Stephen Hess: Why didn't Ike leave more of an impression on the Republican Party?
[Stephen Hess, distinguished research professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, is the author, most recently, of Through Their Eyes: Foreign Correspondents in the United States.]
... Why did one of the most successful Republican presidents in history--eight years that brought peace and financial solvency--leave no imprint on his party?
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a genial, shrewd, optimistic product of small-town middle America, the most popular general of a just war. His military experience gave an internationalist cast to his otherwise conservative beliefs. Harry Truman would have given him the Democratic party's presidential nomination in 1948. Instead, Ike gave the Republican party a smashing victory in 1952, reaffirmed in 1956. Irving Berlin even composed his campaign song.
But Republican Eisenhower was only casually interested in party-building. He had a deep antipathy to partisan politics, which he extended to its practitioners, particularly of the legislative variety. The president was hardly naive and was himself a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter. Yet in staffing his administration it was almost a litmus test that politicians were tainted. (Stebenne shows, for example, how Larson was asked his political affiliation only as an afterthought when he was invited to become the administration's number-two official at the Labor Department, and later, being a political outsider, influenced Eisenhower in giving him two essentially political jobs.)
There were three major players of national political ambition in Eisenhower's government: Harold Stassen, Nelson Rockefeller, and Richard Nixon. Stassen lost a Republican primary for governor of Pennsylvania in 1958, which ended his political career, although not his running for office. Rockefeller's political career was built on being a Rockefeller. Nixon made his own political career. I was his speechwriter when he ran for governor of California in 1962, the only Eisenhower alumnus on his staff. When he became president in 1969, only two Eisenhower people were in his cabinet: William Rogers, whose friendship predated the Eisenhower years, and Maurice Stans, his money man.
In the course of the eight Eisenhower years, there must have been several thousand political appointments: cabinet members, White House staff aides, departmental undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, and those with titles like special assistant to the undersecretary. Of the 20 people who served in the cabinet, only one subsequently ran for office: James Mitchell, secretary of labor, defeated for governor of New Jersey. Excluding the military aides, 104 people served on the White House staff and only one subsequently ran for office: Malcolm Moos, an unsuccessful independent Senate candidate from Minnesota.
Below this level in any presidency are buried the young men and women who return to their states to build political careers. These are the ones I recall from the Eisenhower administration: William Scranton (State), John Lindsay (Justice), Fred Seaton (Interior), George Lodge and Steve Horn (Labor), Elliot Richardson (Health, Education, and Welfare). My back-of-the-envelope calculations surely overlook someone from the Third District of someplace. Still, these are pretty slim pickings from the hundreds who came to Washington to help the president govern.
This should not imply that Eisenhower's people made no further contribution to public service. Quite the contrary. There were the experts. The list might start with Arthur Burns, the president's chief economic adviser, a future Fed chairman. Some of the Eisenhower people were retained by Kennedy and subsequent presidents, such as William Macomber at State. Many Eisenhower people, I felt, came to Washington with no greater expectation than to contribute to government service as good citizens are expected to contribute to the community chest, and would continue as good citizens when they went home.
The analysis of what follows Eisenhowerism in the Republican party is most often presented in ideological or sociological terms. There was a sea change coming. Both William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater had blistering attacks on Larson's treatise in their books. Nor did Rockefeller or Scranton have the political skill to successfully challenge for the 1964 nomination. On history's balance scale, the GOP owes more to Ike than he does to his party. But if only as a sidebar, the general left the field of battle without providing enough foot soldiers to contest the outcome.
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... Why did one of the most successful Republican presidents in history--eight years that brought peace and financial solvency--leave no imprint on his party?
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a genial, shrewd, optimistic product of small-town middle America, the most popular general of a just war. His military experience gave an internationalist cast to his otherwise conservative beliefs. Harry Truman would have given him the Democratic party's presidential nomination in 1948. Instead, Ike gave the Republican party a smashing victory in 1952, reaffirmed in 1956. Irving Berlin even composed his campaign song.
But Republican Eisenhower was only casually interested in party-building. He had a deep antipathy to partisan politics, which he extended to its practitioners, particularly of the legislative variety. The president was hardly naive and was himself a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter. Yet in staffing his administration it was almost a litmus test that politicians were tainted. (Stebenne shows, for example, how Larson was asked his political affiliation only as an afterthought when he was invited to become the administration's number-two official at the Labor Department, and later, being a political outsider, influenced Eisenhower in giving him two essentially political jobs.)
There were three major players of national political ambition in Eisenhower's government: Harold Stassen, Nelson Rockefeller, and Richard Nixon. Stassen lost a Republican primary for governor of Pennsylvania in 1958, which ended his political career, although not his running for office. Rockefeller's political career was built on being a Rockefeller. Nixon made his own political career. I was his speechwriter when he ran for governor of California in 1962, the only Eisenhower alumnus on his staff. When he became president in 1969, only two Eisenhower people were in his cabinet: William Rogers, whose friendship predated the Eisenhower years, and Maurice Stans, his money man.
In the course of the eight Eisenhower years, there must have been several thousand political appointments: cabinet members, White House staff aides, departmental undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, and those with titles like special assistant to the undersecretary. Of the 20 people who served in the cabinet, only one subsequently ran for office: James Mitchell, secretary of labor, defeated for governor of New Jersey. Excluding the military aides, 104 people served on the White House staff and only one subsequently ran for office: Malcolm Moos, an unsuccessful independent Senate candidate from Minnesota.
Below this level in any presidency are buried the young men and women who return to their states to build political careers. These are the ones I recall from the Eisenhower administration: William Scranton (State), John Lindsay (Justice), Fred Seaton (Interior), George Lodge and Steve Horn (Labor), Elliot Richardson (Health, Education, and Welfare). My back-of-the-envelope calculations surely overlook someone from the Third District of someplace. Still, these are pretty slim pickings from the hundreds who came to Washington to help the president govern.
This should not imply that Eisenhower's people made no further contribution to public service. Quite the contrary. There were the experts. The list might start with Arthur Burns, the president's chief economic adviser, a future Fed chairman. Some of the Eisenhower people were retained by Kennedy and subsequent presidents, such as William Macomber at State. Many Eisenhower people, I felt, came to Washington with no greater expectation than to contribute to government service as good citizens are expected to contribute to the community chest, and would continue as good citizens when they went home.
The analysis of what follows Eisenhowerism in the Republican party is most often presented in ideological or sociological terms. There was a sea change coming. Both William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater had blistering attacks on Larson's treatise in their books. Nor did Rockefeller or Scranton have the political skill to successfully challenge for the 1964 nomination. On history's balance scale, the GOP owes more to Ike than he does to his party. But if only as a sidebar, the general left the field of battle without providing enough foot soldiers to contest the outcome.