Veteran journalist and author
Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of William I. Hitchcock's The Age of Eisenhower: American and the World in the 1950s.
Academic historians are
giving the presidential performance of Dwight D. Eisenhower a well-deserved
second look, and the results show the contemporary political pundits who
derided him were either biased or blind to his accomplishments.
A 2017 poll of presidential
historians ranked Gen. Eisenhower fifth, behind Lincoln, Washington and the two
Roosevelts.
William Hitchcock, of the
University of Virginia, spent eight years of meticulous research in newly
accessible archives to produce a splendid biography that belies the image of
Mr. Eisenhower as a benign do-nothing president who was more interested in golf
than governing.
Mr. Eisenhower had already
achieved fame as the conqueror of Germany, a feat that made him the most
popular person in America.
As a military man, he had no
interest in — or need for — further acclaim. Thus powerful Republicans expended
much energy in convincing him to seek the presidential nomination in 1952.
(Disclosure: My father was in the Texas delegation whose vote helped him defeat
the early favorite, Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio.)
The slogan “I Like Ike”
echoed around the country, and he won handily on a pledge to “fix the mess in
Washington” resulting from 20 years of Democratic rule. He cited “unchecked
inflation, a spike in taxes, and the spreading tentacles of a grasping
bureaucracy.”
You can read the rest the
review via the below link:
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