#36 Lyndon B Johnson Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Lyndon Baines Johnson
1. In 1919, congressional aides began what they called the “Little Congress” as a sort of networking tool, one that would also “give them a chance to master parliamentary procedure and public speaking” (p. 13). Lyndon got in on this Little Congress when he was working for Kleberg and really made it a success. “Under his leadership, weekly attendance grew from a handful to more than two hundred as Johnson invited prominent figures such as Huey Long and Fiorello La Guardia to speak to the group—invitations that also served to expand Johnson’s circle of contacts” (p. 13).
2. Due to his time with the Little Congress and other things, Johnson was really a spectacular rookie congressman when his time came. “The support of [Franklin] Roosevelt and [Sam] Rayburn, when combined with Johnson’s driving determination, made him one of the most effective first-termers in the history of Capitol Hill. ‘He got more projects and more for his district than anybody else,’ Corcoran later recalled. ‘He was the best congressman for a district that ever was’” (p. 20).
3. While in Australia checking up on MacArthur during WWII, Johnson was involved in one combat mission for which he would earn a Silver Star. “Johnson’s plane—a B-26 two-engine bomber christened the Heckling Hare by its crew—was attacked, first by one Japanese Zero fighter, and then by a squadron of seven…MacArthur awarded him the Silver Star, the second highest decoration for courage under fire” (p. 28). What they don’t tell you is that not one of the actual crew was given any award at all.
4. After his wife’s second miscarriage, LBJ bought an Austin radio station to keep her busy. “KTBC and its sister television station that the Johnsons created a few years later were to benefit over the years from one favorable Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling after another—rulings that made the Johnsons rich” (p. 31).
5. It was due to Johnson’s influence as Senate majority leader that he was able to finally censure McCarthy. “The public saw that McCarthy was a bully and a blowhard, enabling Johnson to mobilize senators who had heretofore trembled a McCarthy’s threats to rise up and vote to censure him. McCarthy was finished” (p. 47).
6. Since Texas was his home state, Johnson played a role in making sure that NASA was headquartered there. “Johnson, always mindful of his political base, helped make sure that the manned spacecraft was located in Houston. And he reaped the popular reward of his association with NASA when his approval soared as John Glenn circled the globe three times in his space capsule” (p. 73).
7. Johnson was the first president to appoint a black Supreme Court justice. “Johnson had already made history in 1967 by making Thurgood Marshall the first black justice” (p. 149).
8. So I made a pretty substantial error and here is my written statement regarding it. In my Eisenhower blog, I mistakenly believed that it was Mamie Eisenhower’s influence that beautified our highways. In this belief, I was wrong—it was Lady Bird Johnson who worked hard to pass the Highway Beautification Act in 1965. Every time I pass the cherry trees, azaleas and wildflowers along the highways near my house, I will shout out a silent thank you to our First Lady, Lady Bird. Also, Wikipedia let me know that there is a Lady Bird Wildflower Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, her alma mater.

Well I can pretty much tell that old Charles Peters did not quite care for Johnson. Of course when I checked out Mr. Peters’ bio I saw this “He is the founder of the Washington Monthly, which he edited for thirty-two years, following a career in politics and government that included serving in the West Virginia legislature, working on John F Kennedy’s 1960 campaign [italics mine here], and helping to launch the Peace Corps” (Uh…book jacket?). So, Peters was an adherent of JFK, was he? That makes his obvious dislike of Johnson a little easier to understand. Now I’m not claiming that Peters was being irrational—after all, Johnson did a lot to be disliked for—but he compared both Johnson and then Nixon to Uriah Heep! (For those of you who have no idea who Uriah Heep is, you should read David Copperfield by Dickens. The name, Uriah Heep, is now synonymous with creepy, ass-kissing-his-superiors, stab-you-in-the-back people.) I truly do love a good literary allusion but come on now, it sounds a little melodramatic. “He [Johnson] soon verged on becoming Uriah Heep as he fawned on his seniors” (p. 41). “Nixon, who could give a Uriah Heep imitation even better than Johnson’s, was obsequiously deferential to the president” (p. 154). Here’s another good quote that eloquently casts aspersions on Johnson’s character by comparing him with Machiavelli…and you know what that means! “This advice could be taken to confirm that Johnson had read Machiavelli’s The Prince, a copy of which the columnist Mary McGrory had spotted on his hospital bed—though it could be argued that Johnson’s career had already demonstrated that he might be able to teach Machiavelli a few tricks rather than the other way around” (p. 51). Ouch.

The author, Peters, also negatively discusses Johnson’s morality, which we all can agree was a little skewed. We already know about the womanizing but here Peters mentions a slight scandal involving Johnson and FDR’s son. “Among other sins, Johnson was accused of paying five thousand dollars to President Roosevelt’s son Elliott, whose reputation for probity was considerably less than his father’s, in exchange for Elliott’s endorsement” (p. 19). Peters states that everything Johnson did was done directly to benefit Johnson himself. “As was often the case in his long political career, Johnson wasn’t just doing good; he was taking care of Lyndon” (p. 17). This statement effectively casts doubt on all of Johnson’s decisions and motivations.

Even Johnson’s staff had extremely indecisive reactions to this man. “For most of his subordinates, feelings about their leader were ambivalent. Bill Moyers would later say, ‘I both loved and loathed him.’ George Reedy said that Johnson could be ‘magnificent and inspiring’ but also ‘a bully, sadist, lout, and egoist.’ Califano recalled him as ‘caring and crude, generous and petulant, bluntly honest, and calculatingly devious.’ Even the superloyal Valenti could couple praise of Johnson with the acknowledgement that ‘he was also one tough son of a bitch and he was a hard, cruel man at times’” (p. 140).

Despite Peters’ evident dismay with Johnson as a person (and president), there were some really terrific parts of the book. For instance, I loved when Peters discussed a rare disease—Potomac fever. “When people come to Washington to work in the government, they rarely need to reside there for longer than six months before they are infected by what has come to be called Potomac Fever. The principal symptom of this malady is a resolve to find a way to stay in Washington, and, if required to leave, to return as soon as possible. Lyndon Johnson first arrived in Washington on December 7, 1931. He managed to stay for all but two of the next thirty-seven years” (p. 11). I also liked Peters’ fictional rendition of the growing cultural revolution in the 1960s and what it meant to the officials in the Johnson administration. “Imagine this hardworking official arriving home at night around 9:00pm, looking forward to being presented with his slippers and a nice cold martini by a wife filled with admiration for his dedicated public service. But beginning in 1965 and increasing thereafter, he is met by a wife who complains about being stuck with all the housework, asking why she can’t have a career, and, by the way, why doesn’t he make love to her more often. She reports that their twenty-year-old son has left his dorm at Columbia University and moved to the Lower East Side so he can join its growing community of hippies and be near his idol Allen Ginsberg. This is the same son who last Christmas announced he was gay and could no longer bear the hypocrisy of the closet. His eighteen-year-old sister, in her last year at the National Cathedral School, comes downstairs for dinner and asks her father why he doesn’t have the guts to come out against the war. Humiliated and angered by her attack, the official proceeds to take on his daughter’s sex life, berating her for sleeping around even before she’s graduated from high school, and also, complaining about loud music coming from her room, which he says is destroying his hearing” (p. 134). Ahhh…the 60s!

What I disliked most about this book were the disgusting lack of dates (meaning that I was forced to look up some stuff online) and rampant speculation about Vietnam. I really hate speculation in historical nonfiction…especially regarding Vietnam. On the other hand, I enjoyed all the current events that were interwoven into and around Johnson’s life. Peters did a great job with giving the reader a very firm idea of what was occurring concurrently in Johnson’s life and in the world at large.

Sidenote: In my ongoing and admittedly half-assed investigation into JFK’s murder, I found it interesting that the author here has an opinion too. Peters is completely certain—at least he it writes that way—that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. “One of its employees, Lee Harvey Oswald, sat by a sixth-floor window holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. He fired three shots. One shattered Kennedy’s skull, making Lyndon Johnson the thirty-sixth president of the United States” (p. 76). Just thought you’d want to know.

#36 Lyndon B Johnson (1908-1973)

In college, I took a Vietnam War history class. Now those were the days when I goofed off quite a bit, so there’s not a lot that I remember about this particular class. However, I do recall taking away one really important bit of information—that I don’t like Lyndon B Johnson. I am pretty sure that I can’t simply blame this impression on the author’s bias since I read several books on that era but honestly, I don’t know of many people/historians who agreed with Johnson’s policies when it came to Vietnam. Of course, we’re all looking back in hindsight so I think it’s important to find out who Johnson really was and to try, to some extent, to divorce his terrible decision-making regarding Vietnam from who he was as a whole.

To gain a greater understanding of this possibly-misunderstood president, I turned to the old tried and true source—the American Presidents Series. Thus, I read Lyndon B Johnson: American Presidents Series by Charles Peters (New York: Times Books, 2010). Unfortunately for Johnson, he came right after the 900-page Kennedy bio and there was no way in the world I was going to read another large book. Have I mentioned that one of the reasons that I like the American Presidents Series is due to the very manageable length of each biography? The LBJ one clocks in at a whopping 200 pages.

So onto the main event…

Little Lyndon was born on August 27, 1908 on a small farm in rural Texas near Austin. His father was a public man and was several times elected to the Texas legislature while his mother was rather well-educated, having attended college. Lyndon’s upbringing, rather cold and conditional, would color his interactions with others for the rest of his days. “His mother’s conditional love seems to have affected Johnson in two ways. First, he always worried that whatever approval he might receive could be quickly withdrawn. And second, he imitated his mother in his relationships with others, offering generous love until the recipient disappointed him and then administering to that unfortunate soul ‘the Johnson freeze-out,’ the same treatment his mother had given him” (p. 3).

Johnson attended public schools and after graduating high school, he moved out to California for about 16 months. California had been billed as the Promise Land but Johnson was quickly disillusioned and moved back home where he worked in road construction. In 1926, he attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College. “Johnson’s ambition and potential were clear to all…But, though they liked his warmth, his interest in them, and his ability to entertain, they disliked his bragging, his ‘brown nosing,’ and how ‘he’d just interrupt you’ and insist on dominating the conversation” (p. 6). He became the editor of the college paper and even had his heart broken by a young co-ed. He attended the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston and for a year, taught school in Cotulla, TX to mostly immigrant children.

After graduation in 1930, Johnson went on to teach business math and public speaking at Sam Houston High School. His stint as a high school teacher was short-lived however because Johnson’s desire to work in politics was well-known. After only a year at Sam Houston High School, he was offered the job of secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg. He accepted the position and immediately moved to Washington DC. There were many perks to this type of job for Johnson, including the fact that he had a job at the height of the Great Depression and also the means to get to know various important people throughout Capitol Hill.

On a trip home in 1933, Johnson was introduced to Claudia Taylor (nicknamed Lady Bird) and he immediately fell in love. “He was immediately drawn to this engaging and attractive young woman. It wasn’t just her looks and personality, but she had graduated from the University of Texas with all As and Bs and degrees in journalism and history” (p. 15). They were married only months later. It was unfortunate but Johnson was fired from his job with the congressman only a couple years later. Instead he and Lady Bird headed back to Austin, Texas where he began work with the NYA, the National Youth Administration, under the Roosevelt administration. “The NYA helped poor young people by putting them to work full-time at thirty dollars per month and part-time at fifteen per month to help them stay in high school or college when they otherwise would be forced to quit by economic necessity” (p. 17).

The simple fact of the matter is that Johnson missed being in politics so in 1937, he ran for the vacant seat in Congress for his district and won. Without Lady Bird, he moved back to Washington and a year later, began a long-lasting affair with Alice Glass. In 1941, he decided to run for the Senate but lost that election and because the war was just beginning he decided to join the Army. Johnson was made a lieutenant commander of the US Naval Reserve but was never seriously considered for active duty. Instead, “the navy made Johnson responsible for expediting war production in Texas and on the West Coast” (p. 27). In May 1942, Johnson was sent to check up on MacArthur in Australia and was then called back to the United States to take up his post again in Congress. He won re-election for the next six years.

After the war ended, Johnson continued to back the administration and national defense. He won a seat in the Senate in 1948 and started on another affair, this time with Helen Gahagan Douglas, a fellow congresswoman. His career rose even higher when he was elected, just two years later, as majority whip. “The whip’s main responsibility involved rounding up votes and knowing where each senator stood when a bill reached the floor” (p. 43). In 1952, he was voted minority leader and in ’54, majority leader. Unfortunately all this increased political activity, coupled with heavy drinking and smoking, sent Johnson right to the hospital with a major heart attack on July 2, 1955.

Soon, however, he was back on the job and having to face several major civil rights issues. “What followed in 1957 was what many believe to be his most impressive legislative accomplishment, the first civil rights bill to pass the Congress since the days of Reconstruction” (p. 52). Johnson worked hard to minimize the damage of Southern lobbyists and to water down the bill until it was passed. With all this success, it seemed inevitable for Johnson to look ahead to 1960 and the presidential election. The long Eisenhower years were waning and as the majority leader of the Senate, LBJ seemed to be in a perfect position to move into the highest office in the land. The only man standing in his way was a young fellow Senator from Massachusetts who beat him in some debates down in Texas in 1960.

Kennedy went on to win the Democratic nomination and he would turn to Johnson to be his vice presidential candidate. After winning the election, Kennedy tried to give Johnson a number of jobs to keep him busy besides his minimal vice presidential duties. “Kennedy also asked Johnson to chair the National Aeronautics and Space Council and to head the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity” (p. 69). But it was no secret that being vice president was galling for Johnson. JFK sent Johnson on many trips around the world, including South Vietnam and Berlin, as an envoy of the president. Even though, Johnson performed his job with precision there were questions on whether or not he would be Kennedy’s running mate in the 1964 election. JFK finally decided to keep Johnson on the ticket.

Sadly, there was to be no 1964 election for John Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, he was murdered in Dallas and Johnson became the 36th President of the United States aboard Air Force One. Now that Johnson was president, he immediately began bringing certain issues to the forefront. That he was so successful in passing legislation was due to the national sympathy engendered in the American public after JFK’s assassination. Johnson, in 1964, began the Great Society with the Economic Opportunity Act that attacked the War on Poverty and another Civil Rights Act with more teeth than the last one. LBJ began Head Start, Job Corp, and Community Action.

I bet you’re wondering about Vietnam. Kennedy had only placed several thousand military advisors over there but on August 2, 1964 the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred and would forever change the way the fought. This incident (which was basically a farce in which an American destroyer thought it was being attacked by the North Vietnamese) forced Johnson’s hand and so not to appear to dovish, Johnson decided to send the first set of ground soldiers to Vietnam. “To demonstrate his resolve, he ordered an immediate retaliatory attack against North Vietnam and asked Congress to adopt what came to be called the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which authorized the president ‘to take all necessary measures to repel’ and counter attacks on the armed forces of the United States and to defend the freedom of South Vietnam” (p. 93).

With the amazing success of Johnson’s legislative program and the hard line he took with the Vietcong, the American people overwhelmingly voted the Johnson/Humphreys ticket to victory over tepid Barry Goldwater and the Republicans. In fact, Johnson won by over 15 million votes. Feeling that he was made president by popular mandate, Johnson worked even harder in 1965 to push through his legislative program. He passed laws dealing with federal aid to education, Medicare, voting rights, and immigration. In March 1965, he sent the marines to Vietnam in ever-increasing numbers and by May, another 200,000 more arrived in Saigon. He also sent the marines down to Santo Domingo to help put down a rebellion.

All of this pugnacious behavior on behalf of the United States contributed to a growing cultural revolution among American youth. Changes in music, dress, and attitudes swept the nation and while once it was patriotic to fight in a war for the old US of A, it was that way no longer. In 1968, as students returned to school, protests, draft dodging, violence and general unhappiness with the situation in Vietnam was amplified and it was Johnson who they hated for it. “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today,” (p. 137) was a popular cry against the president. It didn’t help that more and more American soldiers were being sent into the jungles to die. The North Vietnamese attacked in the Tet Offensive and, although Johnson did not want to be seen as a coward, he allowed the Paris Peace talks to commence.

1968 was a crazy year. It witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. It witnessed race riots and the institution of a Fair Housing Act. It also witnessed Lyndon Johnson’s decision, due to unexpected domestic pressure, not to run for another term. He took himself out of the 1968 election and gracefully retired with his wife Lady Bird back to his ranch in Texas on the Pedernales River. He spent time managing the ranch, writing his memoirs, and trying to stave off growing heart concerns. In 1972, he suffered another severe heart attack and by January 22, 1973, he was dead.

#35: John F Kennedy Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about John F Kennedy
1. In 1937, Jack lost his first election as a freshman in college.
2. During the spring semester of 1939, Jack withdrew from Harvard so that he could spend time traveling around Europe. What was so cool about this was that he had front row seats to the initial stages of World War II. “During the spring and summer of 1939, Jack traveled throughout Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East. From each capital he reported to his father on the political and economic situation” (p. 94). “’For a twenty-two year old American,’ said Richard Whalen, ‘ it was a unique opportunity to look behind the scenes as the stage was set for the Second World War’” (p. 94).
3. For a brief span, Jack was employed by William Randolph Hearst (a good friend of his dad’s) to work for the Chicago Herald American. “The position would give Jack something stimulating to do, keep his name before the public, probably grant him credentials to travel in Europe, and expose him to journalism as a career” (p. 180).
4. While a senator, Kennedy (and his office) checked out the most books from the Library of Congress. “(Later, the library staff reported the Kennedy’s office signed out more books than any other on Capitol Hill)” (p. 262).
5. I, personally, find this next tidbit extremely interesting because I’m a huge fan of Marion Davies. “Following a few days in Acapulco, the newlyweds [Jack and Jackie] flew to Los Angeles, where they stayed for a week in the Beverly Hills mansion of Marion Davies, the mistress of the late William Randolph Hearst” (p. 270). Awesome!
6. McCarthy is always portrayed as rather an evil character (in just about every book I’ve read) so it’s quite fascinating that Robert Kennedy not only worked for McCarthy at the height of his power, but liked him as well! “From January to July 1953, Bobby served as assistant counsel to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which McCarthy chaired “(p. 274).
7. Nobody mentions this but Jack nearly died after his back surgery in 1954. “Other evidence indicates that the infection on the third day after the operation was a staph infection that nearly killed Jack. Most accounts of life say he slipped into a coma, was placed on the critical list, and received the last rites of the church” (p. 281).
8. This was one of those urban legends that I found to be true. Due to constant back pain, Jack really did have a specially-made bed…and chairs! “Travell designed a new mattress for him made of hair—tightly tied and firm—and installed a heavy bed board underneath the mattress…At Jack’s request Travell redesigned some of his household furnishings, particularly the chairs” (p. 348).
9. It was while Kennedy was a senator that a record was set for filibustering. On an unrelated note, I am not surprised that this long filibuster was to due to trying to halt a Civil Rights Act vote. “The Senate debate on the complicated legislation consumed over 121 hours. Democratic senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina filibustered for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes, trying to impede a vote” (p. 372).
10. And let’s not forget the Kennedy/Nixon debates were the first to be televised in history. “The debates had the potential for reaching a huge audience. In 1960 forty-six million American homes had televisions, 25 percent more TV households than only four years earlier”(p. 479).
11. I thought this was funny. Kennedy was so attractive as a presidential candidate that apparently women went absolutely mad over him. Thus the Kennedy group came up with funny nicknames for each group of crazed women: the Jumpers, the Double Leapers, the Clutchers and Runners. Theodore White explained the jumpers as “teenage girls who would bounce, jounce, and jump as the cavalcade passed…Then, as the press began to comment on the phenomenon, thus stimulating more artistic jumping, the middle-aged ladies began to jump up and down too.” (p. 490-91). “The double leapers were women who jumped together while holding hands. Clutchers crossed their arms, hugged themselves, and screamed, ‘He looked at me! He looked at me!’ The runners were women, sometimes carrying infants, who broke through police barricades to run after Kennedy’s car” (p. 491).
12. The 1960 presidential election was the closest in modern history. “Kennedy earned 49.7 percent of the total to Nixon’s 49.6 percent, the smallest popular-vote margin of any presidential race in the twentieth century” (p. 495).
13. During his administration, Kennedy promoted economic prosperity. “The Kennedy ‘boom,’ begun unspectacularly in the spring of 1961, became the longest peacetime period of prosperity in modern US history” (p. 638).
14. Never needing money, Jack was able to give most of his money earned from jobs away to charities. “Since 1947 John Kennedy had donated his entire legislative salary to charities” (p. 746). He kept up this habit while in the presidency and even donated all his royalties from Why England Slept as well.
15. Kennedy was the first American president to sell weapons to Israel. “Until the deal Israel had never received weapons from the United States” (p. 877).

I have to admit that I really liked this book. It was very pro-Jack from the start but it wasn’t unpalatable. He begins the book with a nice saga-like history of the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds from Ireland which I found fascinating. Of course any book on John F Kennedy is really a history of the Kennedys themselves so I wasn’t disappointed here either. O’Brien (I wonder if he’s Irish as well) gives us all the gory details of the Kennedys’ rise to fame and fortune. Like I said before, the author, you can tell, likes Kennedy but he also is sure to give both sides of every story. For instance, the sinking of PT-109 caused quite an uproar with some people dubbing Jack a hero and other’s blaming him for the sinking in the first place. O’Brien lays it all out there for the reader to decide.

There were tons of ironies in this book. First of all, I thought it was funny that JFK and Nixon were actually pretty good friends. In fact, after Jack’s back surgery, Jack received a large gift basket that said “Welcome Home, Dick Nixon” (p. 283). I also liked the fact that JFK dated Oleg Cassini’s ex-wife and then Cassini would go on to become Jackie’s head fashion designer while she was First Lady. It’s a small world, people. Here’s something you never read about but was a big issue at the time. Because of segregation, African diplomats hated being stationed in Washington. JFK would have to field calls from the angry diplomats from African nations because they were refused room and board in Maryland while driving down from NYC. Indeed it was partially due to the pressure from other governments that Kennedy looked so favorably on civil rights.

I loved that O’Brien included this hilarious entrée into the unique and cliquish Kennedy world with “Rules for Visiting the Kennedys” by David Hackett. “Prepare yourself by reading the Congressional Record, US News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, The Nation, How to Play Sneaky Tennis, and The Democratic Digest. Memorize at least three good jokes. Anticipate that each Kennedy will ask you what you think of another Kennedy’s a) dress, b) hairdo, c) backhand, d) latest public achievement. Be sure to answer ‘Terrific.’ This should get you through dinner. Now for the football field. It’s ‘touch’ but it’s murder. If you don’t want to play, don’t come. If you do come, play, or you’ll be fed in the kitchen and nobody will speak to you. Don’t let the girls fool you. Even pregnant, they can make you look silly. If Harvard played touch, they’d be on the varsity. Above all, don’t suggest any plans, even if you played quarterback at school. They Kennedys have the signal-calling department sewed up, and all of them have A-pluses in leadership. If one of them makes a mistake, keep still…But don’t stand still. Run madly on every play, and make a lot of noise. Don’t appear to be having too much fun though. They’ll accuse you of not taking the game seriously enough. Don’t criticize the other team, either. It’s bound to be full of Kennedys, too, and the Kennedys don’t like that sort of thing. To become really popular you must show raw guts. To show raw guts, fall on your face now and then. Smash into the house once and a while, going after a pass. Laugh off a twisted ankle, or a big hole torn in your best suit. They like this. It shows you take the game as seriously as they do. But remember. Don’t be too good. Let Jack run around you now and then. He’s their boy”(p. 341-42).

Even though I read this big, ol’ book on Kennedy and even though I watched numerous movies on him as well, I still have to admit that I have no idea who killed JFK. We’ll just need to sit tight and wait for 2029 to get the truth.

#35: John F Kennedy (1917-1963)

It’s really sad that the first thing that came to mind when I heard that the new X-men movie (First Class) was about the Cuban Missile Crisis was “Aha! Research!” You know that I love to dovetail my penchant for movies into alignment with whatever president I happen to be reading at that moment. For example, now that I’m on President #35, I immediately watched Thirteen Days (also about the Cuban Missile Crisis) and JFK by Oliver Stone. I even grew rather grumpy when my mom told me that the movie, PT-109, had played that very morning on TCM and she forgot to tape it. I didn’t even know that they had made a movie about Kennedy’s World War II role but now that I knew they had (and that I had missed it) was incredibly galling. And soon—soon, I tell you—I’ll head out to see X-Men: First Class. I’d like you to think that I’m going to watch it because it’s about Kennedy’s administration but honestly, I just love X-Men movies.

Trying to find a biography on JFK that fulfilled all my requirements was not easy. Again, I started at Amazon because I’m able to see a complete listing of all books written on JFK and also I love to read the reviews. It’s funny because someone recommended the book, An Unfinished Life, as being a good bio on Kennedy. However, when I looked it up I realized that old Robert Dallek was the author. Please remember that Dallek authored the book that I intensely disliked about Truman so I decided right then and there not to read An Unfinished Life. Besides the reviews, while favorable, mentioned that Dallek mainly concentrated on Kennedy’s physical ailments and did not go into much detail about his personal life. Well that book was out. So I turned to a 900-page tome that seemed to cover every breath Kennedy took. Ahhhh….that’s the one. I read John F Kennedy: A Biography by Michael O’Brien (Simon and Schuster: New York, 1990).

[Sidenote: OMG! I just saw that a miniseries, called The Kennedys, came out this past April!!!! Greg Kinear is JFK and Katie Holmes is Jackie. I’m soooo excited! Where can I get it??? Check it out: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1567215/]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first president to be born in the twentieth century on May 29, 1917. He came from politicians on both sides of his family tree. His father, though, was a businessman, pure and simple, and he made millions through his various business practices (ethical and unethical), including the movie business and the stock market. The Kennedy children grew up literally in the lap of luxury with houses in New York, Hyannis Port, and Palm Beach. There were eventually 9 of them: Joe Jr, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and Edward. On a side note, they were Catholic (this will be important later).

Jack was a sickly child. At 2 years old, he contracted scarlet fever and after that, there were many other illnesses and blood issues. He was sent to a private school, Dexter School, and then in 1927, when the family moved to New York City, he attended Riverdale Country Day School. “At Riverdale Jack’s teachers described him as bright, confident, and personable; friends remembered him as popular, athletic and girl crazy”(p. 29). As he grew older, he temporarily attended Canterbury, a Catholic school, but soon finished out the rest of his high school years at a prestigious boy’s school in Connecticut, Choate. He wasn’t a great student but he had lots of friends and did well in sports. His mother described him thus. “’Or let us say, lack of ‘fight’ in trying to do well in those subjects that didn’t happen to interest him” (p. 58.). Despite his average grades, Jack was admitted to Princeton but was too sick to attend. Instead he went to Harvard but took some time off to recuperate as a ranch hand out West and to visit his family in Europe. He would eventually graduate cum laude from Harvard in 1940.

Jack’s father, Joe, played a major role in his children’s lives. He was a dynamic personality but not of strong moral convictions. Most people were aware that the origins of his fortune were not upstanding and the fact that he was a blatant lecher disgusted others. In fact, he never really hid his adulterous affairs but Rose, his wife, said not a thing. When he was big into the movie business, he would often bring his girlfriend, Gloria Swanson, home on trips. Later on, he had an ongoing affair with his secretary who spent most of her time with the Kennedys. In 1938, FDR appointed Joe Kennedy as Ambassador to Great Britain and so the whole family moved to London. Joe made headlines for sympathizing with the Nazis and being quite outspoken about it. Jack, who made the trip with the family, was able to witness pre-World War II Europe and he used this experience later to write his thesis (and later a book), Why England Slept.

After graduating, Jack audited classes at Stanford, toured some of South America, and even worked as a journalist. His days of leisure were numbered however. With the situation around the globe deteriorating, Jack knew that it was time to get involved.
He pressured his father to find him a place in the military and despite his numerous physical ailments, in October 1941, he was assigned to Naval Intelligence. By March, 1943, Jack had done so well that he was transferred to the Pacific as a lieutenant to command PT-109. While out doing maneuvers on his patrol torpedo boat in August, they were hit by a Japanese submarine and sunk. Over the next few days, Jack did his utmost to save his remaining crew members (two died in the sinking) and in the process, became an American hero. Jack and the crew were rescued and instead of heading home to recuperate, he insisted that he stay. So they transferred him to PT-59. “Kennedy emerged from the war wiser, mentally tougher and with self-respect for having done his duty. During his extraordinary adventure, he had mingled and worked with men from different classes, backgrounds, regions and religions, and he enjoyed the camaraderie” (p. 165).

Kennedy had hurt his back while playing football in school and he already experienced quite a bit of pain. After the incident in the Pacific, Jack returned home to a serious back operation. In fact, the post-war years were not kind to the Kennedy clan. Back in 1941, Rosemary (who was mentally retarded) was given a frontal lobotomy and placed in an institution the rest of her life. In 1944, Joe Jr. was blown up in his plane over Germany. Four years later, Kathleen, Jack’s favorite sister, was killed in a plane crash in England.

Joe Kennedy never liked his fellow businessmen and since he already had quite a fortune, he steered his children into public service instead. Thus in 1946, when Jack decided to run for office, Joe opened the coffers wide to back his boy. With all the money in the world and excellent organizational skills, Jack was elected to the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts and spent the next six years there. “One thing is certain: His victory transformed him into a major force in Massachusetts politics” (p. 206). While in Congress, Kennedy primarily focused on social welfare issues. He also traveled to Ireland to visit his relatives and discovered that he had Addison’s disease. With all the rules of seniority in the House, Jack rapidly became bored and so in 1952, he announced that he would run for the Senate instead. This position he won also.

Jack had always been sexually promiscuous but with his new position, his father pressed him to marry. He had met Jacqueline Bouvier in 1951 at a party in which the hostess tried to fix them up. Unlike Jack’s other women, Jackie was a Catholic and had an impeccable family lineage—it just seemed right to make it official. Thus on September 12, 1953, they married. However, Jack’s marriage never stopped him from seeing other women. Lots of other women. “The marriage of Jack and Jackie was loving, but distant and sometimes strained” (p. 292).

As a Senator, Jack, opposite to his fellow New England co-workers, supported the St Lawrence Seaway. He also created the New England Conference of Senators as a means to unite legislation in aiding the New England area. “The conference pushed legislative projects on the price of wool, a minimum wage in the woolen industry, a lower tariff on raw wool imports, wage studies of southern textile manufacturing, shipbuilding contracts at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, funds to rehabilitate the Boston Army Base Pier, and a longshoremen safety bill” (p. 273).

It was during this time that Jack needed to have even more invasive spinal surgery because he was still in too much pain. While recovering, he decided to write a book on courageous politicians who had seemed to buck the system. His book, Profiles in Courage, won a Pulitzer Prize for biography. “The book proved more popular and politically valuable than Kennedy could ever have imagined. It boosted his stature considerably within the Democratic Party, making him the spokesman for the politics of integrity and enhanced his image as an insightful student of American history and democratic theory. He became the unofficial historian of the Senate, placed in charge of a subcommittee to honor five outstanding senators from history” (p. 289). He was publicly accused of not writing Profiles; many believed that the book was ghostwritten by Ted Sorenson, his phenomenal speechwriter. This accusation was hotly denied by all parties involved.

In 1956, JFK decided to run for vice president but lost to Kefauver. Actually it was fortuitous that Jack missed out because the Democratic ticket of Stevenson/Kefauver then went down in defeat to Eisenhower. Jack went back to his seat in the Senate, looking really good politically, and was placed on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. JFK and RFK were even placed on a Committee on Labor where they dealt with the Teamsters in the Rackets Commission. Jack, handily, won reelection to the Senate in 1958 and was perfectly poised to capture the Democratic Nomination in 1960. “Jack’s handsome features, personality, charm and intelligence all contributed to his success. But his dogged, unrelenting effort was the heart of his long campaign” (p. 464). The Democrats tacked Lyndon Johnson onto the ticket to offset Kennedy’s New England roots.

Kennedy/Johnson went up against Republicans Richard Nixon and his running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr in the 1960 presidential race. Most people remember the debates between Nixon and Kennedy and the impact that they had on the voting millions. For the first debate, Nixon was sick. He refused makeup and he wore a grey suit that blended into the grey background on the set. Not only that, but he was not as comfortable and articulate during the debate, laughing at odd moments and sweating profusely. Many observers believed that Kennedy came out the winner of the debates spanning from September 26, 1960 to October 21. Kennedy also became friends with Martin Luther King Jr during the campaign and came up with his innovative and popular idea—the Peace Corps. In the end, JFK scraped by with the win to become the 35th President of the United States. “No single factor explained Kennedy’s victory. Winning the first debate was important. So were his personal attractiveness, effective campaign style, and phone call to Mrs. King. President Eisenhower’s tepid efforts on behalf of his vice president hurt Nixon’s campaign. Lyndon Johnson’s presence on the ticket probably inched Texas into the Democratic column” (p. 495).

“On the day after the election, Kennedy was amazed at what had to be accomplished in the short span of time until his inauguration—only seventy-two days. Not much time, Sorensen later noted, ‘to form an administration, staff the White House, fill some seventy-five key Cabinet and policy posts, name six hundred other major nominees, decide which incumbents to carry over, distribute patronage to the faithful and fix personnel policies for the future.’ Kennedy also had to liaise with Eisenhower, prepare for the inauguration, shape his domestic and foreign policies, and plan his legislative program” (p. 498-99). Speaking of the Cabinet positions, Kennedy went very bi-partisan when filling this august board, even including his own brother, Bobby, as Attorney General (he was under direct pressure from his father in this matter). There was quite a ruckus when JFK nominated Bobby but he was prepared for that. “When Ben Bradlee of Newsweek asked John Kennedy how he planned to announce the appointment, the President-elect said, ‘Well, I think I’ll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 a.m., look up and down the street, and, if there’s no one there, I’ll whisper, ‘It’s Bobby.’” (p. 507).

Unfortunately, the first thing that JFK had to deal with upon assuming office was Eisenhower’s plan to depose Castro by sending CIA-trained Cubans back into Cuba. Kennedy went along with the ill-planned idea, which culminated in the Bay of Pigs fiasco on April 17, 1961. “Almost everything went wrong for the invaders. Their landing craft floundered among the unanticipated coral reefs. When portable radios got wet, they didn’t function. Men landed at the wrong locations, several miles from comrades, and others reached shore without adequate supplies” (p. 530). Defeat was inevitable when Kennedy refused to order the accompanying air strikes; the resident Cubans didn’t arise in revolt once the invasion began; and Castro was better prepared than the Americans assumed. Afterwards, Kennedy fired Allan Dulles, head of the CIA and deputy director, Richard Bissell.

Thankfully, people forgot about the Bay of Pigs in all the other stuff going on. There was a summit in Vienna between JFK and Khrushchev. The Berlin Wall was started. Kennedy began a major legislative program that dealt with education, the minimum wage, Medicare, the space program, conservation, mental retardation, and the Equal Pay Act. Civil Rights was a major issue in which Kennedy was quite interested. “Kennedy invited more African-Americans to White House meetings and social functions than any previous President” (p. 592). Kennedy had to deal with the Meredith crisis which occurred when James Meredith, an African-American, tried to enroll at the uber-white University of Mississippi. In the end, Kennedy had to call out the National Guard to quell the riots on the university campus.

In the foreign policy arena, Kennedy was faced with issues in Laos and Vietnam. “Off the record he had serious reservations about fighting there, and hoped to find a way of holding South Vietnam with the minimal use of American troops” (p. 616). Kennedy was still annoyed by what happened in Cuba and so ordered Operation Mongoose which was a secret operation to kill Castro. “The CIA quickly spent from fifty to one hundred million dollars on Mongoose. With its huge nerve center on the campus of the University of Miami, and with four hundred CIA officers, Mongoose was the agency’s largest operation in the world outside its Langley, Virginia, headquarters. The officers controlled thousands of Cuban agents, purchased exotic weapons, and ran a secret fleet of ships and aircraft” (p. 650). There are rumors that this operation included use of the Mafia.

For thirteen days in October, 1962, the United States was beset by the threat of nuclear weapons in Cuba, provided by the Soviet Union. Through skillful negotiation, a naval blockade and the use of diplomatic backchannels and the UN, Kennedy was able to avert a crisis. If Russia would remove all nuclear weapons from Cuba, then the United States would promise never to invade that island and in six months, would remove the Jupiter missiles currently residing in Turkey. The negotiations worked and the threat of nuclear war subsided momentarily.

Kennedy was also interested in an Alliance for Progress with the Latin American nations, which would include US aid to those countries. It never really worked however. Kennedy was also very supportive of independence for African countries and sustained them against their European aggressors. In regards to Vietnam, JFK okayed a coup of the corrupt Diem but was horrified when the generals there assassinated Diem in early November, 1963.

To start gearing up for the next presidential election in ’64, Kennedy undertook a series of tours. The first one was a European trip that included West Germany, Ireland (for strictly personal reasons), and England. Afterwards, he decided on a domestic tour that would consist of 11 states (most of which did not vote for him in the last election), including Florida and Texas. In late November, he flew to San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth. On the morning of November 22, JFK and Jackie flew from Fort Worth to Dallas where they embarked on an open-car parade. While riding down Elm St, Jack was killed by a bullet to the brain and was pronounced dead at 1pm CST. Lee Harvey Oswald was announced as the killer but was killed himself several days later by Jack Ruby.

# 34 Dwight Eisenhower Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Dwight Eisenhower
1. Eisenhower’s senior superlatives from high school tagged him as the next professor of History at Yale. What’s interesting is that his brother, Edgar, was pegged for the President of the United States.
2. His graduating class at West Point would become the most famous in West Point history. “In 1915, 164 of them graduated. Of the 164, 59 rose to the rank of full general, and two to the rank of general of the army. Members included Vernon Prichard, George Stratemeyer, Charles Ryder, Stafford Irwin, Joseph McNarnney, James Van Fleet, Hubert Harmon, and Omar Bradley” (p. 25).
3. Because I love football so much, I had to include this little factoid. Not only was Eisenhower a star running back at West Point, but after he twisted his knee and was never able to play again, he then coached the junior varsity team. “The act of coaching brought out his best traits—his organizational ability, his energy and competitiveness, his enthusiasm and optimism, his willingness to work hard at a task that intrigued him, his powers of concentration, his talent for working with the material he had instead of hoping for what he did not have, and his gift for drawing the best out of his players” (p. 27). What I liked most was that Eisenhower used the idea of football as a way to train troops (teamwork was big) and in battle, to inspire them with good old American terminology.
4. When Eisenhower returned from Germany, once the war was over, he gave a speech to a joint session of Congress and it was electric. “The politicians gave General Eisenhower a standing ovation that was the longest in the history of Congress, and there was not a man in the hall who did not think to himself how wonderful General Eisenhower would look standing at that podium as President Eisenhower” (p. 207).
5. After the war, Stalin invited Eisenhower to Moscow for a victory parade where he let the American even stand on Lenin’s tomb! “At a sports parade in Red Square, which lasted for hours and involved tens of thousands of athletes, Eisenhower was invited by Stalin to stand on Lenin’s Tomb, a unique honor for a non-Communist and non-Russian” (p. 218).
6. Here’s another Eisenhower tidbit that’s near to my heart and not just because I love golf (I also live in Georgia!) Because Eisenhower had many millionaire friends, he spent lots of time playing golf at Augusta National, GA. “The gang [all his millionaire friends] made Eisenhower a member at Augusta, built him a cottage there, and put in a fish pond, well stocked with bass, for his private use” (p. 239). After Eisenhower became president, he even played with Bobby Jones. “Ike played golf with the world’s most famous golfer, Bobby Jones; he vowed to return often” (p. 316). So cool!
7. Being so long in the military, Eisenhower had practically been a smoker his entire life. That is, until he quit cold turkey after experiencing some serious stomach issues. “While he was at Key West, Eisenhower had been told by Snyder that he would have to cut down from four packs of cigarettes per day to one. After a few days of limiting his smoking, Eisenhower decided that counting his cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all, and he quit. He never had another cigarette in his life, a fact that amazed the gang, his other friends, the reporters who covered his activities and the public” (p. 244).
8. The Eisenhower campaign of 1952 would be the last “old-school” campaign in American history. “It was the last whistle-stop barnstormer campaign. All the hoopla of American politics was there. The train would stop; the local Republicans would have the crowd waiting; Eisenhower would appear on the rear platform, accompanied by Mamie; he would deliver a set speech that concentrated on cleaning up the mess in Washington and asking the audience to join him in his ‘crusade’; the whistle sounded; they were off again” (p. 276).
9. I’m almost tempted to include this story under the Nixon bio but since it involves Eisenhower’s presidency, I’m just going to go ahead with it. In the middle of the 1952 campaign, issues with Nixon, as vice president, arose. The problem was that Nixon, through his campaign speeches, lambasted the Truman administration and the Democrats with accusations of corruption and crookedness in Washington. Unfortunately, a story then hit the papers accusing Nixon of having a secret monetary fund that allowed him to live above his means. Nixon countered this with another accusation—that this story was a Communist smear. Eisenhower’s aides pleaded with Ike to lose Nixon but Eisenhower decided to see what the American public had to say about the whole matter. He made Nixon get on public TV, give a speech explaining the fund and then had the public decide whether he should keep Nixon on the ticket. “At the end of his speech, Nixon had asked viewers to write or wire the RNC as to whether or not he should remain on the ticket, a bold attempt to take the decision out of Eisenhower’s hands”( p. 281). The public approved of Nixon’s speech and Eisenhower kept him as the Republican VP candidate but the two men would never be close.
10. In the last week of the 1952 campaign, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated. “In ten weeks, he [Eisenhower] would become the most powerful man in the world. (Just how powerful was exemplified by an event that occurred on the last weekend of the campaign. On November 1, at Eniwetok, the United States exploded its first hydrogen device, 150 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Japan)” (p. 287).
11. Eisenhower renamed Camp David after his grandson. (It was originally named Shangri-La by FDR).
12. Because of post-war difficulties around the world, Eisenhower asked Congress to give him more leeway when it came to declaring war. “For the first time in American history, the Congress had authorized the President in advance to engage in a war at a time and under circumstances of his own choosing” (p. 382).
13. We can thank the Eisenhowers for our intestate highways and the way they look. It was due to Mamie that there was a highway beautification program put into place for flowers and trees to be planted along freeways and highways. Eisenhower though was more concerned with the state of the roads. After West Point, he had to drive cross-country for the Army and was appalled at not only the state of the roads but the increase in traffic. Also, in case of war, Eisenhower knew the country needed good roads and possible landing places for aircraft. “To him, it was an ideal program for the federal government to undertake. First, the need was clear and inescapable. Second, a unified system could only be erected by the federal governemtn. Third, it was a public-worlds program on a massive scale, indeed the largest public-works program in history, which meant that the government could put millions of men to work without subjecting itself to the criticism that this was ‘makework’ of the WPA or PWA variety” (p. 387). The Eisenhower Interstate and Defense Highway System made sure to connect all the major cities of the United States through well-kept highways and that one out of every five miles must be straight in case aircraft need to make emergency landings in time of war.
14. And let's not forget one of the greatest feats of engineering of all time--the Saint Lawrence Seaway! It had been debated in Congress, off and on, for over fifty years and with the help of Eisenhower, it finally passed.

I liked this book. Even though it’s rather obvious that the author really likes Eisenhower, he does try to be fair about Ike’s faults as well. Ambrose gives all the myriad mistakes that Ike makes during the war with his slow strategy and inadvised cautiousness. He also lightly criticizes some of Eisenhower’s acts as president, including his reluctance to aid desegregation. In fact, I was a little disappointed in the fact that Eisenhower did not aid, nor want, desegregation to occur. He refused to condone it, due primarily to the fact that his friends were mainly white Southerners, and it was only when someone forced his hand that he had to uphold the Supreme Court. There was also his affair, so-to-speak, with Kay Summersby.

Ambrose himself tells us his goal. “The aim of this work is to explain and describe this man, to record his accomplishments and failures, his triumphs and shortcomings, his personal life and his personality. In the process, I hope that I convey some sense of what a truly extraordinary person he was, and of how much all of us who live in freedom today owe him” (p. 12). As you can tell, Ambrose is out front about his admiration for Ike. In fact, a few paragraphs before, he states that “Eisenhower was one of the outstanding leaders of the Western world of this century” (p. 11). Ambrose can also be a little poetic about the problems facing this great man and how he handled things. “It all came down to Eisenhower. He was the funnel through which everything passed. Only his worries were infinite, only he carried the awesome burden of command. This position put enormous pressure on him, pressure that increased geometrically with each day that passed” (p. 128).

I thought it was funny, and also rather amazing, that Eisenhower was in such good shape for his age. In fact, his age was never something the Democrats could throw in his face. During the campaign of 1952, “He carried out a brutal schedule. So brutal, indeed, that the Democrats never dared make an issue of his age. At sixty-one, he was a much more vigorous, active, energetic campaigner than Stevenson, who was nine years his junior. He traveled more than his opponent, spoke more, held more press conferences, and never displayed the kind of utter exhaustion that Stevenson sometimes did” (p. 277).

More things that I liked about this book were the copious pictures and battle maps included. I have a secret: I love maps of battles! I can’t help it. When I went to Waterloo in Belgium, what do think was my one purchase there? That’s right—a map of the battlefield with big colorful arrows depicting Napoleon, Wellington and Blucher. It’s so exciting. Beside I’m very visual and a map of a battlefield is like gold to me. Anyways, Ambrose includes maps of the North Africa campaign, the Italian campaign, and even D-Day. Awesome! He also gives a really comprehensive and instructive account of D-Day that I hadn’t known before.

All in all, I have to agree somewhat with Ambrose’s diagnosis—Eisenhower was a pretty cool guy for the most part. In fact, I think that I would have liked him (had we been contemporaries). I could see us hanging out because, let’s be honest, he and I have a lot in common. In summation, I, also, like Ike!

#34 Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)

Wahoo! Only 9 presidential bios to go! As you can tell, I’m just a little elated over the fact that the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter by the day. On the other hand, I will continue to do justice to the remaining phew (hahahaha…look at that pun! I’m awesome!)

So. Eisenhower. What I already knew about Eisenhower could be boiled down to random fragments from AP US History (such as the U2 incident), brief appearances in the FDR and Truman bios, and my uncle’s rather substantial political pins collection (I particularly liked the “I Like Ike” ones). One thing I was sure of though was that Ike deserved a larger than usual bio and so I went a-searching. I was ecstatic to find that not only was there a sizeable Ike biography readily available but it was also written by that paragon of American historical academic literature himself—Stephen E. Ambrose. If you’ve spent anytime perusing American history books then you’re bound, sooner or later, to run across old Stephen Ambrose. What’s ideal in this instance is that he actually got to interview Eisenhower, among other things. This may mean that he’s probably a little more biased towards Eisenhower than not but I was definitely willing to take that chance. After all, I’m running out of presidents and I desperately wanted to include Mr. Ambrose on my acclaimed list of authors before the end. Yay! (PS I am such a dork!)

I read, therefore, Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen E Ambrose (Simon and Schuster: New York, 1990). I just have to mention the totally cheesy and also rather creepy cover to this book. Huh. Check it out->

Dwight was the last American president to be born in the nineteenth century on October 14, 1890. His parents were Mennonites and they would have a total of seven boys, of which Dwight was square in the middle. When he was just one year old, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, where Ike grew up and where his father became a mechanic. While there, Ike attended the local public schools where he excelled at spelling, math, military history, and sports! He displayed early signs of leadership qualities, especially in high school, when he instituted the Abilene HS Athletic Association. During his freshman year of high school, Dwight fell seriously ill. After scraping his knee, it got infected and there were moments when they thought it would need to be amputated. Dwight held firm however, and the dreadful moment passed, leaving him intact.

His love of military history indicated that he should attend college at West Point and in 1911 that is precisely what he did. After four successful years (and several pranks later), he graduated and was assigned to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. While there he met and fell in love with Mamie (otherwise known as Mary Geneva Doud) and they were married on July 1, 1916.

In 1917, Eisenhower was promoted to captain in the army and he looked forward to heading overseas to take part in the Great War. However, Ike turned out to be just too good at organization and training to let go. The army instead sent him to Fort Olgethorpe, GA, where he trained officers, to Fort Meade, MD, and finally to Camp Colt, Pennsylvania for tank training. It was during this time that Eisehower and Patton became good friends because they both realized the importance of the tanks in warfare. By now the war was over and Eisenhower would forever rue the fact that he was actually in the Army and missed it.

Unfortunately, another casualty was claimed in the guise of Eisenhower’s small son, “Icky.” In 1920, the four-year-old contracted scarlet fever and died. Distracted with grief, the Eisenhowers were glad to get away by being transferred to Panama on the staff of General Cooper. After four years of working together, Cooper saw good things in Eisenhower and referred him to the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Kansas. “The course brought out the best in Eisenhower, his ability to master detail without getting bogged down in it, his talent for translating ideas into action, his positive (almost eager) reaction to pressure, his mastery of his profession, and his sense of being a team player (the emphasis of the course was on the smooth functioning of the machine). When the final rankings were posted, he stood first in his class” (p. 42).

Upon graduation, Eisenhower decided to take an unusual but very interesting job. He and Mamie were sent to Paris by General Pershing where Ike then wrote a history of the American Army in France during the last war. “Pershing was so pleased, in fact, that he sent Eisenhower to the Army War College for a year, then to Paris to study the ground and expand the history” (p. 43). It was a pleasant interlude.

But by 1929, it was back to the grindstone when Eisenhower was placed under General Douglas MacArthur. He served under MacArthur for several years in the United States and then under him from 1935-39 when he was transferred to the Philippines. In 1936, Eisenhower was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. Unfortunately, MacArthur and Eisenhower butted heads on so many occasions that when WWII began, Eisenhower begged Washington to reassign him. They complied and he returned to the United States in 1940 to train troops. He became a full colonel.

While in the US, Eisenhower greatly impressed the reigning brass, especially General George Marshall, the military Chief of Staff. On June 8, 1942, Eisenhower was promoted to head the European Theater of Operations and so he (not Mamie) moved to London. There he was given a particularly attractive chauffeur, Kay Summersby, and the two quickly became good friends. Over the years, she would stay by Eisenhower’s side as his secretary and follow him wherever he went. There were widespread rumors that they were having an affair and even later on, Kay admitted as much, except that they had never consummated it. Mamie was very unhappy with the whole situation.

In conjunction with the British, the Americans decided to invade North African and dislodge the Germans. To do this, they instituted Operation Torch and placed Eisenhower over the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF). “Ike’s life was an unending series of conferences, meetings, debates, trips and inspections” (p. 78). Eisenhower faced several troubles in North Africa. The first one occurred when he allowed all the French forces (already on the continent) to be placed under a very shady guy named Darian. Then Eisenhower, when battling the Germans, displayed a worrying tendency towards caution at the point of attack. Nevertheless, the AEF captured Tunis on May 13, 1943 and took many German prisoners.

Eisenhower and the AEF were then told to take Italy. Mussolini had already been deposed by this time but the Germans were still controlling the country. The invasion of Sicily began on July 1, 1943 and Eisenhower did not handle these tactics too well either. Instead of going in for the quick win, he took his time and the war dragged on. The AEF eventually neutralized Sicily and then began the invasion of the Italian mainland. More long, drawn-out battles.

Despite all this though, Eisenhower was chosen by FDR to head Operation Overload, the invasion of France. “It was the most coveted command in the history of warfare” (p. 114). Actually Eisenhower got the job because Marshall, who wanted this position, was needed more in Washington which meant that someone else needed to command the invasion. From what I understand, Eisenhower’s major job in all this (considering that he did not command the individual units) was to coordinate all the units together and make sure that they each had the proper number of ammunition, transportation, and air support. It was also his decision to launch the invasion by deciding upon the most propitious day. Originally, D-Day was scheduled for May 1st but Eisenhower did not like the weather and moved it back to June 6th. As we all know, that day was perfect and the AEF got its first toehold into the northern region of France.

By August 1944, France was retaken from the Germans but it was slow going after that. In fact, there was a very costly German counteroffensive that Eisenhower failed to foresee, which set the process back months. However, by May, 1945, Germany was surrounded by the Allies and the Russians and so they surrendered (V-E Day) through the armistice at Reims. “For Eisenhower, the weeks that followed were full of activity—making arrangements with the Russians, occupation duties, diplomatic difficulties, redeploying the American troops in Europe to the Pacific, entertaining visiting VIPs—but most of his energy went into the hectic, exhausting, satisfying, prolonged celebration” (p. 205). Eisenhower was named the head of the American Occupation Zone in Germany and did his best to uphold the American principles there, including de-Nazification which caused a rift with Patton. De-Nazification allowed no former Nazis to hold office or conduct business in Germany. The problem with this, as Patton averred, was that there were no good people who were not former Nazis. After all, the way to get along in the Third Reich was to pretend to go along with Hitler. But Eisenhower was adamant.

“If being the head of an occupation force in Germany had been a thankless and unwelcome task, being Chief of Staff of the US Army as it demobilized was worse” (p. 219). It was true—Marshall’s tenure as Chief of Staff was soon over and Eisenhower was the obvious choice to fill his place. “Eisenhower anticipated, correctly, interminable battles with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the issues of universal military training and unification of the armed services, and battles with Congress over the issues of demobilization and the size and strength of the postwar Army” (p. 219).

Eisenhower served the next two years with distinction but in 1948, it was time for him to retire (the Chief of Staff was a two-year position). “As a five-star general, he was technically on active duty for life, and thus drew a salary of $15,000 per year. But he had no savings, owned no property, stocks or bonds” (p. 233). The crisis was solved when Columbia University in New York offered Eisenhower the presidency of the college. The Eisenhowers did not want to move to New York City but the position was a good one with very little to do. Unfortunately, over the years that Eisenhower was president of Columbia, there was bad blood between him and the university. Apparently the way that generals handle things and the way that academics do are two totally different things. But even though he was unhappy in his work, Eisenhower continued to stay active. He wrote his war memoirs; he also had a full life with his many friendships. Eisenhower had come to know and respect many millionaires and he spent lots of time staying at their various vacation homes, playing golf and fishing and card games.

It was with relief though that Truman appointed Eisenhower as the first Supreme Commander of NATO in 1950. Eisenhower moved to Europe to take up his position but faced issues there from the start. The main problem was the fact that not enough countries could supply men for the NATO army. So Eisenhower decided that Germany would need to contribute but France freaked out about that. There was bitter fighting and really nothing was accomplished while Ike was on duty. He also heavily promoted a unified Europe but that also did not pan out.

Eisenhower’s millionaire friends—let’s be honest—were mainly Republican and it was quite apparent to them that although the war had ended years ago, Eisenhower still retained an almost abnormal popularity in the United States. They worked on him and finally got him to declare his candidacy for president for the 1952 election. Running against him was Adlai Stevenson of the Democratic Party. This campaign also was one of the dirtiest in American history. “Taken all together, 1952 is recalled as one of the bitterest campaigns of the twentieth century, and the one that featured the most mudslinging. Few, if any, of the participants could look back on it with pride” (p. 285). During the campaign, Eisenhower brazenly declared that he would end the Korean War and it is believed that this statement was one of the reasons that he eventually won the election. “The response was enthusiastic. The nation’s number-one hero, her greatest soldier and most experienced statesman, was promising to give his personal attention to the nation’s number-one problem. It was reassuring, it was exciting, it was exactly what people wanted to hear” (p. 285-86).

“It was a smashing victory” (p. 286) when Dwight Eisenhower became the 34th President of the United States of America and the first Republican one in twenty years. Ike immediately got in a plane and traveled to Korea to view the war firsthand. By 1953, the war was effectively over. On the domestic front, there was a growing problem with the power of Senator Joseph McCarthy over the minds of most Americans. People urged Eisenhower to simply denounce him but McCarthy was a Republican and Ike knew he couldn’t just do that. “So while McCarthy had to be destroyed, his followers had to be educated and brought back into the mainstream, not alienated. The best way to do that, Eisenhower thought, was to destroy McCarthy by ignoring him, or by letting him destroy himself” (p. 309). This eventually (McCarthy destroyed himself) occurred after his crazy HUAC army hearing in 1954.

Eisenhower was lucky—he was able to appoint the Chief Justice to the Supreme Court and he chose one Earl Warren. This appointment was significant because in 1954, a major court case (better known as Brown vs the Board of Education) was tried. The vote was unanimous—all nine justices upheld the fact that segregation was unconstitutional and there was no such thing as separate but equal. Eisenhower had a lot of southern millionaire friends and was unwilling to agree with the court. In the end, he was extremely reluctant to use any sort of force on the white southerners or to stand out against segregation in any way.

That same year the French lost Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu and there were Geneva Summit meetings to discuss disarmament between the Cold War powers. In 1955, Eisenhower suffered his first heart attack and had to take time off but he was well enough, by his doctors standards, to be able to run for reelection the next year. He won again against Adlai Stevenson but was faced immediately with several crises overseas. The first one was the rampant riots running across Eastern Europe. Native people tried to overthrow the Soviet regimes in their countries but the insurrections were brutally put down by the Russians (Hungary is a good example.) Also the year before, Nasser, in Egypt, had nationalized the Suez Canal which severely pissed off Great Britain and France. Those two countries then got together in secret and made a special pact with Israel. If Israel would go to war against Egypt (financed by England and France, that is) then they could march into Egypt, restore peace, and grab the Canal right back. The plan was put into effect, Israel started bombing Egypt and the whole world was shocked. Eisenhower, instead of siding with America’s usual allies, backed Egypt because it was their canal anyways!

Even though Eisenhower was not a fan of segregation, he was the president of the United States and his job was to uphold the law, interpreted by the courts. Therefore, when the governor of Arkansas called out the police to keep nine African American students out of Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, Eisenhower saw that the time had come to act. He sent the National Guard to make sure that the school was integrated and the rest of the south had to toe the line as well. Also that year the Russians were successful in sending the first satellite, Sputnik, to the moon. This event produced a huge wave of shock, fear and hysteria across the United States because Americans believed that since the Soviets had beaten us in the race to space, the terror threat was even greater and more likely. Eisenhower had to spend the rest of his term commenting on this eventuality which probably lead, in some degree, to the stroke that he suffered that year. In an effort to allay suspicion that he was not doing enough for the space industry, he created NASA.


Eisenhower was having problems with Cuba, after an armed uprising placed Fidel Castro in charge. Ike worked behind the scenes with the CIA to try to get rid of Castro but nothing came of this under his administration. After a small American invasion of Lebanon (to show strength in the Middle East), Eisenhower traveled to Germany, France, and England to work out policy. Khrushchev, head of the Soviet Union, even visited the United States for two weeks and invited Ike to Russia in return but then an unfortunate thing happened. In 1960, a US-issued U-2 spy plane was shot down over the USSR taking covert pictures and the Russians captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, alive. Eisenhower denied the whole thing and ended up looking quite stupid when the Soviets exploited the whole matter in front of the world.

1960, however, was also the year that Eisenhower retired from office when John F Kennedy won the presidential election. In retirement, he and Mamie returned to their farm in Gettysburg, PA and in certain matters, Ike became an advisor both to JFK and Johnson. In 1965, he suffered a second heart attack and in ’68 a third. On March, 28, 1969, Dwight Eisenhower died of heart issues.

#33 Harry S Truman Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Harry S Truman
1. Harry didn’t have a middle name because the “S” never stood for anything.
2. In 1947, Truman signed the National Defense Act which did away with the cabinet positions of Army and Navy and replaced them with a Secretary of Defense. This act also created the Joint Chiefs and the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to keep the United States from becoming completely militarized.
3. The steelworker’s strike in 1946 was the largest in history. “When 800,000 steelworkers walked off the job in mid-January—the biggest work stoppage in the country’s history—and automobile workers, glassmakers, telephone operators, electric utilities employees, and numerous other industrial laborers struck in protest against inadequate wages, fringe benefits, and working conditions, Truman had no effective response other than please to both sides to consider the broader needs of the nation” (p. 39).
4. With the backing of the United States, the UN, on November 29, 1947, voted on a partition plan to create the nation of Israel.
5. Truman was the first president since Lincoln to face the growing civil rights issues. “On February 2, Truman fulfilled his promise by asking Congress to enact comprehensive civil rights legislation. It was an unprecedented presidential request. He urged an antilynching law; expanded protection for the right to vote and elimination in particular of poll taxes that denied blacks access to polls in seven southern states; a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission; and an end to racial discrimination on interstate transportation facilities. He also promised to issue executive orders ending segregation in the federal government and in the armed services” (p. 71).
6. The election of 1948 was a famous one, primarily because due to picture of Truman holding aloft the newspaper proclaiming that the other guy had won. The amazing thing was not the fact that Truman won but the fact that everyone believed he wouldn’t. How did this happen? “In October, the polls, the newspapers, the political pundits and leaders in both parties gave Truman little chance of winning…To almost everyone’s amazement on Election Day, Truman defeated Dewey by more than two million popular votes, winning twenty-eight states to Dewey’s sixteen and Thurmond’s four, decisively beating Dewey in the Electoral College by a 303 to 189 margin. Embarrassed pollsters explained their miscalculation by saying that they stopped polling too soon or failed to track shifts in voter sentiment in the last days of the campaign, when a seismic shift had occurred” (p. 82-83).
7. In 1950, Truman gave the go-ahead to develop the hydrogen bomb.
8. Two Puerto Ricans tried to assassinate Truman on November 1, 1950. “They managed to kill one guard and wounded two others, but one of the would-be assassins was killed and the other captured before they could break into the house and shoot Truman, who was taking an afternoon nap in a upstairs bedroom” (p. 111). Why would they want to kill Truman? “They wished to call the world’s attention to a demand for Puerto Rico’s independence from US control, which had existed since the Spanish-American War in 1898” (p. 110). The lone assassin was sentenced to death but Truman commuted his sentence to life in prison. He was eventually pardoned by Carter in 1981.
9. It was during Truman’s administration that the 22nd amendment was passed and ratified. It stated “that presidents could no longer be elected to more than two terms” (p. 131.)

I can’t say that I really enjoyed this book on Truman. One problem was, and this is hardly the author’s fault, the fact that the author clearly didn’t care for Truman and so I found myself not caring for Truman either. Boo. Like I mentioned earlier, Truman is my mom’s favorite president and all I read about in this book were the mistakes he made and the problems that he caused. Of all the presidents, I almost want to read another bio of this one so that I can get a clearer picture of this guy.

It also didn’t help that Dallek did not give a complete picture of who Truman was. Most of these biographies from the American Presidents Series do a great job, in an extremely limited space, of showing the entire lives of the presidents. However, I felt like Dallek was only concerned with Truman’s presidential period and thus gave his early life short-shrift. Truman’s pre-presidential life was stuffed into the first chapter in a few pages only and so it was impossible to get some sense of who this guy really was and what was interesting and different about him. And trust me—you hear all about, in gory detail, the corruption, the foreign and domestic issues and everything else that plagued Truman’s administration. The lack of detail about Truman’s private life extends all the way to the last page when Dallek merely says that Truman died with no reason why. I actually had to wiki it in an effort to sate my curiosity.

In spite of Dallek’s heavy-handling of Truman, glimpses of his character manage to filter through. I could tell that Truman, for all his bumbling political issues, was a straight-shooter for the most part and had a wide…um…variety of verbal expressions to convey his moods. Here’s a good example: “He [Truman] believed justice required an effective response to the plight of the Jews but he resented the unrelenting pressure of the White House from Jewish Americans for help in transporting hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine, where they could settle in a new homeland. ‘Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here on earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?’ he said at a cabinet meeting, venting his frustration” (p. 64). On another funny note, I enjoyed the term “To err is Truman” (p. 36).

For some reason, I’m personally disappointed in Truman’s presidential blunders. His background of small-time politician, haberdasher and farmer was hardly adequate preparation for dealing with the final end of the greatest war to that point, post-war domestic woes (including labor, civil rights, inflation issues), de-mobilization on a massive scale, foreign problems with the Soviet Union, China, Korea, etc., a tremendous Red Scare, the arms race, and all the little things. I’m more than a little amazed that we made it through those crazy years after WWII and just by writing this out, my admiration for Truman rose just a little more.