Fix the Bus

If I merely ranted and raged about Dwight Eisenhower, you might not believe what I have to say. You would think I was making it up. So what I want to do in this blog is try to deconstruct the myth of Dwight Eisenhower, using the words of his chief shoe polisher, Stephen Ambrose.

Ambrose is one of these authors who is universally acclaimed. Since most of the people in the US have been programmed to be puppets and followers of whatever MSM pumps out, that is all the more reason to see with the following passages that Dwight Eisenhower was not the pretty or great man you think he is.

Ike was as petty, cruel and vain as the rest.

He was an ambitious man, nothing wrong with that. It’s okay to want to get somewhere in life. The problem with ambitious people though is that they think they are somebody. And since they are treated as if they are somebody, they tend to skirt the rules and think they’re above the law.

“Shortly after the nominating convention, he had vacationed in Colorado. One day he caught and kept considerably more trout than the legal limit. Enterprising reporters discovered the fact; Eisenhower’s violation of the fish-and-game laws of Colorado was the headline item in the Denver papers; Eisenhower was furious and demanded to know, “Who’s been counting my fish!””

— Eisenhower Volume II: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose

Yes it’s a small thing, but small things are indicative of a sense of entitlement. Let’s look at this.

“He was not above using his rank. Opponents had to hole out their one-or two-foot putts, while Eisenhower would pick up his eight-footer, grin, and say thanks for the gimme. His travel arrangements were always made for him. He did not have to worry about where to stand or what toast to make at the many formal occasions he attended; as he told John Foster Dulles, when Dulles corrected him on a point of protocol, he had never bothered to learn such details because “aides have sat on my right all my life.”

— Eisenhower Volume II: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose

Ike did think he was somebody. He felt that he was the most qualified man to speak on international affairs. He felt he had the most experience in dealing with foreign leaders precisely because he had done so World War II. And maybe he was.

So it’s not surprising that Eisenhower would surround himself with men that he clearly felt were a cut above your average American. Obviously, every president, like every leader of any entity, is going to pick people who he thinks are the best and most qualified, but Eisenhower goes beyond that. Ike believes that a select enlightened group of people should lead the United States which is not necessarily a problem, except that Ike believes that these people necessarily must come from the ranks of Corporate America. He litters his cabinet with these bozos.

Ike’s Cabinet.

Secretary of Defense: Charles Wilson, Carnegie Institute of technology, President of General Motors.

Secretary of Defense: Neil McElroy, Harvard, President of Proctor and Gamble

Secretary of the Treasury: George Humphrey, Univ. of Michigan, President M.A. Hanna Company

Secretary of the Treasury: Robert Anderson, Univ. of Texas Law, former Secretary of Navy, former Secretary of the Treasury. Later went to prison. One of Ike’s closest confidants.

Secretary of State: John Foster Dulles. Princeton. Sullivan and Cromwell. United Fruit Company. Dulles International Airport is named for him. His grandfather was Robert Lansing, SOS under Woodrow Wilson.

Secretary of State: Christian Herter. Harvard, Columbia. Married into the Pratt family. Charles Pratt was a Standard Oil magnate.

Attorney General: Herbert Brownell. Univ. Nebraska, Yale. Lawyer for Aristotle Onassis.

Attorney General: William Rogers. Colgate, Cornell.

Secretary of Commerce: Sinclair Weeks. Harvard. Former Senator from Mass.

Speechwriter: CD Jackson. Princeton. Deputy Chief of Psychological Warfare, SHAEF. Managing Director of Time Life International. Publisher of Fortune Magazine. Later became famous for buying up the Zapruder film and locking it away for decades.

***

So from this small sampling you can see that Ike was quite the elitist in spite of the fact that Ike claimed that he was just a simple Kansas farm boy.

“I’m just a simple soldier,” he would say, or “I’m just a farm boy from Kansas.” His penchant for expressing his distaste about politics and his insistence that he was a political innocent also contributed to the popular view. But Eisenhower had lived and worked in Washington throughout most of the Hoover Administration and on into the New Deal. His principal job had been to lobby in Congress for the U.S. Army. He had testified at dozens of congressional hearings; he had spent countless hours meeting privately with congressmen. After World War II, first as the Army Chief of Staff and then as chairman of the JCS, and finally as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), he had continued to work closely with both the Executive and Congress. Despite the forebodings about the inexperience of the President-elect, Eisenhower knew Washington and its modus operandi at least as well as any of his predecessors, and far better than most.”

— Eisenhower Volume II: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose

Ike joins the illustrious list of so many middle class and lower class boys and girls who are given a taste of power by the ruling class and then go on to hurt and destroy the very middle class from which they came. Another notable in Ike’s class of people was John McCloy, his many time collaborator in prosecuting a dysphoric Pax Americana upon the world.

It should be no surprise that Ike became an internationalist. When you are commanding, the Allied Expeditionary Force, you are necessarily going to come into contact with world leaders, and leaders of major corporations who are financing the war effort. It is also not surprising that Ike would develop disdain for anyone who was an America Firster or, or someone who felt that America should mind its own business first, not the affairs of Europe.

Joseph McCarthy (WI), Styles Bridges (NH), Herman Welker (ID), William Jenner (IN) were the old guard, men who believed in the old fashioned values that built America. Ike worked assiduously to marginalize these men. Ike governed from the center and can therefore be said to be the founder of our modern corporate party which possesses two factions: RINOS and DINOS.

“Thus was the broad outline of the new Administration’s policies set. In foreign affairs, it would end the Korean War as soon as possible, then continue the policies of containment, foreign aid, and Europe first. In national security, it would make major cuts in conventional arms while strengthening nuclear-war capabilities. Tax cuts would be deferred until the budget was balanced. Eisenhower would continue the basic New Deal programs, but not expand them, and strive to save money through more efficient management. Controls would end. The role of the federal government in the nation’s economy would be reduced. The program fell far short of what the Old Guard wanted or the Republican platform promised—there would be no victory in Korea, no reversal of the results of the Chinese Civil War, no reduction in foreign aid, especially to Europe, no immediate tax cut or balanced budget, no end to the New Deal. Instead, the nation would follow Eisenhower down the middle of the road, rejecting the extremes and concentrating on moderate, efficient management.”

— Eisenhower Volume II: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose

Thus was the course of the post WWII set.

Copyright 2024 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved