Channels, Fall 2020

Channels • 20 20 • Volume 5 • Number 1 Page 53 Perceptions of Eisenhower: Then and Now As mentioned in the introduction, the critique of Eisenhower while he was in office that had characterized public perception of him for a time afterward was that he was a “Do - Nothing” President. According to Fred Greenstein, author of The Hidden-Hand Presidency, Eisenhower was viewed as an “aging hero who reigned more than he ruled and lacked the energy, motivation, and political know- how to have a significant impact on events.” 46 Richard Rovere, a political journalist for the New Yorker during the 1950s, was a vocal critic of Eisenhower, casting him as a typical American with a bland personality and dull mind that lacked interest in “the whole operating side of government.” 47 People mistook the still waters of his time as an indication that nothing was really happening and became frustrated with him for appearing to be an unengaged leader. Critics utilized the lack of observable action coming from the White House to perpetuate the characterization of Eisenhower as lazy and politically inept. It appeared to many outside the administration that Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was the one running the country. It was often assumed that the President left the governing of the country to his White House assistants, while he went off to golf or fish. Eisenhower’s public persona did not help combat this assumption – when asked questions on issues, his “meandering, garbled answers to questions at press conferences” made people wo nder whether “he grasped issues and had clear ideas about how to deal with them” at all. 48 Even though the label of “do - nothing” was often meant in a negative manner, however, it could be viewed as praise of a kind. In many ways, the “do - nothing” could sta nd for how he didn’t continue the Korean War. Eisenhower refrained from embroiling the United States in any international conflict, despite tensions running high due to the Cold War atmosphere. 49 His policies also produced a very stable, middle-of-the-road domestic sphere during his years in office. So in some ways, the critique could be turned into a positive aspect of his presidency. This popular critique, with both its negative and positive connotations, would eventually be reversed. Eisenhower’s preside ncy, as mentioned, has undergone significant work in historical revisionism due to the release of his personal and administrative papers, and a subsequent changing of popular perception of him as a less-than-spectacular president to being revealed as an involved and effective leader. Three key historians who contributed significantly to this effort by publishing seminal works on the subject are Robert Divine, Stephen Ambrose, and Fred Greenstein. Divine’s historical work, Eisenhower and the Cold War, was published in 1981, and was the first to 46 Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1982), 5. 47 Richard H. Rovere, Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), 353. 48 Pach, Jr., “Dwig ht D. Eisenhower: Life in Brief. ” 49 Ibid.