by Jim Newton
For Eisenhower, the essential call was always to duty. When leaders he respected urged him onward, when thousands called his name, his duty to those men and women overcame his doubts. “My attitude,” he confided to Clay, “has undergone a quite significant change.”
But it was one thing to consider accepting the presidency, another to actively seek it. With his permission but without any action on his part, supporters campaigned for him in New Hampshire, which was predictably billed as “the first big test of Eisenhower’s voter appeal v. Taft’s.” Eisenhower won the March 11 primary handily, puncturing Robert Taft’s command of the party loyalists. A week later, Ike finished second to the favorite-son candidate Harold Stassen in Minnesota, another stunning showing for a noncandidate. In some ways, Minnesota made an even bigger impression on him than New Hampshire did. Thousands returned ballots with the word “Ike” scrawled across them.
On March 20, two days after the Minnesota results, Ike announced that he was reconsidering his refusal to run for president but still declined to declare himself a candidate. It was at that juncture, hovering on the edge of a monumental decision for himself and the United States, that Herb Brownell arrived to seal the deal.
He was there by invitation. The day of the Minnesota primary, Ike wrote to Brownell to encourage the visit and to “assure you of a warm welcome.” Arrangements were delicate: Brownell was so associated with politics generally and Dewey specifically that his contact with Eisenhower would certainly have signaled Ike’s presidential ambitions. Brownell thus booked his tickets under another name, and Eisenhower made sure his visit was not included in the general’s daily schedule, often reviewed by reporters.
Although Ike had been courted for the presidency since the end of the war—during a break in the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Truman startled Eisenhower by offering to secure him anything he wanted, adding, “That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948”—his views of domestic politics were so vaguely known that both parties fancied he might belong to them. Now Brownell asked Eisenhower to clear up those mysteries, quizzing him about his political beliefs so that Brownell might ascertain whether they could carry the electorate.
Responding to Brownell’s questions, Ike revealed that he believed in limited federal government, favoring the private economy over government spending and states’ rights over federal power—he sided with Texas, for instance, in its claims to offshore oil rights that the federal government asserted belonged to it. He felt strongly that the government should balance its budgets and was shocked at Truman’s latest spending plan, which anticipated a $14 billion deficit. Unsurprisingly, he felt strongly that the United States had an obligation to provide a stalwart national defense.
He was, portentously, murkier on the emerging domestic issue of the day, civil rights. Brownell was an ardent supporter of the gathering call for elimination of American apartheid, and the issue had helped give moderate Republicans a broader appeal in an era when southern Democrats continued to restrain the ambitions of more liberal members of their party. But Ike was raised in Kansas, where segregation had been practiced, and he rose through a segregated military, so Brownell was concerned about where he might fall on this issue. “I was relieved that his views were generally in accord with the pro-civil rights stance of the moderate wing of the Republican Party,” Brownell wrote. Still, Ike sent mixed signals. He noted that some of his supporters were southern Democrats who opposed civil rights legislation, an ambiguous remark that left Brownell convinced that though Ike’s “heart was in the right place,” he “would not lead the charge to change race relations fundamentally in the United States.” Brownell was to be proved half-right in that prediction; to the extent that he was wrong, he himself would largely be the reason.
Having sized up Eisenhower’s politics and concluded that they would fall comfortably within the moderate-to-liberal wing of the Republican Party, Brownell then moved to the other part of his presentation. He forcefully insisted that Eisenhower stop being coy. Neither the nomination nor the presidency would be handed to him, Brownell insisted in terms so adamant that he feared he was being brash. To gain the Republican nomination, Ike would have to return home and fight for it. Eisenhower, who had already fared well in two primaries without being a candidate, seemed surprised at that, but Brownell was expert where Ike was not, in the machinery of American politics. Ike had learned from Marshall to place faith in capable subordinates. He took heed. “It was,” Brownell said later, “an important turning point in his thinking.”
After ten hours, the two men parted. Brownell returned to his hotel and then headed home. Two weeks later, Eisenhower resigned his NATO position. On June 1, he returned home to campaign for the presidency.
PART TWO
THE FIRST TERM
4
From Candidate to President
It is natural to think of landmark American elections as destined. In retrospect, George Washington seems to have ascended to the presidency rather than to have won it, and Abraham Lincoln’s election is recalled as a matter of faith as much as politics. The thought of Roosevelt losing in 1932 seems preposterous given our memory of the New Deal and the war. So it was with Ike. His renown after World War II makes him seem, with hindsight, an insurmountable candidate, and his identification with the 1950s renders it difficult to imagine the era without him at its head. In fact, however, Ike fought hard to be president and stood a good chance to lose.
In June 1952, Eisenhower swiftly completed his transition from general to political candidate. Although his campaign had been under way for weeks, he gave his first official speech in Abilene, delivered at the conclusion of a drenching rainstorm—a “gully washer,” as Ike recalled it. With it, he sketched the broad themes of his candidacy. “America must be spiritually, economically and militarily strong, for her own sake and for humanity,” Eisenhower told a damp, sparse crowd. “She must guard her solvency as she does her physical frontiers.” For a public waiting to hear more about his specific policies, the speech was as disappointing as the weather.
Henry Cabot Lodge, an old friend and early political supporter, tried to tutor Ike in politics. Soon after Eisenhower announced, Lodge sent him a list of sixty questions for him to be prepared to answer, as well as some general observations on how he might be viewed. “I think I have no quarrel with your general observations,” Eisenhower wrote. “I merely want to make the point that I am wary of slogans, and if I have a real conviction I am not to be deterred from expressing it merely because I am afraid of how it will read in the headlines.” Lodge had suggested no such thing, but Ike, sensitive at the outset to being above politics, insisted that he did not “intend to tailor my opinions and convictions to the one single measure of net vote appeal.”
Those were the grumblings of a man new to campaigning for office. By contrast, Eisenhower’s primary opponent was a seasoned, experienced politician with a deep, loyal base of supporters. Indeed, despite Ike’s great appeal as an American hero and strong showings in the early primaries, smart political money that summer favored Robert Taft, who had a narrow lead in delegates and thorough command of the party apparatus. The son of a president and chief justice—William Howard Taft being the only man ever to hold both those offices—Robert Taft was a leader of the U.S. Senate and an ideological archetype, a sharp critic of labor unions and the New Deal, an isolationist so committed to American nonintervention that he opposed war against Nazi Germany until the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. Clever, vindictive, and tough, double chinned and yet curiously dapper, Taft possessed “the almost evangelical loyalty of his followers.” His reach through the party ranks was unequaled. Taft allies picked the convention’s key speakers and even controlled the seating, relegating rivals to distant corners of the hall. Not for nothing was he known as “Mr. Republican.”
That gave Taft a strong advantage on an obscure rules matter that ultimately proved decisive: the seating of delegates from Louisiana, Texas, and Ge
orgia, where competing slates of Eisenhower and Taft delegates were vying for voting slots at the convention. The conflict grew from the general’s late entry into the campaign and the efforts by the Taft forces to impose caucus rules intended to favor their candidate. In Texas, for instance, the Taft-sponsored rules held that only Republicans who had been registered as Republicans in 1948 were permitted to participate in the 1952 delegate-selection process. That had the effect of excluding new party members drawn to Eisenhower’s candidacy. The result was a strongly pro-Taft slate. Eisenhower’s supporters responded by electing a slate of their own, and the two camps stomped into their respective corners. The question before the Republican Party was which delegation to seat—and whether the contested delegates would be allowed to vote on that contentious question.
Eisenhower had the support of an intelligent campaign apparatus, led by Brownell. Having helped persuade Ike to run—and convinced of his electability—Brownell now plotted the strategy to secure the nomination. His role was largely unappreciated at the time, as he stayed out of public view for most of the campaign, careful to avoid pricking the animus of those who blamed Dewey for letting the party down in 1944 and 1948, when Brownell managed his campaigns. This time, Brownell formulated his strategy from the stacks of the New York Public Library, poring over records from earlier Republican conventions, including the complete transcript of the 1912 contest that pitted Theodore Roosevelt against Taft’s father in a debate over delegates.
Brownell emerged with a proposal that was part legal brief and part public relations strategy. Its central argument was that Taft’s strength among Republican stalwarts might earn him the nomination but would almost surely fail in the general election. Republicans savored a return to power, and Brownell knew that the choice was between pragmatism and idealism: a vote for Taft was an opportunity to assert old values; one for Eisenhower was a chance for victory. Brownell wooed wavering delegates with the promise of the White House and simultaneously challenged Taft’s tactics as suppressive and unfair. He wrote what he brilliantly branded the “Fair Play Amendment” and arranged for Governor Arthur B. Langlie of Washington, an Eisenhower supporter, to submit it to the convention.
Party rules at the time called for all delegates to be provisionally seated while rules matters were debated. The Fair Play Amendment, however, forbade contested delegates to vote on their own seating. Taft supporters argued it was unfair to change long-standing rules. Brownell countered that it was unfair to allow contested delegates to seat themselves. Taft controlled the relevant rules committee but hurt himself by refusing public and press access to the committee’s hearings in the days leading up to the convention. When Brownell and Ike’s supporters theatrically showed up outside the door, the newsman John Chancellor joined the group. He knocked on the door and was denied entrance, too. On July 2, with the convention’s opening less than a week away, the committee voted to recommend the seating of Taft’s Georgia delegates, a victory for Taft, of course, but one that reinforced the Eisenhower campaign’s claims of “stolen” delegates and party secrecy. In Fraser, Colorado, where Eisenhower spent the day fishing (catching ten trout, the legal limit), he announced: “I’m going to roar out across the country for a clean, decent operation. The American people deserve it.” In politics, as in war, he was a quick study.
That was where matters stood on the eve of the Republican convention. And with that technical debate the first order of business, the delegates began to assemble. They streamed to Chicago by car and train—a few lucky ones made the trip by plane—arriving to brass bands and banners. They swarmed bars and restaurants and filled the lobbies of the city’s grand hotels, reuniting with old friends and trading rumors and strategies with journalists and colleagues. They presented their credentials at the counters of the Congress, the Blackstone, and the Conrad Hilton. At the Hilton, the Eisenhower forces had already pulled a fast one. Brownell realized at the last minute that the Eisenhower campaign had no place for its headquarters. Luckily, Brownell’s clients included the American Hotel Association. He rang up two associates from the Hilton chain, and they found space. Although Ike and Mamie stayed at the Blackstone, their headquarters were two floors above Taft’s—at the Hilton.
As the delegates arrived, they got the first whiff of the week—Chicago’s convention hall was a little too close to its stockyards for many tastes. But to win the White House, the Republican Party would need the cattle states, which had defected to Truman in 1948. The rest of the map was tantalizing but murky. Could southern states committed to the Democratic Party since Lincoln be drawn across the aisle? Could California, which slipped away to the Democrats in 1948 despite Governor Earl Warren’s place at the bottom of that ticket, be coaxed back into its traditional alignment? Delegates buzzed over those questions late into the night, seduced by the enormity of their opportunity. For decades, Republicans had gathered, often in Chicago, to pick a nominee. This year, they knew they had the chance to pick a president.
There were warnings and conflicting signals. In the week leading up to the convention, the New York Times editorial page featured a provocative series. The headline said it all: “Mr. Taft Can’t Win,” in parts 1, 2, and 3, no less. “We conclude this series,” the paper’s editorial board wrote on July 3, “with the argument that the Taft record and campaign are of such a character that the Senator is not likely to pick up the independent or Democratic votes which the Republicans must have to succeed. General Eisenhower, on the other hand, is in a position to attract precisely that additional support that can spell the difference between Republican victory and one more bitter, frustrating and ruinous Republican defeat.”
In raw terms, however, Taft held the advantage. He came to Chicago with a lead in delegates: the Associated Press calculated that Taft had 530 of the 604 needed to win; Eisenhower had 427; Warren 76; Harold Stassen 25; and a few other candidates divided up the balance. Taft contested the AP’s calculations; his campaign publicly insisted it had 600 delegates, on the verge of locking matters up.
To the attentive ear, however, there was a note of desperation in the Taft camp. On July 5, reeling from the charges that his campaign was stealing delegates, Taft complained of “libel” and “vituperation,” shrill notes that hardly conveyed confidence. Even his rejection of the AP delegate count seemed fishy; no matter how often he insisted that the matter was all but won, the press refused to accept his analysis and continued to cover the race as a hot contest.
At 11:30 a.m. on Monday, July 7, the Republican national chairman, Guy Gabrielson, banged the convention to order and turned immediately to the issue of delegate seating. Brownell had laid the groundwork for this debate well, framing it as one of fairness and openness against secretive party bosses. When Taft forces sought to allow delegates to be provisionally seated and cast ballots for themselves, Langlie countered with the Fair Play Amendment, after which Taft allies parried with an amendment to Langlie’s proposal. On the floor, there was bedlam as delegates argued over the intricacies of an issue that all understood could decide the nomination. Finally, the questions were put to votes, and on the key question Eisenhower won by 658 to 548. Taft’s floor managers suddenly understood Eisenhower’s strength and did not protest when the Fair Play Amendment itself was put before the convention. It was accepted on a voice vote. Although the full convention had yet to consider the seating of each of the contested delegations, the rules, which had once favored Taft, now gave the edge to Eisenhower.
Ike stayed away from the convention floor but monitored the roll call from his hotel suite, where he relaxed in a robe and slippers. He won a bet on the final vote and collected $1 from an aide. Mamie shrugged off a painful tooth infection for long enough to speak briefly with reporters. She too cheered the results, which she described as “encouraging,” and promised she would campaign with her husband if he were nominated: “I go everyplace I can with him. I’ve been following him for 36 years.”
Fights over procedure gave way to a less c
onsequential but more histrionic event, Douglas MacArthur’s keynote address. It had been arranged by Taft and was intended to stir conservatives who violently opposed his firing by Truman the year before. But MacArthur—he who spoke of himself in the third person—often misunderstood his effect on those around him, allowing his stentorian voice and self-regard to overwhelm his better sense. Thundering from the podium, he declaimed that the Truman administration had “brought us to fiscal instability, political insecurity and military weakness.” The Democratic Party, MacArthur charged, had “become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state.” It was, one perceptive New York Times analyst noted, “a stirring oration for a lost cause.” MacArthur’s time was up.
That pattern—delegate fights on the floor that formed the convention’s real business while odes to a bygone Republican philosophy emanated from the podium—continued the next day. Herbert Hoover recalled the party’s history from the dais as Herbert Brownell molded its future on the floor. Hoover complained of Democratic misrule and urged the rapid buildup of the U.S. Air Force. Meanwhile, Brownell sold Eisenhower’s case to delegates, concentrating on those pledged to other candidates on the first ballot but who would be up for grabs if there was a second. Ike did his part, meeting with two hundred delegates that day in his fifth-floor suite at the Blackstone; some wore their Taft buttons, but they came to meet the general anyway.
The following morning, the seating of the contested delegations finally came before the full convention. The results quickly established Ike as the front-runner. The Georgia slate that favored Eisenhower by fourteen to three was seated over the objections of Taft’s managers; having lost that key test, they folded on Texas, where a slate favoring Ike by thirty-three to five was approved. For the first time, Eisenhower moved ahead of Taft in the AP poll. The general told Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, “I’m going to win.” Supporters began speculating on the choice of a vice president. In Washington, Truman, who believed Taft the easier candidate for Democrats to beat in November, announced that he was “worried” about the turn of events in Chicago. “It looks like my candidate is going to get beat,” he joked.
