Book Review: The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s by William I. Hitchcock
(Three Stars)
“Eisenhower had that rarest of gifts in politics: he brought America together.”
Damns Eisenhower with faint praise. Following the rising tide of academic and popular reappraisal of Ike, Hancock tries to hew to the old bumbling amateur angle, even as he says he rejects it.
“These first years of his presidency, Eisenhower laid down a blueprint for the warfare state–an official plan to mobilize the nation and put it on a permanent war footing. The military-industrial complex had begun to take shape.”
“Eisenhower, [Garry] Wills believed, ‘had the true professional’s instinct for making things look easy. He appeared to be performing less work than he actually did. And he wanted it that way. An air of ease inspires confidence.”
Shoddy scholarship. Adds his snarky quips at the end of paragraphs, then sets the footnote after it, implying that the cited source (often in the 1950s) is to blame. “That suited Eisenhower fine.” “Middle-class paradise on a presidential scale.” “The comparatively glamorous and graceful Jacqueline Kennedy.
“The central paradox of the Eisenhower presidency: that a man so successful at the ballot box and so overwhelmingly popular among voters could have been given such poor marks by the political class. His critics never grasped the profound appeal of the man and never appreciated the depths of his political talent.”
Other, better modern investigations into this most-underrated president of the twentieth century–for example, try any David A. Nichols work.
“Dwight Eisenhower must be counted among the most consequential presidents in modern American history.”
As a Matter of Fancy 