Presidential Profiles: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general and Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was well known and admired by the American public. Sought by both Republicans and Democrats to represent their parties in the 1952 presidential election, Eisenhower chose to align himself with the Republican Party. Though opposed to traditional conservative principles of non-interventionism in foreign affairs, he valued fiscal responsibility and did not agree with the liberal social agenda of the Democratic Party.

Domestic Policy
While expressing a belief that individuals should be mostly free to regulate their own affairs in a free-market economy, Eisenhower distanced himself from Old Right Republicans who favored laissez-fare ideologies. Eisenhower believed that government “must do its part to advance human welfare and encourage economic growth with constructive actions.” Thus, Eisenhower tried to steer a middle course on domestic economic issues. He retained major New Deal programs like Social Security, even creating a new cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953, but opposed new legislation such as national health insurance. Most of the price controls re-instituted by Truman during the Korean War were ended, but the federal government continued to subsidize farm commodities, though Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson did persuade Congress to lower the level of supports. Eisenhower opposed federal control of utilities, labeling as “creeping socialism” and blocking the construction of large government dams across the Snake River and Hell’s Canyon, yet he supported the development of an interstate highway system with the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. In response to the Soviet-launched Sputnik satellite in 1957, Eisenhower approved the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with billions of dollars in appropriations. Substantial grants to universities and private business for research and development, along with large military contracts given to aeronautics, electronics, and computer industries helped to develop a corporate culture of reliance on government favor and taxpayer money.

Civil Rights
The 1950’s were a time of great social upheaval. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that segregation in state schools was a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the constitution. This decision overturned a pattern of almost 60 years of federally sanctioned segregation enthroned since the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., helped the fight for legal equality by utilizing the power of non-violent protest and civil disobedience to sting the conscience of segregationists. In December of 1955, local NAACP worker Rosa Parks was jailed after refusing to give up her seat on a public transit bus in Montgomery, Alabama. A citywide bus boycott, led by King, lasted for a year before the Supreme Court intervened once again, desegregating busing. Eisenhower disagreed with these federal encroachments on what he viewed as State’s rights, declaring, “The final battle against intolerance is to be fought – not in the chambers of any legislature – but in the hearts of men.” Still, when Governor Faubus of Arkansas mobilized the National Guard in 1957 to prevent 9 black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock, national outrage prompted the President to order the National Guard and other federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s decisions.

Foreign Policy
Despite campaign promises to pro-actively defeat communism worldwide, Eisenhower's foreign interventionist fervor was tempered somewhat by public discontent over bloated military budgets and the loss of American lives overseas. Eisenhower decided to save money and manpower by cutting back U.S. reliance on conventional ground forces and instead developed air and nuclear superiority as a deterrent to perceived communist aggression. Eager to bring the war in Korea to a close, Eisenhower used this nuclear superiority to escalate threats of attack against China and North Korea, pressuring them to agree to a truce in 1953 that established an armistice and political boundaries between the north and the south at approximately the 38th parallel. This action in effect continued the "communist containment" policy of President Truman, and spurred China to begin to develop their own nuclear capabilities.

The CIA was transformed by Eisenhower into a covert interventionist force, capable of acting outside of public scrutiny or congressional approval. With its multi billion-dollar top-secret budget, the CIA launched disruptive operations world-wide in violation of international law. In 1951 the democratically elected premier of Iran, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, attempted to nationalize Iranian oil wells. Two years later, the CIA instigated a coup d’etat, providing crucial military support and enabling the hereditary Shah to return to power. The Shah returned the oil wells to international control, of which U.S. corporations held a 40% share. In Guatemala in 1954, popular leader Colonel Jacobo Arbenz instituted national land reform, nationalizing the holdings of the U.S. United Fruit Company. The CIA overthrew Arbenz by training invasion forces in Nicaragua and Honduras which installed a new president who returned the holdings of United Fruit and gave special tax breaks to U.S. businesses. Vast foreign aid programs were used as a means of tying other nations economically to the United States, especially in South America. In 1959, toward the end of Eisenhower’s presidency, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba. The administration - opposed to Castro because of his nationalization of private U.S. holdings - cut off aid to Cuba, discontinued importations of Cuban sugar and began training Cuban exiles in Guatemala for a U.S. backed invasion. The decision of how to ultimately deal with the “rogue” dictator would be left to Eisenhower’s successor.