Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Wife thought this was my best column to date.

To pre-empt the obvious question:

1) among the Dems: Clinton, Obama

2) among the Repubs: Romney, Giuliani.

The clear foxes that stand out. I could vote for any of the four.

"A war-weary America turned next to hedgehog Dwight Eisenhower, hoping his steadying hand would calm our increasingly volatile confrontations with the Soviets. The result was both comforting and suffocating: our "happy days" stability came at the price of McCarthyism, separate-but-equal race segregation and father-knows-best gender conformity."

Whoa. What? Ike? A hedgehog?

What was the one big thing? There wasn't? There was a facade that the one big thing was golf. The truth was totally different.

You never get credit for the disasters that don't happen. We went through a very dangerous part of the Cold War with no outbreak of hostilities, itself a remarkable achievement. Ike wound up the Korean war with credible threats, then moved on. He strengthened the Atlantic Alliance for the long haul. Yet he cut defense spending at the same time. He turned Strategic Air Command into a real deterrant. He kept us out of foreign adventures, like Vietnam. When a Democrat congress pushed for increased domestic spending he built the interstate highway system, perhaps the single greatest infrastructure project ever, and a huge boost to our economy. McCarthyism? The existence of Soviet spies was a huge public scandal (Gouzenko, Bentley, White, Fuchs, Rosenberg, Hiss-Chambers, what we now know from the Venona decrypts, etc.) that had played a big part in discrediting Truman. The fact that there was a backlash in the face of this incredible degree of Soviet infiltration is not the surprise -- Eisenhower's ruthless handling of it, letting McCarthy destroy himself, is the surprise historically. Conformity? That is a myth. The civil rights era got going in the 50s. Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce the Brown v. Board decision. The 50s was an era of remarkable economic growth and social progress, despite extreme international tension. The 1950s are long overdue for some revisionism. The Baby Boomers romanticize the '60s and vilify the 50s in contrast. A more balanced understanding will probably require another generation to pass and the boomers to die off or go the retirement home. Eisenhower's "hidden hand" approach, with a smiling exterior and a ruthless control behind the scenes, had a lot to do with our survival and success during this period.

Eisenhower was a fox of the first order, second only to the foxiest fox we ever had, FDR.

The one big thing was to avoid the horrors of war, as your analysis indicates.

Are you showing your age here or what Lex?

I don't know if I am showing my age (43) or not.

I just think Eisenhower is a massively underrated president. Also, he was clever and devious and never let anyone know what he was really up to. A foxy personality, I'd say. I am not sure what his agenda items really were. Keeping the peace was primary. But he wanted to do that by indirection and less by confrontation than Truman had. Of course, he had Dulles threatening massive retaliation, while he personally played it more calmly. Keeping things flexible. But he also was serious about cutting defense spending -- all spending, really -- as big too. And keeping the economy going with pretty orthodox methods for the time. And making sure public spending turned into durable public works. So, lots of things were going on.

Anyway, if you think he was a hedgehog, because of that overriding goal, that is cool. The description is an odd fit for Ike, but the peg can be pounded into the hole.

But I still think he and his era get less respect than they deserve.

Lex, basically agree on undervaluation. The 50s were marked mostly by how much emerging evolutions could have been screwed up by a dumbass president, which Ike was not, so his successes were less about what he accomplished than what he prevented. His genius, I think, was in recognizing that.

For a country such as the US to remain a vibrant part of the core, we need leadership that functions as successful CEOs do in the business world. They have to keep their eye on the ball with full accountability to short term objectives (sometimes the responsability of a COO), and also be dynamically strategic (several five and ten+ year pictures) in their thinking. Their advisors (a board, senior VPs, and on occasion consultants) let's them maintain control and accountability at a very high level.

With the competition of new core members this type of CEO has to have strategic vision and the capability to evaluate and accept new ideas.

With reference to Lexington Green's 1/06/07 comments Ike being a Fox rather than a Hedgehog, Mr. Green referring to Ike,stated "He kept us out of foreign adventures,like Vietnam." This is not true. Following the collapse of the French in 1954,Ike sent US troops(referred to as "Advisors") to Vietnam to prop up the Diem Government of South Vietnam. The biggest mistake of US foreign policy in that era was Sec. of State,John Foster Dulles"Domino Theory",never recognizing that North Vietnamese Leader, Ho Chi Min,
fought alongside US forces in WW2 against the Japanese . Ike may have been a Fox,but not because of his Vietnam policy.

I'm younger than both Lexington and Dr Barnett, and not a historian, so take this with a few grains of salt. . . Everything I've heard over the years suggests that the conservatism of the era was real, but started much earlier after WWII; people were burned out by the disruptions to their lives and societies by the Depression and the War, so they turned back the clock.
Women who got used to working and taking risks were told to go back to their kitchens. Minorities who became war heroes were told to go back to their ghettoes. People who were used to a certain degree of freedom in their private lives were told they had to be proper, upstanding citizens. The social change Lexington pointed out was, in part, a reaction to these setbacks.
Throw in the shocks to people's systems during Truman's administration (the aforementioned spy scandals, the Korean War), and people weren't ready to come out of their shells. If Eisenhower was a fox, then he was a fox who was good at pretending to be a hedgehog.
Any comments from someone who was actually alive at the time? How far off base am I?