Book Review: Eisenhower: The White House Years

Here's that review of Eisenhower: The White House Years.  Hope your day is "nifty," just like the fifties.



Source: Amazon.com

 Eisenhower: The White House Years, by Jim Newton

From the book’s cover:

If you think of our 34th president as little more than the babysitter-in-chief during the prosperous fifties, think again. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed an atomic bomb and was the first American president not to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, “McCarthywasm”. He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, and, for good measure, turned an $8-billion deficit in 1953 into a $500-million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last president until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.)

The President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter and little else. The Eisenhower of veteran journalist Jim Newton’s rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren but could, one aide recalled, “peel the varnish off a desk” with his temper. Mocked as a blunderbuss, he was in fact a meticulous manager. Admired as a general, he was a cham­pion of peace. In Korea and Vietnam, in Quemoy and Berlin, his generals urged him to wage nuclear war. Time and again, he considered and rejected it. And it was Eisenhower who appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren and who enforced desegregation in the schools.
Rare interviews with John Eisenhower, along with access to newly declassified documents, make for a gripping and revealing narrative.


Synopsis:

Eisenhower: The White House Years covers the period of Eisenhower’s presidency, which spanned from the end of the Truman Administration in 1953 to the rise of the self-styled “new generation” under John F. Kennedy in 1961.  Eisenhower was, in fact, the first “lame duck” president, the Constitution having just been amended to restrict a president's terms of office to no more than two.  “Ike,” as he was known to many (in his family he was actually called “Little Ike;” his older brother Edgar was “Big Ike”) was an advocate of the so-called “Middle Way.”  

During Eisenhower’s time in office, only one U.S. serviceman was killed in combat action, which occurred during the invasion of Lebanon.  At the same time, his presidency spanned some of the most harrowing periods of the early Cold War, including the Suez Crisis, the launch of Sputnik, the death of Joseph Stalin and the power vacuum that it left in the Soviet hierarchy, the ongoing crisis between Taiwan and the PRC that threatened to develop into a full scale nuclear war,  the crackdown on Hungary following Nikita Khrushchev's loosening of restraints brought on by his so-called “Secret Speech,” and the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers in the infamous U-2 incident of May 1, 1960.  Eisenhower very well could have been the last serving U.S. president, his Administration remembered by the survivors of nuclear holocaust as the one that ended the world as we know it, had it not been for his determination that the United States should avoid openly aggressive conflicts and walk a dangerous knife edge in the minefield of international issues that was the 1950s.

The book explores all these things and then some.  On the domestic front, Ike’s efforts at addressing the growing issues of Civil Rights for blacks is covered, as well as his reaction to the Rosenberg trial, his actions taken to shore up a flagging economy when a major steel strike occurred in the U.S., his handling of the Sen. Joseph McCarthy-backed communist witch hunts, and his efforts to develop a major Interstate highway system modelled after the German Autobahn that he had witnessed firsthand while serving as Allied Commander in Europe during World War II.  All of this and the 34th president also managed to have both a heart attack and a stroke while in office, both which could have permanently disabled him and left the nation without a strong leader under the arguably shaky Vice President, Richard Nixon.

Eisenhower, as the book notes, has long been seen as a patrician president who was more interested in his golf game than running the affairs of state.  From the evidence provided in the text, nothing could be more the case.  Eisenhower was laid back, but he did so purposefully.  “Ike” took efforts to show the citizens of the U.S. that they should take time to enjoy life, even as he was tackling some of the most critical issues of his day.

The book also makes it clear that Eisenhower held to two critical strategic doctrines.  First, the concept of massive destruction by nuclear war over the emerging theory of limited nuclear conflict.  Ike repeatedly fought against the insistence of his subordinates that the decreasing size of atomic weapons made them more useful as battlefield weapons, and that they could be effectively used to win wars in which the U.S. was involved (such as the Korean Conflict, which Eisenhower inherited from Truman), and the conflict between mainland China and the nationalists under Chang Kia-Shek on Taiwan.  It can be easily argued, in the fullness of hindsight, that had the U.S. escalated post-World War II conflicts to an atomic level, our world would be a much different and much more irradiated place than it is today.

Second, and more damning in many ways, was Eisenhower’s use - some would say overuse - of covert activities against foreign powers.  For some time, I have been personally convinced that Ike did the world a disservice by his initiating of the clandestine efforts that led to the ousting of Mossadeq from Iran in the mid ‘50s and also of the overthrow of the socialist powers that came to rule Guatemala in that same period.  This book, however, sheds more light on the situation, and reveals the thought processes that led to such covert government overthrows.  The U.S.was in the midst of an anti-communist frenzy, and both Iran and Guatemala were seen as potential victims of Soviet influence.  The goal was to not just contain Communism, as Truman’s doctrine had emphasized, but to roll it back where ever possible.  Eisenhower surely didn’t balk at this perceived mission.  The consequences on modern international relations for the United States is something they weren’t worrying about at the time, though it is a burden we carry and our children and grandchildren may also have to deal with.

It is not possible for me to give a full accounting of the contents of Eisenhower: The White House Years, but suffice it to say, there is much that the book provides as background for a period that many Americans (including myself, I must admit) do not fully appreciate in the twenty-first century.


The author, Jim Newton / Source:QualiridgeBookis.com

 What I liked about it:

The book was literally full of history, and though at times it seemed a bit ponderous due to the vast quantity of information it provided, it kept me coming back for more.  There is a lot to learn about the 1950s, and seeing the period through the lens of Eisenhower’s presidency is a good way to learn about things as they were, and also as they might have been.  The author does an excellent job of detailing all the pitfalls that the U.S. might have fallen into, had Ike specifically not been at the helm.  He was definitely not phoning it in.

The book is also full of interesting data that, according to Newton, was not available until well after Eisenhower’s Administration was firmly in the history books.  Again, I can’t do justice to all the stuff there is in this book.  But the author does a fine job of bringing the period of Ike’s Administration to life for the reader.  I found myself quite enjoying the book, despite its length and sometimes thick subject matter.

What I didn’t like about it:

My primary gripe came at the beginning of the book, and I think that area needs addressing  The narrative begins with a recounting of Eisenhower’s youth and family background, and the relationships he had with some of the period’s key figures, including notably Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.  Unfortunately, there are times that the early chapters back-tracked in such a manner that it almost felt as if I was going to get whiplash from the sudden jumps back in time to recount another thread of Ike’s development.  I honestly thought at times that I must have gotten a bad copy of the audiobook and that it had chapters out of order, as the book would be talking about Eisenhower’s time in the military and then suddenly jump back to his days as a young boy.  

I realize it is likely that the author was trying to tie together various parts of the future president’s life (and not a bad audiobook copy), but it was kinda distracting.  Who knows, maybe I did get a bad copy of the audiobook?  But if the book’s beginning was actually written as it was presented to me, I think the author needed to edit the early chapters a bit more for clarity.  That’s my own take on the situation.

Also, and this one is hard to say if it is really credible or not, the book did emphasize Eisenhower’s advantages and didn’t spend much time on his weaknesses.  It did mention the affair that has been alleged between Ike and his personal driver during World War II, and it did mention that the president may have relied too much on covert action, but it didn’t venture too far into any sort of criticism of Eisenhower’s policies as applying to how their ramifications have affected future generations.  On the other hand, the book doesn’t seem to have too much of an agenda, and it doesn’t seem to be trying to hide Ike’s fault so much as put forth the story and let the reader decide.  This seems good enough to me, as long as those who read this book are  willing to think about what they are learning and realize that 1) History can not be fully perceived with accuracy through only the prejudices of those studying it in future times, and 2) The lesson of history is that it can be learned from and applied to the present, and the learner should use what they have observed to make decisions to the best of their own abilities.

Ok, enough soapbox on history and its efficacy and value as a teaching tool.

Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, was known as quite an avid golfer, but he also played Bridge and even took up painting for relaxation at the behest of Winston Churchill / Source: GolfWeek.com

What I learned, if anything:

I learned a great deal from reading Eisenhower: The White House Years. As I have said, I have a new appreciation for the 1950s, which is so easily cast in the myopic vision of either “Leave It To Beaver,” and TV like it from the period, or focuses so much on the period of McCarthyism without an effort being taken to really perceive why McCarthy was taken seriously at all.

I learned, or should I say I came to appreciate, the concept of real fear of Communism that people must have felt at the time.  It seems to me that the 1950s were very much a time of great transition for the United States, despite the reputation falsely spread about the static nature of the period.  Sure, we had come out of World War II as a superpower, and things looked promising in domestic issues after the hardships that were faced in the Great Depression and then the mobilization and its associated challenges that World War II brought, but the looming specter of the Soviet Union as a threat potentially more sinister than Nazi Germany really shook people. And on the home front, unrest was growing as Civil Rights ground its way toward an inevitable confrontation within America, with all the associated upheaval that would accompany it and mark the 1960s in such a radical way.

I picked up a lot of other little things from the book, and that is part of its value to me.  There is a lot to learn here, and those who take the time to read the book will, unless they are already an expert on post-WW2 America, find things that they didn’t know, much less appreciate, about the “nifty fifties.”

Recommendation:

This one is definitely worth your time.  I actually would recommend it beyond the fact of its historical appeal, since the book is pretty good on its own for the most part (besides the previously mentioned issues with the early chapters that I had).  Of course, it is a biographical book with a heavy dose of history in it, and this might put some off, but I found it to be interesting and worth my time.  I would recommend it with little reservation to anyone who wants to know more about this important period in the United States’ history.

Learn more about Eisenhower: The White House Years on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: LOL Snaps.com

When holy water just won't get the job done.  Leave it to the Russians...