History has been kinder recently to Kansas’ own President Eisenhower than it once was, offering new appreciation for how he ended the Korean War, balanced budgets, launched the space race, built an interstate highway system and managed Cold War threats. But Los Angeles Times columnist Max Boot pushed back at the Ike backers, calling him a “status-quo” president and arguing that “he was no profile in courage when he refused to stand up to the demagogic Joseph McCarthy or to do much to enforce the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education school integration decision.” Boot concluded: “Maybe that’s what the nation needed in the 1950s, but it’s no reason to celebrate him as a ‘near great’ president (his ranking in a 2005 survey of scholars). And don’t get me started on his checkered record as a general.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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24 Comments
The only ggod thing that Ike did as president was to initiate Operation Wetback.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or thetimid.”Dwight D. Eisenhower
Perhaps Los Angelos Times Columnist, Max Boot should be booted in the behind to get him to worry about the future of Los Angelos rather than criticizing President Eisenhower. Among other endeavors, General Eisenhower, as a five star General led America in defeating the Nazi’s. As President, Eisenhower accomplished many needed programs such as the Interstate Highway system and others put off during the war years. Later, Mr. Eisenhower had a career as a University president and occasionally returned to Kansas.
I hadn’t heard before the criticism that Eisenhower didn’t enforce the Brown vs Topeka School board decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The bully, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy did manage to intimidate the U.S. over his charge that communists had infilterated American life. Finally McCarthy’s career was effectively ended when the U.S. Army’s legal counsel, Joseph Welch, asked McCarthy “Have you lost all pride?” Historians probably know, but I would like to think that Eisenhower was somehow counseling Mr. Welch.
His Farewell speech will give you shivers.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5407.htm
Excerpt from the LA Times.
Max Boot is a New York City resident (he GREW UP in LA) where he is a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations.
His book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books) was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor.
It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history, and it has been placed on professional reading lists by the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps.
He has lectured at many military institutions, including the Army and Navy War Colleges, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, the Army Command and General Staff College, West Point, and the Naval Academy. He is a member of the U.S. Joint Forces Command Transformation Advisory Group and a Corporation for Public Broadcasting advisory board. Before joining the Council in October 2002, Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, the last five years as editorial features editor. From 1992 to 1994 he was an editor and writer at The Christian Science Monitor.
Looks like Boot knows some military history–or at least the military thinks so.
Ike had some good ideas and issued some cautions about the growth of the military industrial complex. Ike would have despised george bush.
That said.
The interstate system was not Ike’s idea. He borrowed that one from Hitler’s autobahns. Ike launched the space race? Huh? The Soviet Union did that. It was Kennedy that got us in and won that race.
I think that “great” presidents are defined by crises, and how they manage them. Eisenhower’s greatest crisis-management achievements occurred BEFORE he became president, when he lead the Allies to victory in Europe, and they were so universally respected that the GOP “drafted” him to run for the presidency–knowing he was politically non-partisan, a true centrist, BTW.
Our government may have overreacted to the Soviet Union’s development of atomic weapons, which may have pushed the Soviets to develop a nuclear arsenal that, along with ours, threatened Mutual Assured Destruction. But it is noteworthy that Eisenhower tried to reach across the ocean and work with Kruschev to find common ground rather than rattle deadly sabers.
This effort, which presaged later “detente” culminating in the Reagan-Gorbochev summit, and the ending of the Cold War, was scuttled by the alleged shooting down of a U-2 over Soviet territory, which some Air Force officers were convinced was actually a CIA-sabotage scheme to derail Eisenhower’s and Kruschev’s plan to work together to reduce tension and animosity. (Eisenhower was well aware of the Soviets’ critical contributions, as an Allied Power, against the Axis Powers, in WWII.)
When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the Eisenhower administration launched a massive science and mathematics education campaign whose results include today’s American global leadership in technology.
The Interstate Highway system revolutionized commercial and recreational transport.
He was a master at working with people, including people with whom he disagreed. He advanced, and could be persuaded by, good ideas. He helped America keep a cool head in tumultuous times. For those times, our nation arguably could not have had a better leader.
JR, you’re absolutely right about the autobahns. Eisenhower recognized a great idea when he saw it, and acted on it. Moreover, the Interstate system was a high-speed network that dwarfed the autobahn in scale.
Bush is a loser. Or to be more precise, the “hidden president” Cheney is a loser. Bush gets to be “the decider”, after Cheney tells him what his options are, and which option in any given situation, is the only “good” one. So, Bush “the decider” is a great rubber-stamper of decisions that Cheney makes. Then Bush gets to go out and sell Cheney’s schemes to the public, while Cheney works behind the curtain. As John Dean in “Conservatives Without Conscience” and others have pointed out, Cheney’s personal support staff runs circles around Bush’s. Cheney gets the “A Team”, while Bush gets the “B Team”.
This is backwards, which is a sign that our democratic republic is in trouble. Cheney originally made a bid to run for the presidency, but was rebuffed and so he pulled out. In short, he decided to become functioning president through the back door. Not good for America.
Compared to the unelected Bush, President Eisenhower appears to be the best President ever.
Let’s see Bush’s spotty record compared to Eisenhower.
Ike: Fought back the Korean armyBush: Lost to Afghani and Iraqi militias
Ike: Balanced the budgetBush: Record deficits and 9 trillion dollar debt
Ike: Started the space raceBush: Cut NASA’s budget
Ike: Improved Social SecurityBush: Spent the SS surplus
Ike: Was a generalBush: Draft dodger
Ike: Didn’t stand up to McCarthyBush: Illegal wiretaps, random arrests, Patriot Act
Ike: Won two electionsBush: Stole two elections
Ike: Sent soldiers to keep the peace in LebanonBush: Sat back while Lebanon was bombed senseless
Ike: Supported school integrationBush: Played guitar while New Orleans drowned and forceably relocated thousands of Blacks
Ike: Warned about the military industrial complexBush: Expanded it to the greatest degree ever
Probably Eisenhower’s worst foreign policy blunder was supporting Operation Ajax in Iran (which FDR and Truman opposed).
It knocked off Mohd. Mossegadeh the ELECTED prime minister to install a KING.
So much for supporting democracy and freedom.
And it directly led to the Ayatollahs running Iran and building their bombs today, heigh ho . . .
Ah, the Dems are in rare form today, writing out their bumper sticker ‘hate’ lists instead of offering ideas.
You’re right JM, maybe I’ll write Eisenhower a letter.
Ah, the BushBots are in rare form today, defending their failed ‘beloved leader’ instead of showing how ’staying the course’ will lead to anything but more failure.
JM, I have a GREAT IDEA.Vote out the GOP.
Vote in some grown upswho play well with others.
Tracy,
I have a write-in prepared for the 2008 Presidential Election of George Carlin, President and Jeff Foxworthy , Vice President.
That way everyone can be irritated about the issues on both sides, but laugh about it at the same time.
Eisenhower should be included as one of the better presidents. Every one of them has had his problems. None has been perfect. All we can do is weigh the pros and cons of each as to what good they did for our country.
As far as Dubya is concerned, he’s so far down, he doesn’t even make the list.
Looks like the BushBots are back.
JM–
I have an idea.
Let’s vote for people who actually believe in democracy instead of people who steal elections and invade other countries so they can profit financially.
How would that be?
Speaking of democracy … a rejection of Ollie North’s terrorism. Maybe they will issue a warrent for his arrest before he flees the country.
“Ortega heads to Nicaragua vote victory
With returns in from 40 percent of polling stations in Sunday’s election, the 60-year-old Ortega had just above the 40 percent of votes that would seal a first-round win.
An Ortega victory would be a blow to Washington, which backed Contra rebels in the 1980s civil war and fears the leftist would join an anti-U.S. bloc in Latin America led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.”
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/11/05/leftist-ortega-near-comeback-in-nicaragua-election/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fs%2Fnm%2F20061106%2Fts_nm%2Fnicaragua_election_dc%3B_ylt%3DAs8a0bvRLFOi0py4Z0AtbnLMWM0F%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-&frame=true
I may be an idiot to the nth degree, but I’m being trolled. Which is fine. It just shows how desperate the “I don’t know how to think about complex problems” authoritarian personalities are. This troll probably thinks returning to the 1950’s is in order, maybe because he watches Leave It To Beaver on his parents’ television.
I’ve asked the editors to use a password-entry system, to preclude trolling. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been adopted.
Eisenhower is dead isn’t he?
“Los Angeles Times columnist Max Boot pushed back at the Ike backers, calling him a “status-quo” president and arguing that “he was no profile in courage when he refused to stand up to the demagogic Joseph McCarthy or to do much to enforce the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education school integration decision.”
Judging from Boot’s previous columns, he would probably have been a Joe McCarthy supporter in the 50s