Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D.
Eisenhower, 1961-1969
By David Eisenhower with Julie Nixon Eisenhower
(Simon & Schuster, 323 pages, $28)
“I like Ike” versus “Gladly for Adlai” or “Madly for Adlai.”
These were the slogans for the presidential campaigns of 1952
and 1956, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois against General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, former supreme commander of Allied forces in
Europe. Seldom have political slogans so effectively encapsulated
the perceived social, political, and cultural differences between
candidates.
“Gladly for Adlai” or “Madly for Adlai,” with their off-rhyme —
clever, languid, Noel-Cowardish — over against “I Like Ike” —
direct, solid, positive — just right for the poor boy from Kansas
with that great wide smile who played football for West Point and
commanded the greatest multinational fighting force in the history
of warfare, freeing Europe from fascism.
For a majority of Americans, that defined the difference — one
the darling of the Eastern establishment, the other straight from
the heartland. Eisenhower lived up to the image, providing a strong
and steady leadership tempered by common sense. And beneath that
image there was great depth — a superb military strategist, an
historian and author, whose Crusade in Europe was a
runaway bestseller; a successful executive and administrator; a
diplomat and at times a psychologist, as witness his dealings with
some of the most contentious figures of the 20th century —
Churchill, de Gaulle, Montgomery, and even his own fighting
commanders, among them George Patton, a favorite he always called
“Georgie.”
In Going Home to Glory, historian David
Eisenhower, author of the Pulitzer-finalist Eisenhower at War:
1943-1945, and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, whose previous books
are Special People and Pat Nixon: The Untold
Story, take us from Inauguration Day, January 20, 1961, when
leaving the White House, “Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower drove north
to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the 1955 Chrysler Imperial
that Mamie had purchased for Ike on his sixty-fifth
birthday,” to March 28, 1969, at Walter Reed
Hospital, where, “surrounded by others as always, at peace
and in the company of his doctors and his lineal
heirs, Dwight Eisenhower died.”
During those eight years, the man others called Mr.
President or General, a title he much
preferred, and who David Eisenhower called
Grandad, remained active in politics, counseling
his successors and other world leaders,
commenting on important issues, but always behind
the scenes.
MUCH HAS BEEN MADE OF STRAINS between Eisenhower and his former
vice president, most of it more imagined than real. But on matters
of import, Eisenhower and Nixon were in agreement on the central
issues of the day, among them the war in Vietnam.
With the siege and eventual fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, every
NCO in the First Marine Division knew we were preparing to
intervene. Eisenhower, however, said no, emphatically. Although he
did not oppose land wars in Asia in principle, “U.S. forces, if
committed in 1954, would have been fighting for French colonialism
alongside French forces that had proven themselves unable to pacify
the region in five years of war. Nor had France promised to grant
independence to Vietnam once the fighting was over.”
But in the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration committed us
in insufficient numbers with unclearly delineated goals. LBJ
inherited the war, was indecisive in planning and execution,
massively escalated our involvement with the goals still unclear,
and ended by attempting to micro-manage the war. Eisenhower
believed LBJ should have gone all out: “Once a decision is made to
commit American prestige, all else must take a second seat to
winning.” But LBJ was unable to make that commitment.
In a discussion with Richard Nixon in 1967, “Both men
[Eisenhower and Nixon] agreed that it would be difficult to chart
the future course of the war because of the volatility of Lyndon
Johnson.… Johnson’s problem, Eisenhower told Nixon, was that he
lacked the inner pressure gauge that told him when to relax.”
Johnson “was often up at 3 A.M. phoning Honolulu, Saigon, and the
Pentagon to get the latest word on the air strikes and ground
actions.”
Realizing that Johnson’s approach to the war was courting
disaster, Nixon sent Eisenhower the draft of an article in which he
laid out a long-range approach to dealing with Vietnam
in particular and Asia in general, with emphasis on
China. Eisenhower read the article carefully and
telephoned suggestions, “none of which, to
Nixon’s relief, disputed his foreign policy
views. The general took no exception even
to Nixon’s forward-thinking China
views, which were unfurled for the first
time in this article.”
“Nixon… perceived danger and opportunity in the Vietnam
morass,” David Eisenhower writes. “Nixon could envision
that an ‘acceptable’ outcome in Vietnam would serve as the
basis for an opening to China, which would formalize the
breakup of the communist world and the breakup of an
obsolete Cold War structure that had become the prop of
the
status quo, serving Soviet interests, not American.”
And with Eisenhower’s tacit approval, that’s just what
happened. Nixon’s strategy in Vietnam, a gradual withdrawal
that the historian Robert W. Merry called “the greatest
retreat in U.S. history, one of the greatest in world
history,” combined with intense diplomacy, led to the trip to
China in 1972 that resulted in a successful end to the war,
ultimately negated by Congress, and a distinct shift in the
global balance of power.
Thus, Nixon’s much derided “secret plan”
for ending the war was in fact a carefully
developed, coherent, and largely successful
long-term strategy, approved in its initial
formulation some five years earlier by Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
IN 1961, SPEAKING OF “the virtue of avoiding hysteria in
governmental matters” and “the crisis rhetoric of the Kennedy
administration,” Eisenhower declared: “We should plan our
security, defend our rights, and live with the situation in
the world — no Napoleonic brooding, or impulse. Panicky
policies condemn people to live in apprehension,
not serenity, as is their birthright.”
Later in the decade, in 1968, against the backdrop of the
panicky politics of the Kennedy/Johnson administrations and
nationwide unrest, “the Gallup poll would once again name
Dwight Eisenhower the man most admired by the American people”
— a somewhat surprising choice for a man who “had spent
the 1960s in the relative obscurity of retirement.” But he did
give speeches and wrote articles focusing on “patriotism,
family, common sense,” delivering messages from what
Time magazine called, condescendingly,
“the remote past.”
“But somehow Eisenhower’s basic optimism
and his confidence in the future as America’s
leading ‘soldier of democracy’ was appreciated
that troubled December, and Americans
were beginning to look back on the peace
and prosperity of the 1950s with
nostalgia.”
We may never replicate those years, but
there’s no doubt they’ll continue to serve as a
model for the best that America could be. And
interestingly, as the distance increases and
today’s national leaders lose stature, Dwight
Eisenhower’s reputation continues to
grow.
In 1961, a New York Times Magazine article
by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. ranked presidents in
order of greatness. “Eisenhower stood
twenty-eighth on the list out of thirty-three.”
That poll was hardly objective, conducted as it
was by the father of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a
devoted courtier at Kennedy’s Camelot, who would
later take over his father’s presidential ranking
business.
Lately, however, the Schlesinger monopoly is being broken
by scholars like Alvin S. Felzenberg, who moves Eisenhower up
to fifth place, one ahead of FDR. And Robert W. Merry, working
on a book on presidential ratings, also believes the
Schlesinger ratings reflected partisan bias among the
respondents, and notes that in the 2005 Wall Street
Journal poll, Eisenhower was ranked eighth.
But whatever the ratings, writes his grandson, his
self-assessment stood: “He had understood his responsibility
in the White House to be, in addition to making correct
decisions and administering the government, one of defusing
the atmosphere of crisis that had pervaded national politics
since 1932. He felt strongly he had been successful.”
DURING THOSE LAST YEARS, Eisenhower brought his grandson
along like the brightest and most favored of his junior
officers, but was always careful not to show favoritism or the
affection he obviously felt. Twelve years old when
his grandfather left the White House, David
Eisenhower worked at assigned chores on the Gettysburg
farm, was rewarded for school grades — $5 for As, $3 for
Bs and a $1 fine for Cs (during his last year,
Dwight offered David $100 to cut his hair before his marriage
to Julie, but refused to pay when the cut didn’t meet GI
standards) — and spent much of his spare time in the company
of his grandfather.
Much of this book’s interest lies in his
description of those idiosyncrasies that show us
his grandfather as a man — and very much the
quintessential retired military man. When he gets
a driver’s license, his sharp corner turns produce “the squeal
of rubber against concrete [that] never ceased to surprise
him.… Every bump and lurch elicited a faint,
‘Damnation.’”
He is a dedicated bridge player, but others
are reluctant to join him because each game is waged like
a military campaign, with no blunders allowed. The same is
true of his approach to golf. He likes to read Westerns,
preferably with no romance, doesn’t suffer fools gladly,
dislikes casual conversation, and no matter the guests or
occasion, goes to bed promptly at 10.
A man of his times, Eisenhower was not given
to displays of affection. But he was also a
grandfather. When he learned from Mamie that
David and Julie Nixon were engaged (during a
visit, David had been too nervous to break the
news), he sent this letter to his
grandson:
For many years, I have been struck by the
virtual impossibility of men of the Nordic strain
to express, in a face-to-face meeting, their
affection, even when of the same family and when the ties
of sentiment are strong indeed.… I sometimes envy the Latins, who
do not seem to be prey to these particular inhibitions.…
Because of ties of love and respect for your mind and
character, I value every contact I have with you… if
at any time you think I might be helpful to you, during
whatever years may be left to me, it would be a great
privilege to me if you would let me know.…
Even if I could do nothing, it would not be for lack of
trying. This I mean very sincerely. I’m not only proud that
you are my grandson, but my friend as well — to whom I give
my deepest affection.
As for the engagement, he wrote: “Mamie told me of your
telephonic report of the joy you and Julie felt on her acceptance
of your great grandmother’s ring. I am more than delighted that the
two of you feel such a deep mutual affection. You are both the kind
of people who will, throughout your lives, enrich America.” And
with their three children, their quiet but productive lives — with
books like this — that’s exactly what they’ve done.
WRITERS TEND TO BE CYNICS, and the writers on the Nixon
staff during those last long Watergate-drenched days felt they
had plenty to be cynical about, with one notable exception —
the Nixon family, to whom Ben Stein was our unofficial
ambassador, and especially the president’s youngest daughter,
Julie, whose fierce loyalty to her father and concern for the
well-being of his staff exempted her from all criticism.
As Aram Bakshian recently wrote, “Julie was a good egg.”
And still is.
And as this memoir demonstrates, so is her
husband, David Eisenhower.
