Eisenhower, Then and Now

Opinion has largely changed since economist J. K. Galbraith in his 1958 Affluent Society referred to the Eisenhower leadership as “the bland leading the bland.” In his new biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, distinguished historian Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University, repudiates Galbraith, as have others before him. Smith’s elegant, detailed, and balanced biography (whose footnotes alone are worth the price of the book) incorporates and reflects the vast documentation that has emerged in the last half century. This account is now the one to turn to for those interested in one of the most popular and highly respected presidents of all time. While Smith concludes that Eisenhower, along with Roosevelt, was one of the two most effective presidents of the twentieth century, the reader should be warned: as Smith puts it in the introduction of his new account, despite all the new documentation, Eisenhower nevertheless remains an enigma. Smith’s concluding sentence is a quote from Eisenhower’s widow Mamie, who, when asked by her grandson David whether she had really known Dwight David Eisenhower, replied: “I’m not sure anyone did” (p. 766).

Few men have had such a distinguished career as Eisenhower, the boy from rural Abilene, Kansas, who became the thirty-fourth President of the United States, and few have had as many biographies written about them. Smith’s is justified by access to more new materials, by a judicious balancing of judgments on Eisenhower’s achievements and failures, and by an ability to engross the reader in the story of Eisenhower’s life. In retelling in detail the early years, he stresses how much good fortune or luck––along with the backing given him by a few senior colleagues—led “Ike” into a successful military career when he might well have ended up elsewhere. The irony of the attention paid by his critics to his garbled syntax during presidential press conferences is heightened by the fact that, in high school, Eisenhower had learned to write so well and had read so widely, excelling in English and history, that his classmates in the senior yearbook predicted he would become a history professor at Yale!

Eisenhower’s career in the peace-time army, with its stultified routines, strict segregation, outright racism and anti-Semitism, and promotion on the basis of seniority not merit, was one where, nevertheless, he received some of the highest ratings. Smith gives us a colorful picture of Ike’s period in the Philippines in the late 1930s, when he served under the vainglorious and authoritarian General Douglas MacArthur, with whom he had serious differences that he recorded in picturesque language in diaries that became public only in 2003. Smith tells us also how military life, with its moves from one post to another, strained Ike’s marriage to Mamie, who nevertheless stuck with and supported him.

America’s entry into World War II changed everything for Eisenhower, who was promoted to serve directly under Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. Marshall soon appointed Ike as the man who would command the European theatre of operations––jumping him over 228 other general officers. Smith excels in recounting the infighting over personnel assignments, with their implications for policy; over inter-Allied disputes; and over the policies themselves. His detailing of the mishaps, including those of Eisenhower in North Africa (where other officers laid blame for Ike’s errors on his lack of command experience), is scrupulous and fair. At the time of the costly Allied conquest of Sicily, Eisenhower, writes Smith, was responsible for the escape of the German and Italian forces with most of their materiel across the straits of Messina into Italy. He was also responsible for near disaster during the invasion of Italy, though he later blamed Montgomery. At this point, as later at the time of Overlord, everyone nevertheless praised Ike’s capacities to get the best out of an inter-Allied force when American generals like Mark...