Channels, Fall 2020

Channels • 20 20 • Volume 5 • Number 1 Page 59 shakers of the White House during this time, as compared to the President who was perceived to be quite uninvolved. Sherman Adams, the White House Chief of Staff for Eisenhower, published a memoir of his time serving the President in 1961 titled First-Hand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration. Adams was, for his six-year tenure as Chief of Staff, one of the most powerful men in Washington. He was the person through whom all of Eisenhower’s paperwork, personal meetings, and preliminary information was funneled. In his words, he got to work side-by- side with and see “a great military leader, under intense pressures, in sickness as well as in health, applying himself to the responsibilities of the presidency.” 69 Adams was the character who, in Eisenhower’s administration, could engage in pitched polit ical conflict on behalf of the President, but at the same time enable Eisenhower “to remain aloof from the fisticuffs of the battling parties.” 70 He was a valuable political colleague and friend to Eisenhower; Adam’s First -Hand Report shows the feelings to be mutual. He writes that he learned much from Eisenhower as leader and found much to admire within the man. Adams spoke often with Eisenhower about the responsibilities and demands of the Presidential office and how “the President must have authority to d elegate more work and responsibilities to others,” so as to free him to devote his attention to the bigger and more pressing matters. 71 This, Adams writes, was a hallmark of Eisenhower’s style, and one of the reasons he was criticized harshly. Adams, as one of Ike’s most trusted men, was a person to whom much was delegated, but he also attested that simply because the President delegated it to him did not mean the President no longer cared. It was just a matter of prioritization. John Foster Dulles, like Sh erman Adams, was an essential figure in Eisenhower’s administration. As Secretary of State for Eisenhower, he took his duties with utmost seriousness, and worked his hardest to do his job well. Alongside Sherman Adams, Dulles quickly became one of the most powerful and prominent men in Washington in the 1950s. He was often cited as the man who ran the United States’ foreign affairs during this time; however, what critics did not know was that while John Foster Dulles was the face of foreign affairs, Eisenhower and Dulles collaborated on nearly everything. The two men had what Fred Greenstein termed a “collegial working relationship.” 72 They stayed in touch almost daily. 73 While it may seem on the face that Dulles was the “senior colleague,” Eisenhower was the one who made the final decisions policy- wise, “and Dulles executed them.” 74 69 Sherman Adams, First-Hand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 2. 70 Ibid, 295. 71 Ibid, 460. 72 Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, 87. 73 Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 151. 74 Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, 87.