Dead Presidents

Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis: Suez and the Brink of War
David A. Nichols
Paperback.  346 pp.
February 2012.  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

A few years ago, I ordered the The Presidents Collection DVD box set from PBS’s awesome American Experience series.  This particular set included documentaries about 10 of the most important and influential Presidents of the 20th Century:  Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy (in “The Kennedys” featuring the story of the entire political family), Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.  For someone like me, 35 hours worth of documentaries about our Presidents is basically my personal definition of heaven and I have never had any complaints about my purchase.  However, I’ve always been surprised that one of the 20th Century Presidents left out of this particular set of DVDs is the 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

For some reason, Dwight D. Eisenhower as President is often overlooked or overshadowed.  The mid-20th Century featured large personalities immediately preceding and succeeding Eisenhower in the Presidency — FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon — and the eight years that Eisenhower served were relatively calm, peaceful, and prosperous in comparison to the events that took place during the Administrations of FDR (Great Depression/World War II), Truman (End of World War II/Atomic bombing of Japan/Korean War), JFK (Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis), LBJ (Civil Rights Movement/Vietnam), and Nixon (Vietnam/Watergate).  Then there’s the fact that Eisenhower’s greatest fame came before he entered the world of politics, first as one of the leading Generals and then the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, where he planned and oversaw the successful D-Day invasion of Europe.  In a way, President Eisenhower has always been overshadowed by General Eisenhower, and Eisenhower’s performance as President continues to be underrated, although more Americans are beginning to understand Ike’s greatness during his two terms in the White House.

The world didn’t stop being a dangerous place from 1953-1961.  A famous Eisenhower quote inscribed on a wall at the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas notes that the peace and prosperity that the United States enjoyed during his Administration wasn’t the result of good luck:  “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground during my Administration.  We kept the peace.  People ask how it happened — by God, it didn’t just happen.”  Eisenhower spent almost his entire adult life prior to entering politics as a warrior, but as President, the old soldier committed himself and his nation towards, in one of his favorite phrases, “waging peace”. 

Even before Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn into office in January 1953, he took steps to end the fighting in the Korean War, which had become a stalemate under President Truman.  During the transition between Eisenhower’s election and inauguration, the President-elect followed through on a campaign pledge and traveled to Korea to revive peace talks and help guide the parties to an Armistice.  When he took office, Eisenhower hit the ground running and Americans had immense faith in their new President because of the leadership skills that helped the Allies win World War II.  The peace and prosperity that Americans enjoyed during Eisenhower’s first term virtually guaranteed that Ike could be easily re-elected in 1956.

David A. Nichols begins his remarkable look at the most difficult year of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presidency, Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis: Suez and the Brink of War (Paperback, 2012, Simon & Schuster), with President Eisenhower enjoying a nice vacation at the Colorado home of his mother-in-law.  However, early in the morning of September 24, 1955, the President, who was less than a month away from his 65th birthday, suffered a massive heart attack.  The quick reaction of Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie, may have saved the President’s life, but a little over a year away from the 1956 election, Eisenhower’s ability to seek re-election, or even continue in the Presidency, was in serious question.

Nichols follows President Eisenhower’s recovery into 1956 as Ike slowly but surely regains his strength and becomes convinced that he is not only capable of seeking re-election, but that his country needs him to remain at the helm.  The President’s heart attack is the beginning of several crises that make Eisenhower 1956 a gripping account as the political calendar flips closer and closer to Election Day, and as one international crisis after another plunge the world to the brink of yet another World War and seemingly blend together to make every move that the Eisenhower Administration makes potentially dangerous and crucial to the survival of peace.

In Eisenhower 1956, David A. Nichols uncovers incredible details from recently declassified documents, personal diaries, diplomatic cables, and more in order to prove that Dwight D. Eisenhower was not merely a popular, genial, caretaker in the White House.  Instead, Eisenhower was a hands-on leader who may have come from a military background but who had perhaps better political instincts than any American politician of his time.  Eisenhower was clever and cunning, in national politics and international diplomacy.  Despite running for a second term and another serious setback to his health, Eisenhower stays engaged at a top-level and, in many instances, the President’s perspective on foreign relations and his vision for the big picture rivals that of his ever-present Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and any of the other longtime political or diplomatic veterans in Eisenhower’s Cabinet or inner circle.  For those readers who were previously aware of Eisenhower’s surprising political skills, Eisenhower 1956 will add to your appreciation of Ike’s capabilities.  For those who might have thought of the old General as a hands-off delegator with a famous smile who won the Presidency as something akin to a lifetime achievement award — and there are many Americans who have thought of Eisenhower the President in that way over the past half-century — this book by Nichols is perhaps the best revelation yet about Eisenhower’s immense skills and how he transformed the Presidency.

The main conflict in Eisenhower 1956 is the Suez Crisis, an event that continues to have consequences today in an area of the world which remains a flashpoint.  Since the Suez Crisis took place in 1956, some historians have looked at it one of the last gasps of European colonialism in the wake of World War II.  Throughout Eisenhower 1956, the deep research done by David A. Nichols reveals incredible details about how the Suez Crisis escalated and what could have happened if not for the restraint and stunning diplomatic footwork of President Eisenhower and the Eisenhower Administration.  One of the most incredible aspects of the Suez Crisis is how, just a decade following the end of World War II, two of America’s wartime Allies that owed perhaps more gratitude than anyone else to Dwight D. Eisenhower — Great Britain and  France — secretly plotted with Israel to double-cross President Eisenhower and the United States in order to attack Egypt after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.  It is a tremendous story, told with incredible detail by Dr. Nichols, which not only takes you back to 1956, but makes you feel as if you were in charge of President Eisenhower’s daily calendar throughout the crisis.

Most unbelievable of all is that President Eisenhower’s bid for re-election, the most heated moments of the Suez Crisis, and Eisenhower’s precarious health are issues that don’t simply share the same year — 1956 — but, in many cases, take place simultaneously.  And, as President Eisenhower considers how to handle the Suez Crisis — including the unthinkable possibility of American forces combating the aggression against Egypt by responding militarily against our seemingly inseparable Allies, Britain, France, and Israel — the Soviet Union puts down a popular revolt in Hungary with 200,000 Russian troops and threatens to funnel weapons and funding, if not direct military support, in the Middle East.

Eisenhower 1956 is a compelling, phenomenal history of one of our great, underrated Presidents, at the top of his game as a world leader and visionary of modern global relations, responding to a hurricane of dangerous international crises with political skills that few leaders — Presidents, diplomats, politicians, or soldiers — have ever possessed.  Dr. Nichols has crafted a masterpiece that does justice to the gravity of the events portrayed in his book while giving President Eisenhower the just due that he so richly deserves.  This is an important work for the study of Eisenhower, the American Presidency, the Cold War, and the always-evolving status of American relations in the Middle East. 

Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis: Suez and the Brink of War by David A. Nichols is available now in hardcover and paperback from Simon & Schuster.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Dr. Nichols previously authored another title about the 34th President, A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (BOOK•KINDLE).  For more information on Dr. Nichols, be sure to check out his author page at the Simon & Schuster website.

“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.  And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States (1953-1961), Second Inaugural Address, January 21, 1957

It was exactly 42 years today that Dwight David Eisenhower died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  Eisenhower was 77 years old and had lived the final months of his life in a suite at the famed veteran’s hospital, under constant observation by doctors who were treating the 34th President for congestive heart failure.

With his family at his side, the great General was prepared for death, exhausted and ailing after seven heart attacks throughout his long, legendary life.  A military man to the end, Eisenhower’s last words were an order:  “I want to go.  God take me.”  At 12:25 PM on March 28, 1969, the General’s final order was carried out.  A few days later, after lying in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda and being honored in a funeral at the National Cathedral, Eisenhower was buried in a simple military casket at his Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas.

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” — Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States (1953-1961)

“The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.  The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States (1953-1961)

Going Home To Glory: A Memoir of Life With Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969
By David Eisenhower (with Julie Nixon Eisenhower)
Hardcover.  323 pages.
Oct. 26, 2010.  Simon & Schuster

Grandfathers are exceptionally special people — deeply important figures, particularly in the lives of young men.  In every sense, grandfathers literally define the word that describes them:  Grand old men who help raise us in a unique manner by dispensing fatherly wisdom, teaching valuable lessons, and supporting us along the way, always stopping to answer questions or to pick us up when we stumble.  Our relationships with our grandfathers is different because, while we can disappoint our parents and let them down, our grandfathers (and grandmothers, too) seem inherently unable to feel anything towards us besides pride.

The difficulty with grandfathers is that they are giants — at first physically when we are young and small, and later metaphorically, when it is their accomplishments in life which appear to be impossible to match for mere mortals such as their grandchildren.  We find ourselves spending most of our lives wondering whether we can fill our grandfathers’ shoes when the truth is that, in our grandfathers’ eyes, we’ve already exceeded their hopes and dreams.  That is the beauty of grandfathers.

My generation is filled with grandsons of World War II veterans, some of who fought through the Great Depression and then helped save the world from the Nazis; some of whom were young men who helped save the world in the 1940’s and had to do it again in the 1950’s.  It’s difficult to measure ourselves against such men, and it’s impossible to try.  As another grandson of a World War II veteran proves in Going Home To Glory, it’s best to just pay tribute.

David Eisenhower’s grandfather was no ordinary soldier.  In fact, his grandfather would be offended that I implied soldiers were “ordinary”.  David’s grandfather, of course, was Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of World War II, the man who ordered those soldiers into battle and commanded the Normandy invasion, a five-star General of the Army, and the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961).

In Going Home To Glory: A Memoir of Life With Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969 (Simon & Schuster, October 26, 2010), David Eisenhower focuses on his grandfather’s post-Presidency retirement to his peaceful farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania after John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960.  The old General’s final years are beautifully recalled with personal memories from the grandson entwined with candid entries from General Eisenhower’s private diary. 

Going Home To Glory is filled with interesting facts and reveals Eisenhower’s complex relationships with three Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  With Kennedy, Eisenhower is seen as being professionally respectful but personally displeased.  A deep friendship is shown between Eisenhower and Johnson, especially during LBJ’s beleaguered attempts at controlling the disaster in Vietnam.  The relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon is the most complex, yet probably the closest.  Besides being Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President from 1953-1961, Richard Nixon also became David Eisenhower’s father-in-law, as David married President-elect Nixon’s daughter in December 1968.

Because of David Eisenhower’s proximity to General Eisenhower in those last years of the former President’s life, this is likely the closest we will ever get to a man whom, as even David writes, “had always been imposing and at times unapproachable”.  We learn about Eisenhower’s likes and dislikes, his tendency to cut people out of his life who had wronged him, his restless energy, his temper, his creativity, his conservative, old-fashioned viewpoints, and the warm lessons he tried to extend to his only grandson.  As age encroached on the old General’s ability to command others, he turned instead to teaching, becoming a mentor to people from teenagers like David Eisenhower to Presidents like LBJ and Richard Nixon.

This book, Going Home To Glory, is one which consists of several stories.  It is the story of a worldwide hero and a beloved American icon’s life in the sunset of his years.  It is the story of the last President born in the 19th century adjusting to a rapidly changing world while steadfastly refusing to change his beliefs or morals.  It is the story of an elderly man, used to living an active, incredibly fast-paced and important lifestyle, facing the restrictions of ill health and a failing body.  Most of all, it is the story of a grandson and a grandfather connecting and attempting to relate to one another as one grows old and the other grows up.

My grandfathers were not great Generals or Presidents, but we all believe that our grandfathers were among the greatest men of the world.  No one can change that fact, and no one should try.  David Eisenhower paints a touching portrait of his grandfather’s importance in his life — a subject I personally related to — while also accomplishing the task of establishing General Eisenhower’s impact on the nation, especially against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, waging during Eisenhower’s retirement.  Going Home To Glory is about a family and a nation, and it reminds you that, often, those two entities are not that different.

Going Home To Glory: A Memoir of Life With Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969 by David Eisenhower (with Julie Nixon Eisenhower) will be released tomorrow (October 26, 2010) by Simon & Schuster.  It can be found in your local independent bookstore, through Simon & Schuster, online at Amazon or other online retailers.