because the Washington Mall is space-limited, there is a larger-collection Smithsonian air and space annex at Washington National Airport, the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center. Mr. Udvar-Hazy is a Los Angeles businessman.
Ask anyone who the 20th century’s leading academic aerodynamicist was. Theodor von Karmann, at Caltech. Ask anyone who the 20th century’s greatest aeronautical engineer was. Clarence “Kelly” Johnson at Lockheed. It’s not my judgment, its the judgment of experts who nominated these men to receive Presidential Medals of Science and Technology, and in Johnson’s case TWO Collier trophies, which never previously happened.
You see, Californians realized a dream of loosing humankind’s terrestrial bonds. It no longer builds enormous numbers of aircraft. But it designs and tests every leading-edge aircraft. Today Californians design and build probes that travel to every planet.
There are seven aeronautical research centers funded by Daniel Guggenheim in the 1920’s. California has two of them at Caltech and Stanford. NASA has three aerospace research centers in California: Ames, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dryden. No other state had more than ONE.
The first woman astronaut, Stanford alumna Sally Ride, teaches at the University of California, San Diego. Amelia Earhart learned to fly in Los Angeles, and established records working for Lockheed. Beech’s only Bendix trophy winner, Louise Thaden, learned to fly working in SF. Patti Wagstaff, arguably the top aviatrix ever, lives in California.
Do you know that despite the sound barrier’s being broken 55 years ago in California, before most currently-living Kansans were born, Wichita has not yet built a single transonic plane?
California will never again be a top-ranked aircraft assembly state, but it will be the world’s #1 aviation R & D center for the foreseeable future.
The spinoffs of creative California aviation engineers and craftsmen ranging from hotrods and offroad vehiciles to fishing gear to high-tech golf clubs and sunglasses are nothing short of amazing.
Heartlander,I am very well aware of California’s past in aviation. I am also very well aware that California is attempting to live off that past and attempting to ignore the fact that people, and their businesses are leaving in droves. Their educational system has made it one of the least desirable places to operate a business in the US. No amount of cheerleading can change that. Only time and desired can help them and they seem to be ignoring it across the board.A state with a very rich past and a very bleak future.—–
YBS…regardless of the low opinion you have of California, if it were a separate country, it would have the 6th largest economy in the world.
Seems it hasn’t completely folded..
Raptor,I don’t have a low opinion of California, I simply stated the truth about it. It was not me that chose to bolster a false image of one state at the expense of another.
As opposed to heartleander’s low opinion on Kansas.
Compare the kansas economy with the california economy. Compare population trends. Compare just about anything.
How many congressional seats is California losing and how many will Kansas loose?
Who wins if you consider the truth vs cheerleading?
Oh, but kansas’ problems are just because people like heartlander refuse to drink the kookaide.
Gives new meaning to “what’s the matter with kansas”.
KFG! Actually. Kansas isn’t losing population, it just a slow population growth state.
It’s just that California is gaining in population. You have to remember that most people in California are in poverty and they habor more criminals in prison and have the largest illegal alien population that even surpasses the entire population of the state of Kansas.
It’s all in perspective.
I didnt ask for population figures joe, I asked you this:
How many congressional seats is California losing and how many will Kansas loose?
Answer the question joe. I know you did the research before and you can do it again here.
And while we are on the subject, wanna back this up or is it just your opinion:
You have to remember that most people in California are in poverty and they habor more criminals in prison and have the largest illegal alien population.
Well, duh…if they have the largest population, they will have more in prison and more illegals especially since they are located on the border.
How about some figures as a percentage of population?
Joe’s perspective on populaton:
“yes doctor I know he is sixteen and only three feet tall. He isnt really short, the other kids just grow faster”.
Kansas will most likely lose a congressional seat in 2010. California is expected to gain a seat in 2010.
You asked about comparing.
What’s your point?
Heartlander: I’m not quibbling with your overall thesis. However, I question your third paragraph remark above that TWA was organized in California. Perhaps you are referring to the late 1930’s when Howard Hughes owned TWA?
Actually, TWA had close connections to Kansas and even Wichita. With a different nod, Wichita could have been the headquarters of TWA instead of Kansas City.
TWA was actually founded in about 1927 by a fellow named Richard Robbins who grew up southwest of Wichita at Norwich, Kansas. Following Yale, Robbins founded a company called Trans-Continental and Western. This was the company that coordinated trans-continental flights with the Santa Fe Railroad with passengers flying during the day and taking the train at night. Later, probably in about 1930, Robbins changed the name of the company to Trans-World Airlines or TWA and hired Donald Douglas to build the first DC-1, the predecessor to the great twin- engined DC-3 workhorse airplane. Robbins then shopped for a headquarters location and chose Kansas City’s municipal airport over Wichita’s municipal airport, now the Air Museum.
In about 1932, President Roosevelt ordered all existing airline presidents to resign because they had supposedly divided up the lucrative airmail routes without bidding somehow. Richard Robbins continued as a large stockholder of the Santa Fe Railroad. He also accumulated many large ranches in Chase County and Barber County, most of which are still in existence today operated by Robbins’ descendents.
Mr. Robbins died back about 1968. His large white house still stands on north Main Street in Pratt, Kansas. One of my personal memories is going with my father to visit Mr. Robbins in his ranch house in Belvidere, Kansas in about 1948.