That simply means economic growth outpaced federal spending. He did not CUT spending, he increased it. You're using the rhetoric the Democrats do when they call a slower increase in spending a "cut."
"Eisenhower and McCarthy. McCarthy was badly flawed, but he deserved better. Eisenhower seems to have regarded him as a treacherous publicity hound and a burden to efforts to establish sound procedures to weed out the disloyal and insecure. Worst of all was McCarthy’s attack on the US Army and reckless slams on George Marshall, Eisenhower’s friend and mentor. Is it any wonder that Eisenhower was antagonistic toward McCarthy?"
Ike obviously abhorred the messenger (despite having ostensibly used McCarthy to ride to office in '52), but it seemed obvious that he didn't like the message, either. There was a substantial infiltration of American institutions by Soviet agents and sympathizers (I mean, FDR's 2nd Vice President, Henry Wallace, was a Stalinist sympathizer !), and that included the military. Ike seemed either oblivious or out of his depth when it came to aggressively going after this infiltration.
"Taft’s foreign policy views if elected. Really? Taft should be preferred to Eisenhower because Taft would have repudiated his own isolationism if elected -- and then been succeeded by MacArthur, who was intent on waging a massive war in China? Why not simply elect Eisenhower in the first place?"
Because Eisenhower was a lousy President, as I've outlined here. What one does as a Senator, tending to parochial state interests, differs from what one would do acceding to the Presidency in having to deal with foreign affairs. Had Taft lived, he would've risen to the occasion, as MacArthur certainly would've, and we'd have been left in better shape in my estimation.
"Earl Warren, etc. Eisenhower also thought Earl Warren proved to be a terrible appointment. More broadly, your rhetoric against Eisenhower echoes the Old Right rhetoric against Taft."
And yet Ike continued to make awful and mediocre appointments. Warren, Brennan, Whittaker, Stewart, and that just on SCOTUS. Would Taft/MacArthur have put these bozos on the court ? Let's just say they probably couldn't have done worse. Gee whiz, even JFK put Byron White on the Court, and he pretty much blew away Ike's imbeciles.
Taft had repudiated his isolationism in his book A Foreign Policy for Americans.
Earl Warren will understandably never be a conservative hero but he was not as bad as many suppose. The job of Chief Justice has many powers in excess of those of an associate justice. Warren seemed to be in over his head. He was principled but not the sharpest knife in the drawer and certainly not a conservative.
It was often said of Warren that if someone in HIS family had been murdered, he would have had a different view of the rights of the criminally accused. In real life, Warren's father, a retired railroad worker, was axe-murdered and a drifter whom he had hired to chop wood, was arrested for the murder. Warren was Oakland County Attorney. He stepped aside while the prosecution was pending, hired an attorney he regarded as the best defense attorney in the county and paid him with his own funds. It turned out that the drifter had not killed his father.
Neither as a politician nor as a judge, is Warren my cup of tea but I knew a black but conservative pro-life Republican judge who had been an Army private in California during WW II. On several occasions, he had been invited along with other enlisted men to small dinner parties at Warren's Governor's mansion. He spoke extremely well of Warren and his admiration for Warren. Often these matters are more complex than we suspect.
William Brennan had NO redeeming qualities. Warren did.
Warren also recognized that Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, KS would be highly controversial and an essentially revolutionary landmark in jurisprudence. He recognized that it would not do to have a 5-4 decision. He exercised all of his management skills and persuasive power and skill at compromise to produce a very one-sided decision that left no hope of being overturned. That is a chief justice using the extraordinary powers of his office in ways that those powers were meant to be used.
Worse than Warren was his predecessor Fred Vinson.
Eisenhower and McCarthy. Having constant hunts for spies and security risks can cripple an organization. McCarthy’s public fusillades tended to do just that with critical parts of the federal government. McCarthy is vindicated only in part by the times that he was right. His attacks were too much like firing off a shotgun in a crowd, hitting not just valid targets but also innocent people and panicking most of the crowd.
Taft versus MacArthur. You propose that if elected President, Taft, a mature man of deep principle, would have been forced by on the job training and taking up a national perspective to go from isolationist to interventionist. Just how long would such a process take? Would we have to lose Europe to the Soviets first? There can be no credible assurance that would not have happened.
Ike’s Supreme Court appointments. Eisenhower’s Supreme Court appointments include the dismal Earl Warren and William Brennan, but the historical consensus is that the liberal decisions they delivered were contrary to Eisenhower’s expectations.