The Hated and the Dead

EP16: Dwight Eisenhower

• Tom Leeman • Season 2

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Dwight Eisenhower served as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, and as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. Whilst his presidency is often ranked highly among presidential experts, other scholars have pointed out Eisenhower's mixed record on civil rights, his overthrowing of democratic governments abroad and his "tip-toeing" into Vietnam as reasons why his presidency might be deserving of greater scrutiny. My guest and I discuss all this and more; she is Julia Azari, presidential scholar, author of Delivering the People's Message, and podcaster at Politics in Question (which is great!). She tweets @julia_azari 

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Hello and welcome back to the hated in the dead with Tom Leeman. Just a reminder that I've now set up an Instagram account for the podcast, so please go and follow it if you're on Instagram. Just search the hated in the dead, and you'll find me. Today's episode is about Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower had a truly remarkable life, serving as the supreme allied commander during World War Two, and the 34th President of the United States between 1953 and 1961. Since this is a podcast about politics, today's conversation focuses on Eisenhower the president rather than Eisenhower the military man. However, as you're about to find out, it's not entirely clear where one persona ends, and the other begins. Eisenhower's unconventional route to the White House meant that he was hard to locate on traditional ideological maps, and to use this to his advantage brilliantly. However, whilst Eisenhower's political ambiguity helped deliver to landslide election victories, it also meant that he often abdicated political leadership on important issues. On no issue was this more obvious than how to accommodate the burgeoning civil rights movement, with Eisenhower's hesitation on confronting the issue of racial inequality during the 50s, leading to the explosion of the civil rights movement in the 60s. In this sense, Eisenhower's presidency is perhaps a caution against choosing a leader that is, if anything to moderate, especially if the country he or she governs is anything but the America of the 1950s possess just as many ideological stresses and strains as the America of today. And Eisenhower's attitude towards this, especially towards his own Republican colleagues, seems pretty timid in hindsight. Despite this, Eisenhower often comes near the top of presidential rankings, having presided over strong economic growth, and few presidents were more popular as incumbents than him. My guest for this episode is Professor Juliet Azhari. Of Marquette University in Wisconsin. We discussed Eisenhower's ideology, his success in navigating America through the Cold War, his record on civil rights, and which of Eisenhower's successes has come closest to recreating his unique political appeal. The answer might surprise you. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce Dwight Eisenhower. Hi, Julia, how are you? Great. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. We're talking about Dwight Eisenhower. Today. He was the 34th President of the United States. I've never talked about a President of the United States on this podcast before I originally contacted you about doing a podcast about Richard Nixon. This is a podcast primarily about controversial people. And Nixon is one of those people whose known primarily, I would say, for controversial reasons. Eisenhower, by contrast, is seen by many people as a figure of stability, and of epitomising America at an economic and military peak in its history. The 1950s Eisenhower is the person that you wanted to discuss in a sort of, you know, minute or so why do you find him interesting? Yeah, so there's three main reasons, which is probably the last thing you want an academic to say when you want them to talk for a minute. The first one is, I think of Eisenhower is both the first in a lot of ways the first modern president, but also a kind of archetype that in some ways, we've been kind of looking for Eisenhower for the last 70 years or so. And the second thing it has to do with kind of party politics and his role in the Republican Party, and what's happened in the Republican Party after that. And the third one, I think, is where there is a controversy. It's just at the moment sort of confined to people who study, mainly race and American politics, which is Eisenhower's civil rights legacy is actually quite contested and debated and quite controversial among people who are interested in that topic. Eisenhower was born in 1890. I think he was the last president born in the 19 century. That's right. Yep. He was born in Texas, but his family moved to Kansas when he was a young child. What was his childhood? Like? What do you think? How do you think it informed his later life? Yeah, that's, I mean, I find I always find that said challenging part of political biographies? I should say, I didn't cover Eisenhower. Neither one. But I've taught two classes on political biography. So always kind of puzzling about this question. I mean, I think that it's, it's hard to make that it's hard to make that connection. And people often make that connection of in group in this kind of big Midwestern strict family. And that informed his kind of worldview, in contrast, maybe with people who grew up on on the coasts, but in a lot of ways, I think it's tough to make that to make that call between the childhood and the political biography, particularly for someone like Eisenhower had some kind of dramatic intervening event of his military service, which is maybe not our focus today. But obviously, the thing I think that really shaped his political identity. Sure, I mean, you just mentioned the thing that took up nearly half his life, which was his military service. I mean, this is obviously mostly a podcast about politics rather than military history. So I'm, I'm only interested in his military career today, insofar as it informs the type of politician that he ended up being. And there's no doubt that much of Eisenhower's appeal, as a candidate for high office was down to the importance and achievements of Eisenhower as a military man. Can you give a very brief description of what that military achievement was and what he did during the Second World War? And why it was important, right? Yes, so there is so he was a general and at least one of his biographies is pointed to the fact that really his his crowning accomplishment wasn't being an amazing general, but in in taking command of allied forces and his role in World War Two, so he was the sort of planner of the D Day invasion of Normandy. And that's really the kind of crowning achievement and what made him a national figure. And so that's obviously as you said, that was really the kind of catapulting of his political career. The other, the other two things I would point to that sort of come up again, and again, and these is Eisenhower biographies are the first one is earliest during this sort of world war one years, which is him being in a caravan across the United States, and realising that the kind of national infrastructure wasn't very good. And then kind of deepening that realisation as he spent time in Europe. And so by contrast, what they had in Germany, and the advantages of having that kind of infrastructure, and that that the kind of common wisdom among his biographers is that that informed his approach to the highway bill, which was one of his kind of signature domestic achievements. The other thing that really comes out, as you look at the way that he served as the, the commander of the allied forces is, all of a sudden, you're really in a deeply political position of having to kind of understand all these different world leaders, the generals, also the heads of state, and kind of what kinds of military actions are not only going to be militarily feasible and achieve military goals, but also sort of work well for the different players involved. And so we had to get really informed about all these different different people, not just in the United States, and not just in his own division in the military, but in all these other contexts. And you really see that I think, play out in his presidency as a Republican who's knowing leading this sort of fractious party, but also leading in a time where the Democrats are still quite strong, nationally and control Congress for most of his presidency. And so he's sort of an they're also fractious, so he's got all this stuff going on, domestically, all these different viewpoints. And that, I think, was informed by that by that military experience. The third thing I do want to say about that, that I think often doesn't get as much attention, as it should, is that there are implications to having sort of cut your political teeth in a non electoral context. And that's not a common background for a president and it's a lot of military. It's a lot of political skill, you build up in a big organisation, like the military, on the other hand, is not the same as doing it in in this sort of party politics, election context, you don't get the same sort of background. I certainly want to come on to that. I mean, the war and his role in it obviously made him incredibly famous, not just in America, but in the rest of the world as well. I think he got in Britain, for example, he was presented with order of merits for certain cities, which had been very heavily bombed during the Second World War as a sort of show of gratitude for what the Americans had done for the war effort in Europe. When did Eisenhower first consider going into politics? So he was he was sort of that People often use the word drafted, which I feel like is not a great word. But he was initially pursued in 1948. To run for president then, and he didn't do it. It after serving in the military, he became president of, of Columbia University and sort of experienced, in addition to his military politics experience, sort of academic politics, and trying to lead and make decisions about kind of academic freedom. In the early in this early Cold War context, you actually get a lot of the same kinds of the same kinds of things that are going on here in the United States. Now with these sort of questions about like, what kinds of speakers to invite, and what are, you know, how does this match with institutional values. And then in 1952, that's when he was sort of successfully courted by the Republican Party and declared that allegiance. Not so much not trivia, I guess. But political background isn't he wasn't a member of either party, and that it wasn't uncommon for a member of the military not to have that kind of political affiliation. And also, it wasn't uncommon. He, you know, the big thing is he had he had never voted, it's also not uncommon, if you spent your entire adult life in the military didn't really have a permanent address, you know, voting political affiliation here in United States is very, is very much tied to your local residents. So that was that was when, in that 1952 election when he joined the Republican Party as a as a potential candidate. And the politics behind that are essentially, you know, you think about the Republican Party in 1952. They've been out of power out of the White House for 20 years. And it that really shapes the way a party starts to think about what kinds of candidates it is going to recruit and how it is going to sort of sell those candidates to the public. So obviously, Eisenhower was a very attractive target, because he was so incredibly popular nationally, and they felt he could win. And again, this is I want to sort of flag this as one of the ways I think, in American politics, we keep looking for Eisenhower, we keep looking for the candidate who can sort of solve all these internal divisions, and you can appeal across different social and political lines. And that it's clear that that person existed in Eisenhower, the voting data, the public approval really speaks for itself there. It's not clear in contemporary American politics. So we can have that. It's also not clear as you look at the way, Eisenhower's presidency unfolded, that that's a really, that's a logical Gold Standard Outside of winning elections. But that's essentially what they're thinking about you. If you think about the Republican Party at this moment, they had, I think, anticipated, they might win in 1948. So you imagine a sort of shock level, kind of like the Democrats in 2016, except with 16 years, prior of being out of power. So they're really thinking about what can we do. And you have this moderate faction led by Thomas Dewey, who had been the candidate in 1948, the subject of the famous headline, Dewey defeats Truman, the papers printed jumping the gun a little bit, had also been the candidate in 1944. Unexpected loss to FDR during World War Two. And sorry, go ahead. No, no, please, I have a question. But that can wait. So anyway, so So this is a very deliberate cording of Eisenhower to become the spokesperson for this, for let's consider that time, that kind of mainstream moderate faction of the Republican Party, which is very focused, not exclusively, but very focused in the northeast, as opposed to a more Midwestern and a border state, sort of faction that is more conservative and was in the 1952 nomination contest be spearheaded by by Ohio's Robert Taft. And that's that becomes a sort of famous showdown in a national nominating convention. But so that's kind of our, our setup in terms of how Eisenhower is, is drawn into politics. This is not just a news drawn into one particular political party successfully, and then Democrats were unsuccessful in recruiting him, but then he's drawn in deliberately by a very specific faction within the Republican Party that is trying to position themselves and trying to make electoral gains. But that's that that's the reason that the Republicans wanted to go after him. You as you said, in 1948, he had decided against running for office in 1952. He does run for office, what has changed in Eisenhower's mind? You know, I don't think anybody knows. These are the other I mean, as as we sort of get deeper into Eisenhower, we get deeper into this, this enigma and this sort of controversy among people who study Eisenhower about you know why Why does he decide to enter politics? Is it he's persuaded? You know, do we goes through and talks, you know, other members of military that know Eisenhower or things like that? Is that a sense of national obligation? Is it his is the same sort of service compulsion that drew him into the military and this sort of sense about the ways in which the ways in which in the late 40s and early 50s, it seems like things can go wrong, right. And Eisenhower has this very internationalist view, he has a very well developed sense of what the security threats are run around the world of the threat of communism. And that, you know, if left to Harry Truman, who has gotten the country kind of mired in the Korean War, or left to someone like Robert Taft, who wants to draw back in and pursue a more isolationist path, you know, what he can he save the country from these two kinds of leaders or perspectives that that aren't going to be successful. But he also kind of thought, you know, in 1948, again, this sort of goes back to the prediction that the Republicans will, will win and 48. And so he's thinking, okay, it was 1948. And one of the other Republicans wins, and they're gonna serve two terms. And then by the end, he'll be too old. And then so Truman serves another term. And Eisenhower at that point is sort of like, okay, I'm at the I'm at the right age to serve two terms. And that's, you know, this is the way these are sort of the options that the country is facing, in terms of why he picked which party he did. This gets at one of the other, I think, really hotly contested elements of, of the Eisenhower story, which is what, you know, what really was his political ideology. He approached, like I said, he was attracted, he's drawn into the moderate faction. But you know, and his clearly was moderate relative to other types of political actors, and clearly in the way the Republican Party developed. But was he really a moderate? Was he conservative, with his sort of own read on on conservatism, and this is what I was writing my dissertation. And subsequently, my, my book on American Presidency and the interpretation of elections. This was sort of the I think, the the most pressing scholarly controversy about Eisenhower. And I believe, since that is really this one about race is heated up quite a bit more. But that is sort of the question here is, what was Eisenhower's ideology? I've kind of fallen in a place where I think Eisenhower had a governing philosophy, but not a political philosophy. And I think that comes out of his somewhat non traditional background, he had a sense of kind of what government should and also should not do, but had a less well developed sense, again, from not coming out of a traditional political background and a less developed sense of kind of who should who should be in power and how power how power should flow and how institutions should work. He won the presidency in a landslide. And he became president in January 53. I was sort of going to ask you about his political ideology. And I think what you've said about governing versus having a sort of well formed idea of power and politics is sort of was was my perception of him? Do you think he was interested at all in kind of changing things for the better as many politicians claim to be in a sort of deeply political or sociological way? Or do you think he basically just saw himself as a manager of a system? Neither? Maybe. Here's, again, we're just like peeling back the layers of the Eisenhower Enigma, when he was elected. And during the two election, he talked a lot about change, and wrote a book that 1952 mandate for change. And that was his whole idea behind his presidency of Okay, again, the Republican opponent of Harvard 20 years, right. And so moving changing course, from the New Deal and what they saw as the dangers of communism, the disaster in Korea, this is sort of the 1952 slogan, Korea, communism and corruption and this sort of corrupt party politics has really always been the hallmark of the traditional Democratic Party. At the same time, so So Eisenhower comes in with his vision, he's going to change the way that the New Deal works is going to make the New Deal kind of more more efficient, more rational, but not totally move away from the notion that the federal government has things you can do to provide for people and you know, social things like social security, things like the highways. This is going to be the kind of pursuit, so I don't think he's on so there's just a manager, I think he saw himself as a sort of caretaker of, of a particular kind of philosophy. But where this I don't know where you want to get into the, the race part and I also have some things I want to say about the development of the Republican Party that that go backwards a little bit. The 50s You can bet Tension, do you want to let's go to the 52 convention. And then we can talk about civil rights. So to backtrack a little bit Eisenhower's nominations much more interesting in a lot of ways than the general election. In 1952, you're in this sort of hybrid moment. So some states hold primaries. But really the people who control the nomination are the kind of local party leaders. So you've got Eisenhower, who's against very popular, well known figure. And then you've got Robert Taft, and what was very interesting to me, I've spent some time in tax papers in the Library of Congress. One thing that's super interesting to me about Taft as a figure in the Republican Party is that so this is isolationist, very conservative. And he's getting all these telegrams and letters from people that really reminded me as I was reading them, and 2019 of the way Democrats were talking about Elizabeth Warren of kind of, you know, I love your ideas. I think you're really principled, I don't think you can win. And so Taft is getting those types of messages. He's also though notably, you know, he's the insider candidate here. And he's the one who has a lot of kind of pull with these different state parties, and with importantly, as they go into the convention, the National Party in the Credentials Committee. So well, Eisenhower's really popular and he is like getting people to go to these Republican county and state nominating conventions who've never gone before, who aren't Republicans who are independents are Democrats, which is a significant element that they weren't Republicans, right. Yes, absolutely. Right. And so this is like this is the whole story of Eisenhower. And it's a story of his his military and personal fame. It is a story of his geography. This is where I think is sort of early biography matters is not so much as his what happened his childhood, but the fact that he kind of has this Kansas vibe. This is very different than the northeastern Republicans, mitt and it makes it palatable to some of these former Democrats. And so that's the kind of dynamic of that nomination contest and they go into the they go into the 1952 convention. There are several slates of electors that are contested, including Texas, which is that a lot of delegates and there's this contest about, you know, did Eisenhower so the TAF people essentially accused Eisenhower, they say Eisenhower people are people that they're not real Republicans, they stacked these conventions, and they're trying to send an Eisenhower slate and like the real Republicans, it's true party, people who really care about this party are the tough people. And that is so that is a dynamic around the specifically the Texas convention, but also kind of going into the 52 Convention and TAF strategy as well. He's gonna control the Credentials Committee, which is ultimately who decides who, who which slates get to sit. So that's what Taft is going to do. And he is statute that Credentials Committee. People think this stuff got made up in 2016, about how parties worked. It did not but Eisenhower, Eisenhower, people were able to sort of circumvent this and essentially put the seating of the delegates to a floor vote, which they're able to really delegitimize this party strategy. And again, this goes back to American politics as it is in this weird hybrid place with the nomination where it's like some primaries, not like it is now but not quite like it wasn't the 19th century either. And so the Eisenhower people sort of accused Taft, you know, this is several people who've written about this. We've referred to it as trying the TAF people in the court of public opinion. And that really looks bad when they do that, that really looks you know, that really looks bad that the Credentials Committee is trying to control the process. And so they put it to a floor vote and the Eisenhower people win. So that credentials vote not only seats, the the delegations that put it over for Eisenhower, but also sort of demonstrates their strength, right. It shows the tough people that they've lost. And a few years ago, I spoke with former Senator Alan Simpson, who is kind of an old school Republican, and I think he was a very young person at this convention. I think he went with his dad. And he told me that the thing about this was the tough people never got over it. They were mad. They were still mad. And it's not that Eisenhower didn't make any overtures to them. You know, you've got to unify that party. Impex, anti communist kind of, you know, person with with fairly serious conservative credentials, Richard Nixon as his vice president, although he's always rather ambivalent about Nixon. So I have an hour. It's not that he wants to drum that faction out, although he's not interested in their isolationist ideas, but they're just mad about how this has gone down. And it's sort of I think it's solidifies two really important features of American politics. The first one is that it establishes this moderate faction as the dominant faction in the Republican Party, something that was not obvious leading up to that point. But their success in recruiting Eisenhower their success in manipulating the ambiguities of the nomination process, and then their success in the 1952 general election, making it a kind of personality contest between the guy who won World War Two, and at least even said, and that so that, that catapults the moderate faction of the Republican Party into the sort of establishment dominant position that was was it was not clear that it held up to that point. And that really creates the space for what the conservative movement becomes. That means that the conservative movement in the Republican Party evolves in not exclusively but in really important ways in these non elected spaces. It means that it evolves in the media, it evolves in the creation of the National Review in the 50s. And who that movement is pushing back against. It's partly the Democrats, but it's also the Eisenhower administration, who they see as being too sympathetic to the Democrats in the New Deal. And that really, I mean, you can still see the role of the media and other kind of non elected spaces as the seat of the conservative movement. That is one of the I think, most important features of American politics today. And it really reverberates out of this politics of the 1950s. And out of this sort of sense of marginalisation of conservative Republicans. That's really interesting. I think you're absolutely right, in the sense that it's still that change, which is carried over to today, perhaps, you know, I want to I want to talk about Eisenhower as president a little more directly. I know you want to talk there things that you want to talk about, we'll we'll get to them. But I remember reading once that Truman, a few days before he left office is rumoured to have said that he thought Eisenhower wouldn't like being president, because it wasn't like being in the Army. And, you know, he couldn't just click his fingers and get things done. Did Eisenhower like being President? That's a great question. I don't I don't know. Um, I think yeah, actually, I think yes. And maybe folks who have studied his his sort of personality and biography, more closely, would, would dispute that, but I've never seen any evidence to suggest that he didn't like being president. One of the things that I have sort of recent pieces more or less, not recent anymore, but sort of intervention in the scholarly trajectory of Eisenhower is Fred green Stein's work, The Hidden Hand presidency, where he essentially, you know, I started papers open up and he learns like Eisenhower has his whole way of organising the White House and interacting with his various advisors, and, you know, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, including Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, all of these different people that he's interacting with, that are, you know, he is able to, he's able to kind of be, you know, not make them do things they don't want to do necessarily, but sort of set up political situation so that they're the face of difficult and unpopular decisions. At the same time. You know, he's he's able to take credit for things that are that are good and able to be really ambiguous in a way that maintains this this large coalition, and he ran for reelection in 1956. Which I think is usually an indicator, if he hadn't liked being president, he could easily have exited the stage at that point, a political animal who's not Bill Clinton, and also things came up that he didn't necessarily want to deal with, like race and civil rights. You know, he I think he did enjoy being president had his particular way of doing it. That worked for him. And I think, you know, was really invested in re envisioning the country's approach to, to international politics. And this is something what I mean by being the first modern president is that he's really got a skirt. You know, the Cold War means you have to skirt this line between war and peace. In terms of the international stage, the Cold War context is obviously incredibly important to his presidency. The Korean War was still going on when he became president in 1953. Milestones communists had taken over China in 1949. The presidency is primarily, at least in the confines of the Constitution, an international position, it's a position to do with foreign policy. Do you think he was overall a successful international president? That's a really complicated question, because I think it I think it forces us to really identify our vantage point. This is where you know, I think Most people would say yes, certainly I think in the Presidential Scholar world, people would say yes, right that he did, he did what he said he was going to do in terms of getting the United States out of the Korean War. That his sort of management of the Cold War, you know, nothing, nothing terrible and nothing dramatic happened. I think there are a couple of ways that we could think about things that weren't as successful. One is the sort of, you know, setting the country on the path to Vietnam, which is like, that's like a whole other podcast, you could do. But you know, clearly not not resolving those issues, and kind of paving the way again, for things that would really manifest themselves in the 60s and 70s. And, and, and to some extent, still today. I also think that there's been this is another area where there's been sort of this new wave of scholarship, there's this really good book, the brothers about John Foster Dulles, and the other dose Arthur, I think, and the CIA, which goes through all of these covert operations. And this is really so this is where I think, you know, my perspective is maybe a little different than some of some other presidency scholars who might talk to you because I'm also an Iranian American. And so I've sort of grown up in the shadows of stories about the CIA, and most Adak, and the kind of overturning of the only democratic government that Iran ever had, which my family were supporters of. And, you know, that's, I think, when you read those books, that if you if you really have a kind of internationalist perspective, and you want to think about this from the perspective of, of different people throughout the world, the things that the Eisenhower administration signed off on are very different. I mean, on the other hand, we don't have a counterfactual, right? We don't know, what would have happened had, you know, had communism spread the way some people were worried that it would have, you know, what would have happened? Had the United States dealt with the Soviet Union differently in the 50s? I don't have the answer to those counterfactuals. But I do have a sort of perspective that I can't really, I can't really get away from about the international repercussions of some of those decisions. I guess my final thing, I'll say, right, before we we recorded, I listened to his farewell address, again. And that's, you know, everybody kind of talks about that in the military industrial complex. And I think that one of the advantages that one of the advantages that Eisenhower had as someone who came from outside of politics, sorry, can you? Can you just explain to people what Eisenhower said, that was significant during that speech, just for people who don't know. Yeah, I mean, he just he warned against the development of a military industrial complex, and of kind of excessive expenditure on the military and excessive focus that way, and he was saying he talked a lot about, you know, dollar spent on on the military can't be spent on feeding children and and other sort of more like domestic pressing domestic human needs. But I think what's really interesting about that, is that, you know, is as much as I think Eisenhower had some disadvantages coming from outside electoral politics, that the advantage of that is that I think he could see very clearly the ways in which political incentives create an alternative to policy incentives. And that there on the one hand, you look at, you know, what, what the, what the international policy needs, right, what American foreign policy needs. And the other hand, you have sort of political pressures of a military industrial complex, right, you have industry that sees that there's money to be made. And you develop a sort of, like a set of business imperatives, a set of domestic political imperatives that are really not aligned with the imperatives of foreign policy. And that that can sort of take on a life of its own. I think that as this is mostly speculation, I mean, hard evidence for this, but I think that as someone who came from outside of politics that Eisenhower maybe saw that more clearly or with fresher eyes. When I asked you about Eisenhower over email, and you sort of mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast, again, civil rights was one of the reasons you mentioned as to why you find Eisenhower interesting. How did you how did Eisenhower interact with the early civil rights movement on how did he attempt to kind of accommodate it? This is one of the I think key pieces of that that story is he doesn't really sit down with civil rights leaders until 1958. So quite late in his presidency. This was, you know, this is another area where Eisenhower's an enigma where on the one hand, there's historical record that suggests he's he's quite egalitarian and his mindset in the military was in a lot of ways, it was sort of at the forefront of integration at that point in time. And at the same time, you know, there are particularly as the main issue during his presidency becomes school integration. You know, there's there is one quote about him sort of saying he didn't, he didn't blame people for not wanting their daughters sitting in classrooms with African American boys. He doesn't say that. But you know, it's not a it's not a crude statement. But it says it's a pretty, you know, objectionable statement, and also is, I think, pretty, you know, pretty well exemplifies the crux of that, of that controversy. I taught this last semester, I nonclassical, the president in history, and one of the things that was interesting about that, I think, for a lot of my students, they hadn't thought about race as having gone back this far, which was sort of hilarious. But, you know, the, the, there's something about the Eisenhower chapter that really changed their thinking, but one of the questions I asked him was sort of like, when do you think we solved this school integration problem? And nobody really knew? And I said it, you know, I don't think we have. So 1954, the Supreme Court rules on Brown versus Board of Education, and unanimously strikes down the idea that that separate schools can be equal. So that's all well and good. And Eisenhower, importantly, had appointed Justice Earl Warren, that's one of the things people point to when they talk about the strength of Eisenhower's civil rights record, is the appointment of Earl Warren. And, you know, it's not opposed to this decision, and very, very specifically says the, the important thing here is is the courts job to interpret the Constitution. So once brown V board has decided, Eisenhower becomes very kind of institutionally cautious about what, you know, what, what's in charge of what the court has the power to interpret the Constitution. And Eisenhower sort of says, when the court says it, that's the law of the land. Okay. So that's all well and good, then the question becomes, how do we implement that? And like I said, at that question, dog, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. And I think as of today, we still have no idea how to put that principle into practice. And by some measures, our schools are actually more segregated than they were then. So Eisenhower, kind of privately grumbles about you know, why, why did the court have to decide this, while I'm President, you know, this was not what he wanted to deal with. And he saw so there's a sort of procedural argument, he said, This is really is for localities to figure out. And he also, throughout this, the 50s, sort of made this argument of, you know, what, what needs to happen is people need to give the south patients, people need to understand that the South is, is going to, you know, take a long time to deal with this major change in their way of life. And the more resort portion, the more the South will get alienated and rebel, which there's a lot of ways you could evaluate that, but factually is sort of true that it's not obvious, the South could have been accommodated. But in reality, they did respond. There was very strong response to the Brown v Board decision, there's the southern manifesto, that they won't integrate. There's through the 50s, of sort of growing violence in the south, and you have the the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. This becomes a kind of focal galvanising point for the civil rights movement. You have, again, kind of mounting violence against civil rights leaders, and there's a bomb planted where Martin Luther King, Jr. is going to be. And, you know, Eisenhower is, I think, increasingly just sort of it's not obvious what the President's role is there. And here, once again, we see the presidency itself at this sort of modern crossroads. Eisenhower is president at a time where there's there's TV at a time when FDR had really made a point of using the radio addressing the country on pressing moral issues. And Eisenhower, when it comes to race, you know, doesn't seem to want to do it. Doesn't want to make a speech, you know, his successor, Kennedy eventually makes a speech talking about the morality of civil rights. Eisenhower's a supporter and ultimately signs a 1957. Civil Rights Bill which is which is pretty bare bones because of the the role of Southern senators but it it did establish some federal infrastructure for civil rights, but it's just kind of like oh, Okay, the President has this capacity to be a national moral leader. Is it going to be, you know, is Eisenhower going to marshal the power of the office to do that? And civil rights leaders or, you know, make no mistake about it are asking him to do that. And it's not clear, did he not do it? Because he thought it would be counterproductive? Did you not do it? Because it wasn't, he didn't want to spend his political capital that way? Nobody knows. I mean, one of those interpretations is a lot more charitable than the other clearly. I mean, I suppose, you know, forgive me for trying to kind of put words in your mouth. But I think what you're saying is that his quite non radical stance on these issues, condemned a lot of African Americans to white racist people who controlled whichever local area they were unfortunate enough to live in. Yes, that more or less what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, that I think that is the that is the story of American history. And that is, you know, the extent to which Eisenhower stands out in this is, you know, only only because of this context, and maybe in some ways is is, is remarkable, again, because of the partisan context, which is you have, the Republican Party's kind of the party of Lincoln has, to the extent there are enfranchised African Americans in the north are, you know, are Republicans that sort of fall apart with really with Herbert Hoover, that starts to fall apart and African Americans are, although FDR is not a spokesperson for civil rights, is not a spokesperson for anti lynching. The the economic benefits of the new deal did did extend to African Americans, even though they were also excluded from some of the programmes. So that becomes a shift in sort of party loyalty. But, you know, there's just as long history of particularly black leaders sort of saying, you know, neither party is really is really for fronting our needs is really putting themselves out there for us is really, you know, doing what needs to be done as far as a federal anti lynching bill. And most recently, United States Senate, declined to to pass anti lynching legislation in 2020. And it's never been passed. I want to move on to talk about the Republican Party. under Eisenhower, you said, you've said that he was politically ambiguous, distinctly so for a president really, then as now the Republican Party had a kind of hard conservative wing, it was anti New Deal, viciously anti communist, again, the Cold War context is important. You have the McCarthy trials, trying to root out American, excuse me trying to root out communism from American society, how much dissent you mentioned, the sort of the the Taft Republicans in the early on as his presidency progresses. And as it comes to an end in 1961, the Democrats take over the presidency again, John F. Kennedy wins, he beats Vice President Richard Nixon in a very close race. What happens to the Republican Party after Eisenhower left? Well, that is the question, isn't it? I mean, that is the driving question of American politics. So I mean, I think your point about you know, this is very close election 1960. But But Kennedy wins. The Democrats had taken took back control Congress in the midterms in 1954. And held on to it until the 80s in the Senate, and 94 for the house. So what happens to the Republican Party in the 60s, they have, you know, they have, at this point, multiple different factions and different ways of thinking about what it means to be a Republican. And you still have a strong kind of liberal wing of the Republican Party that believes in, I guess, if I were going to caricature their beliefs, right. They they are drawing from these 19th century notions that that is sort of vision of national strength, right. It's business, but it's also the the government provides things like education infrastructure that that makes that makes the nation strong, and that makes business strong. And that's a sort of going vision of Republican philosophy. You have a sense, of course, that especially after 1952, and Eisenhower does this successfully, that there are there were votes that can be picked off as the Democratic Party becomes the party of civil rights. Something that is As doesn't definitively happen until 1964, but it's sort of that tension is really there with Kennedy and the Democrats. So you have, and you have a sort of building conservative movement that has also multiple facets, right, this sort of anti New Deal, anti government expansion. And that philosophy is really sort of fertile ground for opposition to civil rights. And then later it becomes it becomes weirdly the sort of locus for kind of populist pushback against against this more sort of cultural turn. And that's more of a phenomenon of the early 60s and the 70s. And then, you know, onward. So, I think that I mean, that's essentially what happens to the to the Republican Party, right, that they nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964. That's, that's what happened. The Barry Goldwater is a very, also very complicated turning point there because Goldwater, I don't think would be particularly legible to to cultural conservatives today, before we sort of before I examine it, I was just gonna say before we examine him, but uh, Goldwater in retrospect, do you mind talking a bit about how what Goldwater's politics was, like, at the time how it differed to how it differed to Eisenhower's? Yeah, so I think, you know, in many, many ways, because it isn't politics is a politics is very sort of heavily symbolic, and very much rooted in opposition to the expansion of government, opposition, and then so opposition to the expansion of civil rights. And I and Goldwater held to the idea that it wasn't that he opposed racial equality, it's that he opposed the growth of the federal government. And that turned out to be not a particularly winning strategy. This became really divisive within the within the Republican Party, one of their most kinds of divisive conventions ever, in 1964, a lot of high level defections and voter defections. And so ultimately, the only states that Goldwater wins are his home state and Arizona and and states in the South. And that's really different from, you know, Eisenhower's very, you know, very measured, approach to approach to foreign policy approach to everything, someone who did see a role for the state and the federal government, even though when sort of push came to shove with civil rights that became that became really complicated. But he was, again, as I said, sort of a, you know, supporter of, of some civil rights, federal legislation provided it was passed through these sort of institutionally proper channels. Goldwater had a little bit of this sort of symbolic and bombastic style that we would associate with conservative Republican politics today, even though he lacked the sort of cultural edge that it that it gained in the 70s and 80s. Clearly, the Republican Party move took a sharp turn to the right, between 60 and 64, or at least at its at its leadership, just to ask you one last question, then, do you think that the sort of rightward turn that they took Do you think it was a reaction to Eisenhower's personal style and politics or do you think it was a manifestation of other changes that have gone on in American society and in the world, you know, sorry, to keep harking back to it, but obviously, the importance of the Cold War, anti communism, those things, I'm not sure what the what the precise Cold War story would be here, because I think in a lot of ways, the Cold War as as it pertained to kind of domestic electoral politics got sort of like, you get used in various strategic ways that I don't know, were necessarily reflective of some of those developments, and then includes Vietnam, which became, which very quickly became difficult integrated with these cultural disputes. I think that some of what you see is that Eisenhower, like other presidents leading up to that point, Democrats and Republicans sort of tried to hold the kind of racial compromises together around ideas of of sort of balances with with localism and trying to get up not electoral institutions like the court to take care of different things and limit his role. And then when that was impossible, in the mid 60s, Johnson, you know, so like, really, I should start with Kennedy. Right. Kennedy speaks on civil rights, Johnson finishes that work legislatively, and then Nixon can't ignore it. That's, I think, the the major catalyst in American politics, but I do think that what's important for the development of conservatism is the is the way that it sort of was able to develop in the in in the margins and in the silences of the 1950s and that this sort of merging of the Eisenhower personality, the outsider, the person who can appeal to Republicans and Democrats and independents, and merge that merging that with whatever was going on with a modern, moderate, mainstream Republican. And this sort of notion of Eisenhower tries to make the party into the modern Republican Party, which not regarded as a great success, but it's the dominant strain through the 50s. And it's that it's that lack, right, it's that silence that allows this movement to start and to build up some of its it's sort of key infrastructure, including conservative media. That's all it's there, when when these other issues start to evolve. And it's there when when you have the sort of, again, the sort of insertion of populism and cultural questions in the 60s and 70s, as you get the Vietnam protests, the sexual revolution, the kind of liberal court decisions on things like prayer in schools, right, it's a culture starts to shift, this conservative infrastructure already exists, and already has a sort of sense of itself as being marginalised and out of the mainstream. And that's really where I think, you know, the, the key element of the Eisenhower presidency is is not so much his personal reaction to the, to that turn to You know, he was toward the end of his life by that point. But, um, but it's really kind of what happens in the, in the shadows, sounds very dramatic, but out of power. No, I understand what you mean. And I think that if you were to go forward to the sort of last 10 or 15 years, the Tea Party movement, I think, in some ways, evolved in a very similar way it evolved online. It evolved when Obama was in office, but it also was a reaction against the kind of Bush era of Republican politics. Now, that's really interesting. We'll let you go in a second. There's one last question I'd like to ask you. You said at the start that, in some ways, America has been looking for an Eisenhower figure as president, ever since he left. I don't think anybody has found the same level of universal appeal. I, I could be wrong. But who do you think has come closest? If you had to name one of your one of the 11 or 12 people that have assumed office since who is Donald Trump I always write this piece, and it's gonna piss everybody off. But it's not because I don't think Donald Trump so it, you know, we've qualified this, this is a different thing. Donald Trump is not universally loved. That's obvious. He never won a majority. He was not especially popular. But he was incredibly well known. And I think that was really the the key to his success. And as I was, I always meant to write this piece during the Trump years. And it wasn't that I was afraid of pissing people off. It's just, I just never got around to it, kind of comparing these two, because this is the most obvious comparison point to having someone who really is coming from a very different kind of background into the presidency, and someone who is an outsider to the party, but then the party sort of, you know, attaches themselves to for strategic reasons. But I think and I think that it tells us a lot about contemporary fame. So I mean, on the one hand, like we haven't had World War Two, right, that is a big difference. People talking about Colin Powell. That's what everyone expects you to say. But the big thing with Colin Powell Powell was he wasn't one of the two parties. He didn't want to run for office, and he didn't. And it's also not clear that actually someone hit this particular figure that he was, would have been especially successful in a Republican primary. Maybe, you know, maybe 92 or 96. Certainly not after that. Because he was to moderate. Yeah. And I mean, because he was black. Let's I mean, that like we maybe, uh, maybe a black candidate could succeed in a Republican primary, but we don't have a lot of evidence to suggest that that's, you know, that that's likely. So. You have and that was one of them. His wife didn't want him to run because she thought that was dangerous. That but so with Trump, you see, like, what is what is what is national celebrity in this era? You know, I'm 42 and I've never not known who Donald Trump was. Everybody knew his name, and that's a huge advantage. It's a huge advantage in a primary. It's why he won the primary reason I think so I think it's one of the Yeah, it's someone who did all the same things. It was just some rando would never have one. And it helped him in the, in the general as well. And then also being famous in another venue as Eisenhower. One is strong Plus allows you to really maximise your ambiguity. And I think ambiguity is an underappreciated part of presidential politics, of Nam of winning the nomination, you have to prove yourself sort of like you've, you've just suggested you could appeal to multiple factions within a party, you also have to at least get enough people outside your party to vote for you to win. And, you know, that's something that, you know, we're still debating about was, was Eisenhower, a conservative? Was he a moderate? What were his real racial views? And with Trump out? I think there's a lot of question about his racial views. But but he was ambiguous on key questions in 2016. And I think that in, in the general in particular that people did, there's evidence that shows people thought he was more moderate than Hillary Clinton. And that people saw him as you know, he's a businessman. And he's, he's a name that they know, and, you know, he'll just govern, you know, govern in the centre, and he'll be practical, and we'll fix the economy. And I'll do all these things. I know a lot of people thought of that. And they thought of him. As you know, Trump, the successful businessman, that people perceived him to be, and not necessarily if you were following the rallies closely, and things like that. So honestly, that's the that's the, that's the comparison. That's the blog post I never wrote. Trump wasn't the last person on my sort of mental list of who you were gonna say. I thought if you're going to say anyone, you'd have probably said, Ronald Reagan, simply because he also came from outside of politics, and I think, at least for a while, seem to perhaps transcend Republican democratic politics. I'm not sure if I'm not 100% sure if that's true. Now, I think about it more deeply. But so here's the Reagan difference. I'm sorry, they're bringing him around, right? And maybe not the thing to do. He's gonna give me a phone, but I'm gonna go that's fine. The Reagan difference, I think, is that a lot of what catapulted his his success in the in the general election was just sort of like the disaster of the end of the Carter Presidency and Carter's unpopularity. I think that that was the feature that really worked for him, not so much ambiguity, not so much his ideological identity, and not even really his fame as as an actor, but the other big differences and even governor of a very large state. Thank you very much, Julie. That was great. I really enjoyed that. Um, where can people find your work if they want to find out more about this or other things that you've written? Um, lots of places I write for a blog called Mr. So faction. We are independent political science blog. mischiefs affection.com. I'm regular contributor at 538. I podcast, weekly ish. podcast called politics in question. I'm the author of a book called delivering the people's message. I am probably on Twitter tweeting some dumb crap about my cats. Yeah, that's where you can find me. Julia, thank you. Thank you for listening to the hated in the dead. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow it on Spotify or Apple podcasts to get updates whenever new episodes are released. If you're just on that last stretch of your commute to and from work, or have a spare two minutes, please leave a five star review on Apple podcast. It's the best way to help the podcast grow