I Like Ike: The Presidential Election of 1952 by John Robert Greene (review)

The presidential election of 1952 is significant to both historians and political scientists. For historians, the election is especially important to studying Dwight D. Eisenhower's life and the Korean War. The federal elections of 1952 signified the first time since 1928 that the Republican Party, as the minority party among voters since the Democratic realignment of the 1930s, won control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. Thus, political scientist Charles A. Moser has referred to the 1952 election as a "'deviating' election" within the context of Democratic dominance in federal elections between 1933 and 1981 (p. 180).

John Robert Greene's I Like Ike: The Presidential Election of 1952is a well-researched, comprehensive, and valuable study. It will prove to be essential reading for students and accomplished researchers in history and political science interested in the 1952 presidential election. Greene makes good use of both primary and secondary sources and includes an extensive bibliographic essay.

Greene initially explores and details Eisenhower's attractive and bipartisan image as a patriotic figure and hero of the Operation Overlord (D-Day) invasion. President Harry S. Truman and other Democrats had hoped that Eisenhower would run for president as a Democrat in 1952. Using primary sources from Eisenhower and his closest campaign associates, this book convincingly explains how Eisenhower, despite his distaste for the partisan conflicts of civilian politics and election campaigns, finally decided to consider accepting the Republican presidential nomination because of his concern about the future of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War. Eisenhower was concerned that the bipartisan internationalism and containment policy that he supported might end if an isolationist Republican like Ohio senator Robert A. Taft was nominated and elected president.

Shrewdly, Eisenhower did not at first actively seek the Republican nomination in order to protect his widespread, bipartisan popularity and to avoid permanently alienating pro-Taft Republican delegates and voters whom he would need in the general election. Thus, he relied on moderate, internationalist Republicans led by former Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey and Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. to organize his campaign and to secure delegates and endorsements before he announced his willingness to accept the GOP's presidential nomination.

After Eisenhower secured his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, his most important decision was his choice of a running mate. Greene's well-researched study reveals that there are conflicting accounts of whether Senator Richard M. Nixon of California was one of Eisenhower's top candidates for the vice presidential nomination. It is possible that Dewey, rather than Eisenhower, was the prime mover behind Eisenhower's choosing Nixon as his running mate.

Eisenhower appealed to voters of both parties who were eager for a change in presidential leadership, an end to the stalemate in the Korean War, and a reduction in inflation, taxes, and government regulation of the economy and who were concerned about corruption in the Truman administration and communist infiltration of government and labor unions. Eisenhower's popularity benefited Republican congressional candidates, and his wide margin of victory was due in part to Truman's unpopularity and the weaknesses and problems of Adlai E. Stevenson II's Democratic presidential campaign. Greene persuasively concludes that no Democrat "could have beaten Eisenhower in 1952" (p. 174).