He built the interstate system, he first integrated school, warned of the Military Industrial Elite. It just goes on and on
The more I learn about Ike the more I put him up there with Reagan.
Ronald ReaganWe wish he could have done better with his nominations of O’Connor and Kennedy to SCOTUS, but Eisenhower’s SCOTUS nominees were:
- Got the country going again
- Whipped inflation
- Finessed the Energy Crisis, and
- Transcended Communism.
- Earl Warren
- John Marshall Harlan
- William Brennan
- Charles Evans Whittaker
- Potter Stewart
Eisenhower left office with serious political capital. Apparently nobody told him that no sitting POTUS since Andrew Jackson had seen his sitting VP win election, for he never invested any of his prestige in the election of Nixon in ’60. Consequently, he lived to see Kennedy call him to Camp David to give him a blessing from Ike for the sake of the country after the appalling Bay of Pigs fiasco. And also consequently, Nixon scandalized the media by running a “Southern Strategy” in 1968.
- Question:
- Name the conservatives in that list (hint: there were “Impeach Earl Warren” signs all over the South. And William Brennan was a flaming liberal Democrat).
The fact that the negroes (as they were politely referred to at the time) voted Democrat in 1960, and ever after, despite signal help they received from Eisenhower led to Nixon writing off the black vote and choosing a VP from south of the Mason-Dixon line. After having named Henry Cabot Lodge, R, Mass (not a misprint) in ’60 . . .
Eisenhower thought the world of his Attorney General, Herbert Brownell. And if you study his career, you will see he would definitely fit the moniker “RINO” today.
Other than that, Eisenhower was a fine man. I was all for him, at the time.