Eisenhower

As you may have heard, John Eisenhower, son of former President Dwight Eisenhower has declared that he is voting for Kerry. A nice moral victory I suppose. But this provides an opportunity to consider how Dwight Eisenhower would fit into modern American politics. Usually these counterfactual arguments are fruitless and this one may be as well. However, looking a bit at Eisenhower's beliefs may help us place the current political climate into perspective.

Eisenhower came to the White House at a very interesting time in American history. Democrats had controlled the White House for 20 years and had radically changed American life, instituting the New Deal and Fair Deal. However, since 1946 Republicans had controlled Congress and America was certainly headed in a conservative direction. When Eisenhower entered the White House in early 1953, McCarthyism was at its height and with the election of a Republican president there was significant pressure from the conservative wing of the Republican party to dismantle the New Deal. Wisely, Eisenhower chose not to do that. If anything, he ratified the New Deal by being a Republican who didn't dismantle that. In fact, in some ways he expanded government presence in American life, primarily through the interstate highway system, the largest public works project in American history. Eisenhower recognized that to get rid of social security and other popular programs would kill the Republican party for many years and that rather than pander to the right-wing base, he would lead--a nice contrast to today.

Eisenhower was undoubtedly a conservative man. He did not believe in radical change, which is really the sign of a conservative. He believed in relatively balanced budget and a realistic foreign policy. Of course there are many Eisenhower initiatives that I disagree with, especially in foreign policy--the development of extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons accelerated under his administration, and the use of the CIA to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala was inexcusable, especially Iran considering the long-term disaster that led to for US foreign policy. His leadership on civil rights was not exactly stellar either.

However, who among us would not take John Foster Dulles over Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. in running America's foreign policy? He could be a bastard, but at least he was competent. Of course, Powell is our Secretary of State today, which was Dulles' position under Eisenhower, but Powell has so little control over foreign policy that he is essentially irrelevant.

Overall then, would Eisenhower vote for Kerry or Bush. This is an impossible question to answer. But I do think that today's Democratic party has a lot more in common with Eisenhower than today's Republican party, something that is personified in John Eisenhower deciding to vote Democrat for the first time at age 82. Both Eisenhower and the Democrats believe in a balanced budget. Democrats, at least the moderate and conservative wings of the party, are advocating a foreign policy based more about realism, negotiation, and building alliances than the Republicans, positions I believe Eisenhower would more or less approve of. The Democratic party is really fairly conservative--they like Eisenhower, want to hold on to the fundamental aspects of the New Deal while today's Republicans want to destroy those gains of 70 years ago.

I think this discussion illustrates how far right the American political system has gone in the last 50 years. Today's Democratic party is now where the moderate Republicans were in 1954. Today's Republican party is where the far right of the Republican party was in 1954, out there with the John Birch Society. Mainstream Democrats of the mid 1950s in America, such as Adlai Stevenson would be well to the left of the Democratic party of today. This is disturbing. For many reasons--the wealth of many Americans, right-wing radio, Fox News, lack of Democratic leadership, etc.--this nation has moved far to the right over the last half-century with immense consequences to us and to the rest of the world. Only when the left shows real leadership will the equilibrium of the mid-20th century return to American political life.