by Jim Newton
In 1955, Eisenhower was gratified when the Court issued its desegregation order (so-called Brown II allowed states to integrate schools with “all deliberate speed,” a formula that permitted much deliberation and demanded very little speed). That announcement was well received in the South, and Brownell remarked to Eisenhower that it “followed the President’s formula almost exactly.” Nevertheless, school integration dominated the civil rights agenda through Eisenhower’s tenure and provided recurring sources of conflict throughout the South. The issue brought out the worst in Eisenhower, making him churlish and defensive. By 1956, his patience was so exhausted on the question that he threatened to boycott his own nominating convention in San Francisco if the GOP leadership insisted on inserting platform language stating that “the Eisenhower Administration” supported the Court’s ruling in Brown.
Civil rights confounded and annoyed Eisenhower as a domestic obligation, but it spoke clearly to him as Cold War advantage. Barely had Brown been announced than the Voice of America was broadcasting the news around the world. As Eisenhower recognized, Brown supplied a powerful counterweight to a mainstay of Soviet propaganda—that democratic capitalism, as practiced by the United States, upheld racist oppression. American apartheid validated that theory, and the Soviet Union exploited it throughout the Third World as it trumpeted the moral superiority of Communism. Brown undermined that argument, and the Voice of America made sure the world knew it. International reaction was overwhelmingly positive, especially in Africa (a notable exception being South Africa) and other areas of the Third World. In São Paulo, Brazil, the local municipal council passed a resolution expressing “satisfaction” with the ruling, and in Dakar, West Africa, a local paper proclaimed, “At last! Whites and Blacks in the United States on the same school benches.” The stain of American racism was lightened by Brown, and America consequently gained strength in the long battle for international appreciation vis-à-vis the Soviets.
Brown capped a monumental spring, but as Eisenhower’s unwillingness to associate himself with the decision suggests, it contributed to a trying period for the Republican Party, which was already riven by McCarthy. The controversy over Brown now threatened to erode the party’s attempts to gain voters in the South, where Eisenhower believed there was room for political growth. Instead, many Southerners associated the Warren Court with the GOP, and the most ardent anti-Communists regarded Eisenhower with renewed suspicion. Swede Hazlett wrote from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to convey his concern and express precisely the fears that Eisenhower himself harbored regarding Brown. “I’m afraid we’ll have plenty of trouble,” Hazlett wrote, “and some bloodshed, if the issue is forced too fast.”
International developments offered no respite. China resumed its episodic aggression toward Quemoy and Matsu during September, and the Joint Chiefs itched for a fight. On September 6, they approved a proposal to allow Chiang to bomb bases inside China and, if that provoked a Chinese attack on Quemoy, to wage all-out war. Six days later, the Joint Chiefs presented their idea to the NSC, meeting in the Williamsburg Room of the Officers’ Club at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, where Ike was relaxing with the Gang.
After a brief presentation of the current situation and a display of maps of the region by the CIA’s Allen Dulles, Admiral Arthur Radford opened the discussion that afternoon, urging support for the more aggressive policy. Bedell Smith objected. John Foster Dulles equivocated but warned that Taiwanese withdrawal from the islands would have implications for Korea, Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. On the other hand, use of nuclear weapons to defend those same islands would invite the condemnation of the world. But it was Eisenhower himself who spotted the full implications of Radford’s suggestion. The council, he said, needed to be clear about one thing: it was contemplating not a limited war but an all-out attack on China, a conflict in which there would be none of the restraint practiced in Korea. Moreover, he added, the war that Radford proposed, one to defend islands of remote consequence, would grow quickly into one of unimaginable violence. “If we are to have general war,” Eisenhower said, it would not be against just China. The United States would “want to go to the head of the snake” and strike the Soviet Union itself.
Those ramifications were far more than Eisenhower was willing to wager. However much Radford and the generals might crave such a showdown, Ike would not authorize it. He said no.
On November 1, Chinese planes bombed the Tachen Islands, and three weeks later thirteen American pilots—eleven uniformed Air Force pilots shot down during the Korean War, as well as two CIA operatives—were sentenced by a Chinese court to prison terms for espionage. Bill Knowland urged a blockade of China even after Ike had counseled gentler action. “The hard way is to have the courage to be patient,” Ike lectured the senator. Knowland did not listen; he rarely did.
Under pressure from the right to respond to Chinese provocation, Eisenhower agreed to a mutual-defense pact with Taiwan. The treaty’s careful language reflected a delicate balance of factors as well as Dulles’s gift for legalistic formulations in the conduct of foreign affairs. It pledged the United States and Taiwan to each other’s defense in the event of any “armed attack in the West Pacific Area directed against the territories of either of the Parties.” That was the warning to China and the bone to Knowland and the China-first lobby in Congress. But the treaty was vague as to what constituted the “territories of either of the Parties.” It specifically mentioned the Pescadores, but did it include Quemoy and Matsu? If so, what about the Tachens? The treaty could be extended to protect “such other territories as may be determined by mutual agreement.” The vagueness was intended to create uncertainty in China without committing the United States to wage a major war over a minor outpost. In case his point was missed, Eisenhower reinforced it a few months later, responding to a question at a press conference by acknowledging his willingness to use nuclear weapons to enforce the treaty. “In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes,” he said, “I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.”
Mao did not take Eisenhower’s threat lightly: China had negotiated an end to the Korean War after Ike passed word that he would consider using nuclear weapons to resolve that stalemate. Now the Chinese kept up their assaults on the remote Taiwanese positions but refrained from an attack on Taiwan itself. Ambiguity prevailed.
Finally, the year wound down. Ike wavered between testy and reflective, snapping occasionally at aides, lecturing, sometimes complaining. His family was annoying as well: Arthur lobbied for an invitation to a stag dinner and asked to bring Louise; Ike agreed but reminded his brother that Louise would not be allowed to attend the dinner itself. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “there will be nothing for Louise to do unless she and Mamie go downstairs to a movie.”
Eisenhower’s frustrations were understandable. He knew he had done more than the American people were aware of, but he could not tout the victories that had resulted from covert action. In late November, Eisenhower turned on Knowland, who had been irritating all year, especially with his grandstanding over China. It was Thanksgiving week, and the China standoff was particularly tense. To Knowland, Eisenhower condescendingly explained the rigors of the Cold War. “I know so many things that I am almost afraid to speak to my wife,” said Eisenhower, who by then had authorized the overthrow of not one but two foreign leaders. “You apparently think we are just sitting supinely and letting the people do as they please. Here’s the thing to remember: Suppose one day we do get in war. If too many people knew we had done anything provocative …” Eisenhower trailed off, but his insinuation was clear: that Knowland should not know too much, probe too deeply, or complain too loudly. Knowland mumbled an incoherent reply—“indistinct” was how the note taker regarded it—and departed.
Ike’s next guest that day was Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Monty and Ike—once rivals, then friends, bound
by victory despite their differences—relaxed for a few minutes in the Oval Office, reflecting on their long association as well as fresh challenges facing their nations. To Monty, Ike could afford to gripe. “No man on earth knows what this job is all about,” Eisenhower said. “It’s pound, pound, pound. Not only is your intellectual capacity taxed to the utmost, but your physical stamina.”
Nor did the problems let up. After Eisenhower cut off McCarthy, the senator slipped out of the national mainstream but remained skulking on the margins. Once the elections were over, the Senate moved to discipline him. A special Senate committee chaired by Arthur Watkins, a Republican from Utah, sifted through dozens of charges. Watkins, a devout Mormon who was as methodical and even-tempered as McCarthy was brash and inconsistent, carefully waded through the voluminous record and eventually settled on two counts: McCarthy’s efforts to obstruct a committee investigating him in 1951 and 1952 and his abuse of Ralph Zwicker during the general’s testimony earlier that year. The Senate, meeting between the election and the seating of the new Congress in January, pressed toward a vote, with Republicans dominating the debate (Lyndon Johnson, the Senate Democratic leader, urged liberals to hold their fire for fear of alienating moderate Republicans). McCarthy responded in predictable fashion, charging that the committee was the “unwitting handmaiden of the Communist Party” and specifically attacking Watkins as a coward. McCarthy’s abuse of the Watkins Committee was so zealous that the Senate voted to add a new count for his conduct toward Watkins and his colleagues. The Senate was less convinced about the impropriety of McCarthy’s attack on Zwicker. Watkins tried but came up short on the votes relating to the Zwicker count. He later told Eisenhower that he would “regret to his dying day” that he could not rally the Senate on that charge. Still, once the Zwicker charge was dropped, the Senate voted, 67–22, to condemn McCarthy on two counts of noncooperation and abuse of his colleagues. Democrats unanimously supported the motions, joined by twenty-two Republicans and the Senate’s lone independent, Wayne Morse of Oregon. Knowland, the Republican leader, voted against McCarthy’s censure, annoying Eisenhower.
Eisenhower gave the hearings wide berth, but once the Senate had voted, he signaled his pleasure at the outcome. On December 4, two days after McCarthy was condemned, Ike summoned Watkins to the White House. “I wanted to see you,” he said as Watkins entered the office. “You handled a tough job like a champion.” The two spoke for forty-five minutes as Eisenhower reviewed his misgivings about McCarthy and even indulged in a rare reminiscence about his years working under MacArthur. Their meeting had been convened privately—Watkins entered through a basement door to escape public notice—but reporters at the White House inquired about the president’s schedule that morning and discovered the meeting. James Hagerty, Ike’s erstwhile press secretary, afterward reported that Eisenhower told Watkins he had “done a very splendid job.” Eisenhower was startled that Hagerty was so frank after the measures the White House had taken to keep the session off the record, but he was pleased anyway. “Confidentially,” he told Hagerty, “I thought the stories were just exactly what I wanted to see in the paper, and I don’t particularly care what the Old Guard thinks about it.”
McCarthy used the meeting to declare his “break” from Eisenhower. “Why it was called such at that late date I could not fathom,” Ike grumbled in his memoirs. Theatrically, McCarthy apologized to the American people for having supported Eisenhower in 1952. But McCarthy no longer struck fear. Ignored, he disintegrated into alcohol and irrelevance. He remained in the Senate, a lonely and shunned figure, shambling the halls, pleading for attention. He died three years later.
While the Senate belatedly rid itself of McCarthy, Eisenhower was busy fighting more dangerous enemies with more powerful weapons. In the fall of 1954, CIA officials, led by Allen Dulles, brought to him a proposal for a new addition to the nation’s Cold War arsenal—a high-altitude surveillance plane, equipped with the most modern and sensitive camera equipment.
The meeting was attended by John Foster Dulles from State, Charlie Wilson from Defense, and leaders of the Air Force and was conducted, of course, in utmost secrecy. Eisenhower approved the project verbally but signed no written authorization. Worried that the Soviets would consider it an act of war if military planes were to fly over their territory, Ike directed that the program be run by the CIA and later indicated that he would prefer the agency hire non-U.S. citizens to fly the craft. With that, the U-2 program was launched.
The Senate vote cleared the nation’s political landscape of McCarthy, but the November midterm elections highlighted the divisions in the Republican Party, as well as the gap between voters’ affection for Eisenhower and their support for the GOP. Without Ike on the ticket, Republican candidates tanked. Congress slipped back into Democratic control, where it would remain for the balance of Eisenhower’s presidency. He would govern by the strength of his arguments, his commitment to centrist bipartisanship, and his personal popularity, but never again would he enjoy the luxury of carrying a party-line vote.
Republican leaders naturally wasted no time after the elections before courting Eisenhower to consider a second term. Just two weeks after the results of the midterms were tallied, Lucius Clay came calling again. He arrived at the end of a busy day—the French premier, Pierre Mendès-France, was in town, so Ike had hosted a stag luncheon. Afterward, Eisenhower cleared most of his day for Clay. At first, Clay beat around the topic, then “once he got on to the real purpose of his visit, he pursued his usual tactics—aimed at overpowering all opposition and at settling the matter without further question.” Eisenhower’s reaction, recorded in his diary two days later, mirrored his initial response to the first draft-Ike movement: he was flattered but realistic about the suggestion that he was indispensable.
Clay received no answer the day of his visit, but he had placed the idea where he wanted it. Eisenhower began to mull the question of his own presidency. His thoughts turned to history and leadership, to the defining qualities of great men and great challenges. As was his habit, he found expression for those ideas by sharing them with Swede Hazlett. Rambling and digressive, his letter represented the unguarded musings of a friend, not the considered comments of a president. Nevertheless—or as a result—the letter revealed Ike’s unguarded sense of himself and his place in history. “No man,” Eisenhower wrote, “can be classed as great unless” he either is preeminent in a “broad field of human thought” or has, “in some position of great responsibility, so discharged his duties as to have left a marked and favorable imprint upon the future of the society or civilization of which he is a part.” By his criteria, Plato was a great man. So were George Washington, Martin Luther, and Napoleon (though Napoleon, Ike emphasized, also had “obvious and glaring defects”). Of Churchill, Eisenhower wrote: “I think I would say that he comes nearest to fulfilling the requirements of greatness in any individual that I have met in my lifetime.” Among Americans, Washington, Lincoln, and Robert E. Lee topped Eisenhower’s list; he named George Marshall as the greatest American he knew personally and listed Henry L. Stimson and John Quincy Adams as men who left great legacies. Arthur Vandenberg and Senator Walter George, a Georgia Democrat who broke ranks to support Ike on important congressional matters, according to Eisenhower, “came close.”
Amid those ruminations, Eisenhower sketched one short paragraph of special note. “The qualities we seek in a great man,” he wrote, “would be vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation either in the spoken or the written form, and what we might call profundity of character.”
Eisenhower would not presume to consider himself alongside his idols, but his contemporaries were pleading for his continued leadership and appealing particularly to his sense of duty. By his own standards—vision, integrity, courage, understanding, and rhetorical power, not to mention leaving a mark on his time—Ike’s early presidency qualified as great.
He was a man who knew the difference between greatness
and lesser achievement. As his comments to Knowland a few weeks earlier showed, Eisenhower appreciated the gravity of the presidency and the extent of danger in the world. He had, over the space of two years, built a distinguished cabinet, ended a war, authorized the overthrow of two leaders, appointed a consequential chief justice, and ended the rampage of Senator McCarthy. Just as important, he had refused to act heedlessly when others clamored for action: time and again, advisers urged the use of nuclear weapons against America’s enemies; Ike would not do it. When the French begged for assistance in holding their colonial outpost in Indochina, Eisenhower refused, judging that America’s interests did not reside with colonialism. Weaker or more arrogant men might have escalated the war in Korea or entered one in Indochina. More cautious men might have flinched at action in Iran or Guatemala. Small men might have passed over Warren for the Court, choosing a safer pick, one with a judicial record that would make his tenure more predictable. Cautious men might have embraced McCarthy.
