The Korean War had seesawed back and forth for 2 1/2 years and finally had ground itself into a bloody intractable stalemate when Eisenhower was sworn in in 1953. His single admonition to the Koreans, their co-belligerents the Chinese and to the Russians was enigmatic: "I shall go to Korea."
Such was the prestige of America's war hero, a five-star general, the supreme Allied Commander in Europe, the former commander of NATO, the man who had vanquished Hitler was such that a armistice was quickly agreed to by adversaries who had been utterly unmovable for years. The carnage ended and the American death toll halted at about 33,000.
Moral of the story: the prestige and credibility of the commander-in-chief of the United States of America matters very much.
Before you dust off your next old-time example of prestige, I challenge you to spend time on the site linked in my next post. Reddit hates The_Donald, and has actively persecuted them for many months. Yet it recently came to light--from Reddit's advertising division--that the REAL numbers for The_Donald are 6 million members and 28 million unique views per day.
Read a few of the threads. Maybe it will cure your gloom and doom.
But he didn't.
And here we are today...