America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (21 page)

Events in Eisenhower's second term quickly turned to the Cold War.  With the end of the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower pledged military and economic aid to Middle Eastern countries, in an attempt to bring them into the West's political orbit.  At home, the arms race was heating up, and the United States detonated its first underground nuclear weapon test in Nevada in September of 1957.

That year, however, the U.S. also lost some of its international clout.  In October, the Soviets launched Sputnik, throwing the first man-made satellite into the earth's orbit.  Sputnik-1 took about 90 minutes to complete its orbit around the Earth, speeding along at 18,000 miles per hour while transmitting a distinct beeping noise by radio.  The mission marveled the world, and made the U.S. look technologically inferior.  Months later, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, but it did not complete an entire orbit around the Earth and was clearly no match for Sputnik.

Though Sputnik is viewed as the beginning of the Space Race, which would culminate with Apollo 11 landing on the Moon in 1969, the Soviets and Americans had already spent over a decade working on rocket technology, which had its origins with Nazi rocket scientists who developed the V-2 rockets for Nazi Germany in World War II. The Truman Administration even recruited Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun, who had been instrumental in the design of the V-2, and von Braun had successfully designed the Jupiter-C rocket by 1956, which could have allowed the United States to beat Sputnik-1 by over a year. At the time, however, the technology was being designed for use as missiles, a clear indicator of the Eisenhower Administration’s priorities.

  Worse, in 1959, a revolution in Cuba put a communist regime in power, under the leadership of Fidel Castro.  For all the successes of Eisenhower's first term, Eisenhower's presidency ended with a double whammy of Soviet successes with Sputnik and Castro.

Castro

Civil Rights and 50 States

Eisenhower spent the final years of his Presidency on the domestic front with Civil Rights.  In 1957, he signed into law the biggest expansion of Civil Rights law for African-Americans since the Civil War with the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. While the Civil Rights Act of 1957 lacked the meat of a later version signed in 1964, it was widely hailed as a decent start.  The bill established a Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice, whose job it was to ensure that all Americans were allowed the right to vote.  It also created a Civil Rights Commission to continually update the nation on the states of civil rights within its borders.

While Eisenhower wholly supported the bill, he understood that signing it further weakened the position of his party within the South.  He had never managed to attract much support from the South, and he knew that the bill would forever ensure that Democrats would continue to win that section of the country. As it turned out, the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights flipped the politics of the region, and the Solid South that produced Democrats for nearly a century became solidly red almost overnight in the mid-1960s.

Eisenhower's final year in office also saw the addition of two new states: Alaska and Hawaii.  On January 3
^rd
, 1959, Alaska became the nation's 49
^th
state, while Hawaii became the 50
^th
state on March 18
^th
, 1959.  They were the first two states to not be stationed continually along the continental United States.

Chapter 6: Later Years and Legacy, 1960-Present

Post-Presidency and Death

In the election of 1960, Eisenhower publicly supported his Vice President, Richard Nixon, in his bid for the White House.  In private, however, Eisenhower had reservations about Nixon, and was not terribly displeased when he lost to John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy himself, despite being a Democrat, had supported Eisenhower over Stevenson in '52 and '56. As it turned out, Eisenhower may have harmed Nixon’s chances when he publicly campaigned for Nixon in the waning days of the election that Fall. After giving a press conference, reporters asked Eisenhower to name a policy idea proposed by Nixon that he had adopted, to which Eisenhower responded, “
If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember." Though Eisenhower intended it as a joke, Kennedy's campaign seized upon the gaffe, using it as a quote in its own campaign commercials. Kennedy, of course, would go on to win that fall in one of the closest elections in American history.

Ironically, one of Eisenhower’s most memorable moments as President was one of his last. In his final televised Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower delivered a farewell speech in which he coined one of the most famous phrases of the Cold War Era. While acknowledging that the nation faced “a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method...", he cautioned Americans about overestimating the threat and unjustifiably spending too much money on defense. Eisenhower warned that the United States “must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex…Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Though he couldn’t have intended it at the time, Eisenhower had just created one of the great Orwellian phrases of the 20
^th
century, one still commonly used in American politics.

Upon leaving the White House as the oldest president in history and handing the presidency off to the youngest president in history, Ike and Mamie retired not to Abilene, but to his ancestral homeland in Pennsylvania.  The two lived out their remaining years on a farm near Gettysburg. Eisenhower hosted dignitaries on the famous farm, situated just next to the country’s most famous battlefield, and he enjoyed hobbies like golf and oil painting. In 1967, shortly before his death,
the Eisenhowers donated the farm to the National Park Service, and it remains a widely visited tourist spot in Gettysburg today. 

Eisenhower’s Gettysburg Farm

On March 29
^th
, 1969, nine years after leaving the White House, Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure.  He was 78 years old. Not all Presidents receive State Funerals, but Eisenhower did.  His body laid in repose in the United States Capitol Building for over 24 hours.  His funeral service was conducted in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. before his body was brought to Abilene, Kansas, for burial.  International dignitaries from around the world attended his funeral, and many European leaders praised him both for his leadership as U.S. President and as Supreme Commander during World War II.

Eisenhower’s Funeral Procession

Legacy

Naturally, Eisenhower's legacy has endured for his dual roles as a General and a President.  American history periodically produced such General-Presidents, including Washington, Grant, and Jackson, and more than any other president since Grant, Eisenhower is the clearest example of an American political figure catapulting to the presidency after a successful military career.

As a general, there can be no doubt that Eisenhower succeeded.  Whereas numerous generals – British and American alike – struggled to find a path to successfully invade Europe, Eisenhower succeeded – on two fronts.  He is most famous for his D-Day Invasion of Normandy, but his Southern strategy of invasion through Sicily was the most impressive military feat of its time and gave him the necessary experience to stage an even more ambitious amphibious landing the following year. The results of World War II may have been very different with Dwight Eisenhower, and he is unquestionably the most widely revered American military figure in Europe, with roads and and memorials dedicated to him across the continent.

At home, Eisenhower is celebrated for his generalship and as a President.  Domestically, the 1950's represent an era of unprecedented prosperity.  Economically, America flourished, with incomes increasing by 20% during Eisenhower's Presidency while inflation was kept at nearly 0.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average tripled during the eight years of his Presidency, cars proliferated from sea to shining sea, and the new Interstate System ensured that Americans could see both oceans regardless of where they lived.  Though there was much work to be done on Civil Rights, some significant progress was made during the Eisenhower years.

On foreign policy, Eisenhower's legacy is mixed.  His first term represented enormous success, and the Suez Crisis solidified America's leadership of the West.  His second term, however, ceded many successes to the Soviets, and Eisenhower's successors were forced to scramble on the Space Race and Cuba in a way Eisenhower chose not to. As a result, in the turbulent 1960s, with Soviet advances in space and social conflicts roiling the country, Eisenhower was widely denigrated as an ineffective do-nothing who contributed to the troubles the new decade faced.

Over time, however, historians have begun to look back at Eisenhower's Presidency much more favorably. His lack of partisanship was crucial during a period that was notorious for Communist hysteria and red-baiting, and the country needed a president above the fray like Eisenhower.  Eisenhower's partisan ambiguity was an enormous asset, and it is one that is sorely missed in the United States today, where even the tiniest issues become partisan calamities.  With that, many Americans collectively yearn for the kind of man like Eisenhower, who effectively and efficiently went about his work while managing to rise above the political fray during World War II and his presidency.

For all of these reasons, Eisenhower will long endure as an American legend.

John F. Kennedy

Chapter 1: Early Life and Education, 1917-1945

Birth and Education

John F. Kennedy was always intended for greatness, or at least one male in his family was. On May 29
^th
, 1917, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born into a prominent Boston political family in Brookline, Massachusetts.  The second son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, young John spent the first 10 years of his life in Brookline attending prominent private schools in the Boston area.

In 1927, the family left Massachusetts for the Bronx.  While in the New York area, the Kennedy's moved around, but John remained a student at the Riverdale School in the Bronx.

Later, John's high school experience put him in one of the most elite schools in the country.  Kennedy enrolled first at the Canterbury School and then later at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. This was hardly unusual for the Kennedy clan, which had enrolled many of its children at Choate, alongside some of the nation's most important political families.  Choate was a member of a group of elite preparatory schools in New England, including Deerfield, Hotchkiss and St. Paul's.