Eisenhower (1 gen 1952 anni – 1 gen 1960 anni)

Descrizione:

New Look: The defense policy of the Eisenhower administration that stepped up production of the hydrogen bomb and developed long-range bombing capabilities.

As the 1952 election approached, the nation was embroiled in both the Cold War and a “hot” war in Korea. Though the opposition Republicans captured the White House, radical change was not in the offing. The new president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not a career politician. The former commander of Allied forces in Europe embraced what his supporters called “modern Republicanism,” an updated approach that aimed at moderating, not dismantling, the New Deal. Eisenhower Republicans were as much successors of FDR as of Herbert Hoover. Foreign policy reflected a similar continuity. Like the Truman administration, the Republican leadership saw the world in Cold War polarities.

Despite Eisenhower’s enormous popularity, divisions persisted among Republicans. Conservative party activists preferred Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the Republican leader in the Senate who was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, a close friend of business, and a vocal critic of labor unions. Though an ardent anticommunist, Taft was far more of an isolationist than most Cold Warriors, and he criticized Truman’s aggressive containment policy and opposed U.S. participation in NATO. Taft ran for president three times, and though he never claimed the Republican nomination, he did earn the loyalty of conservative Americans who deemed the welfare state wasteful and international initiatives dangerous.

In contrast, moderate Republicans looked to Eisenhower, a man without a political past. Believing that democracy required the military to stand aside, the career soldier had never voted. In contrast to Taft, Eisenhower was ideologically closer to more liberal-minded Republican party leaders like Nelson Rockefeller, who supported programs such as the Marshall Plan and NATO and were willing to tolerate labor unions and the welfare state. Rockefeller, the scion of one of the richest families in America, was a quintessential Cold War internationalist. He served in a variety of capacities under Eisenhower, including as an advisor on foreign affairs. Rockefeller was elected the governor of New York in 1958 and became the de facto leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party.

SKILLS & PROCESSES
DEVELOPMENTS AND PROCESSES

How was the Republican Party divided in the 1950s, and what were its primary constituencies?

Between 1952 and 1960, Eisenhower maintained peace between conservative Taft Republicans and liberal Rockefeller Republicans, though more ardent conservatives considered him a closet New Dealer. “Ike,” as he was widely known, proved willing to work with the mostly Democratic-controlled Congresses of those years. Eisenhower signed bills increasing federal outlays for veterans’ benefits, housing, highway construction, and Social Security, and increased the minimum wage from 75 cents an hour to $1. Like Truman, Eisenhower accepted some government responsibility for the economic security of individuals as part of a broad consensus in American politics in these years.

A black-and-white photo shows Dwight D. Eisenhower appreciating cheers from supporters in Chicago as he waves during the presidential campaign in 1952.
Dwight Eisenhower

In this photo taken during the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledges cheers from supporters in Chicago. “Ike,” as he was universally known, had been a popular five-star general in World War II (also serving as supreme allied commander in the European theater) and turned to politics in the early 1950s as a member of the Republican Party. However, Eisenhower was a centrist who did little to disrupt the liberal social policies that Democrats had pursued since the 1930s.


The political landscape that birthed the containment strategy also guided Eisenhower’s foreign policy. But the tone of the Cold War changed with Stalin’s death in March 1953. After a prolonged power struggle, Nikita Khrushchev emerged as Stalin’s successor. The new first secretary of the Communist Party soon startled the world by denouncing Stalin and detailing his crimes and blunders. He also surprised many Americans by calling for “peaceful coexistence” with the West. But the conciliatory outlook of the new Soviet leader had limits: when Hungarians rose up in 1956 to demand independence from Moscow, Khrushchev crushed the incipient revolution.

With no end to the Cold War in sight, Eisenhower focused on limiting the cost of containment. The president hoped to economize by relying on a nuclear arsenal instead of expensive conventional forces. Under this “ New Look” defense policy, the Eisenhower administration stepped up production of the hydrogen bomb and developed long-range strike capabilities. The Soviets, however, matched the United States weapon for weapon. By 1957, both nations had intercontinental ballistic missiles. When an American nuclear submarine launched an atomic-tipped Polaris missile in 1960, Soviet engineers quickly produced an equivalent weapon. This arms race was another critical feature of the Cold War. American officials believed the best deterrent to Soviet aggression was the threat of an all-out nuclear response, dubbed “massive retaliation” by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Although confident in the international arena, Eisenhower was a novice in domestic affairs. In the wake of the rancorous Truman years, the new president sought a less confrontational tone. He was reluctant to speak out against Joe McCarthy and did not lead on civil rights. Democrats remained strong in Congress but proved weak in the two presidential contests of the decade. In the 1952 election, Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was hampered by the unpopularity of the Truman administration. The deadlocked Korean War and a series of scandals that Republicans dubbed “the mess in Washington” combined to give the war-hero general an easy victory. In 1956, Ike won an even more impressive victory over Stevenson, an eloquent and sophisticated spokesman for liberalism but an ineffectual politician.

During the Eisenhower era, particularly at the national level, Democrats and Republicans seemed in broad agreement about the realities of the Cold War and how to sustain both a welfare state and a modern industrial economy. Indeed, respected commentators in the 1950s declared “the end of ideology” and wondered if the great political clashes that had wracked the 1930s were gone forever. Underneath the apparent calm, however, new forces on both right and left were stirring, with starkly opposed ideas about the direction of the nation. Their differences would bitterly divide the country in the 1960s and bring an end to the brief and fragile Cold War consensus (Chapters 26 and 27).

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