Let's see.
1. Led the country through a post war boom. Granted America was in a position to dominate the world economically because the destruction of Europe and Asia after WWII, but he kept up going.
2. Ended the Korean War. Unlike the current occupant of the White House no one questioned the word of Ike. After visiting Korea he let the Chinese and North Koreans know he would use nuclear weapons to end the war and no one doubted he would. The result, a cease fire months into his administration.
3. What many people drive on daily, the Interstate Highway System was his dream. It's properly called The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. A major named Eisenhower had to get a convoy across the US in 1939 and the lack of connected roadways cause this simple act to take two weeks. After seeing the Autobahns in Germany he envisioned a similar network for the US. And think how that transformed this nation's economy and society for the better.
4. Ike started the integration of the southern schools including federalizing the Arkansas National Guard in direct opposition of the Democratic governor there.
5. Kept the peace while a maniac was pounding his shoe at the UN. I would say this could be enough but damed, don't you remember fondly when America had the adults in the room.
That's off the top of my head. Oh, he did this while having two heart attacks and quitting a four pack a day smoking habit cold turkey. Hey Barrack, try that.
Now we can look at the statue being put up for the man. From this Sunday's New York Puke:
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| The concept monument |
The Greatness of Ike
By ROSS DOUTHAT
THIS year, two decisions will be made with long-term implications for how we think about the presidency. In November, voters will decide whether to give Barack Obama a second term in office. And sometime before then, the National Capital Planning Commission will decide whether to go forward with Frank Gehry’s plan for a Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.
The Gehry design is, well, Gehry-esque: it reimagines the traditional monumental form, using huge metal screens to depict the landscape of Eisenhower’s Kansan childhood while devoting far less space to his accomplishments in World War II and the White House. (The only significant statue will portray Eisenhower as a barefoot boy, rather than a war leader or president.)
The design has been widely criticized — by the Eisenhower family, by architectural traditionalists and by right-of-center columnists like George Will and David Frum. Some of the critiques are purely aesthetic, but the most important ones are substantive: as planned, the critics argue, the memorial sells the supreme allied commander’s greatness short.
What’s interesting, though, is that by emphasizing Eisenhower’s ordinariness rather than his heroism, Gehry is arguably being conventional rather than radical. As conceived, his memorial would ratify Eisenhower’s current place in our national memory, not revise it.
Gehry’s vision, as The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott writes, implies that while “Eisenhower was a great man ... there were other Eisenhowers right behind him, other men who could have done what he did.” Far from being a bold reimagining, this is a near-perfect summary of the way many Americans already regard their 34th president.
Sorry but Adlai Stevenson could not hold a hankie to Ike. Yes, there were many capable men out there qualified to hold the office. But at the time there was no one as seasoned, trained, experienced and knowledgable as Ike to lead the nation in the post war years.
...But he is not nearly as beloved as many of his midcentury contemporaries. He’s overshadowed as a war leader both by F.D.R. and by his many colorful subordinates, and his two-term presidency has attracted little of the posthumous enthusiasm that made his “give ’em hell” predecessor a folk hero and his martyred successor an icon.
In a 2011 Gallup poll on the greatest president, Eisenhower came in a lame 12th, in a tie with Jimmy Carter. He performs solidly in scholarly surveys, but he’s frequently ranked behind his prominent 20th-century rivals.
I don’t know the details on this poll but I wonder if these were the same morons who put Obama in the top ten. Ike definitely belongs there. Obama belongs at the other
...ultimately Eisenhower is underrated because his White House leadership didn’t fit the template of “greatness” that too many Americans pine for from their presidents. He was not a man for grand projects, bold crusades or world-historical gambles. There was no “Ike revolution” in American politics, no Eisen-mania among activists and intellectuals, no Eisenhower realignment.
Instead, his greatness was manifested in the crises he defused and the mistakes he did not make. He did not create unaffordable entitlement programs, embrace implausible economic theories, or hand on unsustainable deficits to his successors. He ended a stalemated conflict in Korea, kept America out of war in Southeast Asia, and avoided the kind of nuclear brinkmanship that his feckless successor stumbled into. He did not allow a series of Middle Eastern crises to draw American into an Iraq-style intervention. He did not risk his presidency with third-rate burglaries or sexual adventurism. He was decisive when necessary, but his successes — prosperity, peace, steady progress on civil rights — were just as often the fruit of strategic caution and masterly inaction....
Again an ability to act when needed, the judgement to not go when not needed and the wisdom to know the difference.
I visited the Eisenhower Center in 1986 and the impression you get (like the Truman Library and the Reagan Center) is how a simple man from America’s heartland can being himself up to the leadership of the greatest nation on earth.
RIP Ike...when you were needed you always were there for this country. Now hopefully your country builds a worthy monument to you.
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