Eisenhower Republicanism

Eisenhower Republicanism
Author: Steven T. Wagner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2006
Genre: United States
ISBN:

Despite the Republicans' commitment to limited government, free enterprise, and individual initiative, Eisenhower and his fellow liberals recognized that the federal government had to intervene in order to preserve the United States' founding principles.

Modern Republican

Modern Republican
Author: David L. Stebenne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2006-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 025311232X

"This book is an original, important, and interesting contribution to the literature on President Eisenhower and on American history in the years before and after World War II. It will make a difference in the way historians and political scientists think about a critical period of national history. Too few books have that sort of impact...." -- Michael A. McGerr, author of A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870--1920 Arthur Larson was the chief architect of moderate conservatism -- one of the most influential and least studied political forces in U.S. history. During the Eisenhower administration, Larson held three major posts: Under Secretary of Labor, Director of the United States Information Agency, and chief presidential speechwriter. In each of these roles, Larson's most important achievement was to explain clearly and cogently what the administration stood for on matters foreign and domestic. Larson's views were put forth most forcefully in A Republican Looks at His Party, published in 1956. Larson and his book provided the Eisenhower administration with "the vision thing." His limitations and disappointments also help explain Eisenhower-era conservatism. They illuminate the extent to which there was a gap between what the "Modern Republicans" believed and what they said and were able to accomplish, and why those beliefs, values, and achievements did not always mesh. Larson's ultimately unsuccessful efforts to prevent the rise of the New Right are especially enlightening, for they help to clarify why the party of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s gradually became the party of the more conservative Ronald Reagan by the 1980s. Modern Republican will enlighten readers who want to understand more fully the historical context of today's divisive political arena.

Presidential Party Building

Presidential Party Building
Author: Daniel J. Galvin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2009-09-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400831172

Modern presidents are usually depicted as party "predators" who neglect their parties, exploit them for personal advantage, or undercut their organizational capacities. Challenging this view, Presidential Party Building demonstrates that every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to build his party into a more durable political organization while every Democratic president refused to do the same. Yet whether they supported their party or stood in its way, each president contributed to the distinctive organizational trajectories taken by the two parties in the modern era. Unearthing new archival evidence, Daniel Galvin reveals that Republican presidents responded to their party's minority status by building its capacities to mobilize voters, recruit candidates, train activists, provide campaign services, and raise funds. From Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism" to Richard Nixon's "New Majority" to George W. Bush's hopes for a partisan realignment, Republican presidents saw party building as a means of forging a new political majority in their image. Though they usually met with little success, their efforts made important contributions to the GOP's cumulative organizational development. Democratic presidents, in contrast, were primarily interested in exploiting the majority they inherited, not in building a new one. Until their majority disappeared during Bill Clinton's presidency, Democratic presidents eschewed party building and expressed indifference to the long-term effects of their actions. Bringing these dynamics into sharp relief, Presidential Party Building offers profound new insights into presidential behavior, party organizational change, and modern American political development.

The Eisenhower Years

The Eisenhower Years
Author: Michael S. Mayer
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 1025
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1438119089

The 34th U.S. president to hold office, Dwight D. Eisenhower won America over with his irresistible I like Ike slogan. Bringing to the presidency his prestige as a commanding general during World War II, he worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the cold war. Pursuing the moderate policies of Modern Republicanism, he left a legacy of a stronger and more powerful nation. From his crucial role in support of Brown v. Board of Education to the National Defense Education Act, The Eisenhower Years provides a well-balanced study of these politically charged years. Biographical entries on key figures of the Eisenhower era, such as Allen W. Dulles, Joseph R. McCarthy, and Rosa Parks, combine with speeches such as the Military Industrial Complex speech, the Open Skies proposal, the disturbance at Little Rock address, Eisenhower Doctrine, and his speech after the Soviet launch of Sputnik to give an in-depth look at the executive actions of this administration.

The Age of Eisenhower

The Age of Eisenhower
Author: William I Hitchcock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451698437

A New York Times bestseller, this is the “outstanding” (The Atlantic), insightful, and authoritative account of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security; fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy; and advanced the agenda of civil rights for African-Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War and avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam. Yet he also charted a significant expansion of America’s missile technology and deployed a vast array of covert operations around the world to confront the challenge of communism. As he left office, he cautioned Americans to remain alert to the dangers of a powerful military-industrial complex that could threaten their liberties. Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William Hitchcock’s “rich narrative” (The Wall Street Journal) shows us why Ike’s stock has risen so high. He was a gifted leader, a decent man of humble origins who used his powers to advance the welfare of all Americans. Now more than ever, with this “complete and persuasive assessment” (Booklist, starred review), Americans have much to learn from Dwight Eisenhower.

The Last Liberal Republican

The Last Liberal Republican
Author: John Roy Price
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2023-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700636137

The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon’s senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price—a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller’s campaigns—joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies, and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, and President Dwight Eisenhower. Price makes a valuable contribution to our evolving scholarship and understanding of the Nixon presidency. Nixon himself lamented that he would be remembered only for Watergate and China. The Last Liberal Republican provides firsthand insight into key moments regarding Nixon’s political and policy challenges in the domestic social policy arena. Price offers rich detail on the extent to which Nixon and his staff straddled a precarious balance between a Democratic-controlled Congress and an increasingly powerful conservative tide in Republican politics. The Last Liberal Republican provides a blow-by-blow inside view of how Nixon surprised the Democrats and shocked conservatives with his ambitious proposal for a guaranteed family income. Beyond Nixon’s surprising embrace of what we today call universal basic income, the thirty-seventh president reordered and vastly expanded the patchy food stamp program he inherited and built nutrition education and children’s food services into schools. Richard Nixon even almost achieved a national health insurance program: fifty years ago, with a private sector framework as part of his generous benefits insurance coverage for all, Nixon included coverage of preexisting conditions, prescription drug coverage for all, and federal subsidies for those who could not afford the premiums. The Last Liberal Republican will be a valuable resource for presidency scholars who are studying Nixon, his policies, the state of the Republican Party, and how the Nixon years relate to the rise of the modern conservative movement.

Rule and Ruin

Rule and Ruin
Author: Geoffrey Kabaservice
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2012-01-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019992113X

The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are "Republicans in Name Only." Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney--father of Mitt Romney--conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "listen to the voices from the ghetto." Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present. Today, following the Republicans' loss of the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, moderates remain marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans. He has added a new afterword that considers the fallout from the 2012 elections.

Eisenhower and the Cold War Economy

Eisenhower and the Cold War Economy
Author: William M. McClenahan Jr.
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2011-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421403625

Throughout his two-term presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower faced the challenge of managing a period of peacetime prosperity after more than two decades of depression, war, and postwar inflation. The essential issue he addressed was how the country would pay for the deepening Cold War and the extent to which such unprecedented peacetime commitments would affect the United States economy and its institutions. William M. McClenahan, Jr., and William H. Becker explain how Eisenhower’s beliefs and his experiences as a military bureaucrat and wartime and postwar commander shaped his economic policies. They explore the macro- and microeconomic policies his administration employed to finance the Cold War while adapting Republican ideas and Eisenhower's economic principles to new domestic and foreign policy environments. They also detail how Eisenhower worked with new instruments of government policy making, such as the Council of Economic Advisers and a strengthened Federal Reserve Board. In assessing his administration's policies, the authors demonstrate that, rather than focusing overwhelmingly on international political affairs at the expense of economic issues, Eisenhower’s policies aimed to preserve and enhance the performance of the American free market system, which he believed was inextricably linked to the successful prosecution of the Cold War. While some of the decisions Eisenhower made did not follow conservative doctrine as closely as many in the Republican Party wanted, this book asserts that his approach to and distrust of partisan politics led to success on many fronts and indeed maintained and buttressed the nation's domestic and international economic health. An important and original contribution, this examination of the Eisenhower administration's economic policy enriches our understanding of the history of the modern American economy, the presidency, and conservatism in the United States.

The Roots of Modern Conservatism

The Roots of Modern Conservatism
Author: Michael D. Bowen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807834858

Between 1944 and 1953, a power struggle emerged between New York governor Thomas Dewey and U.S. senator Robert Taft of Ohio that threatened to split the Republican Party. In The Roots of Modern Conservatism, Michael Bowen reveals how this two-man b

Ike and Dick

Ike and Dick
Author: Jeffrey Frank
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1416588205

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in age and temperament. Yet the two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and their association had important consequences for their respective presidencies. In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank rediscovers these two compelling figures with the sensitivity of a novelist and the discipline of a historian. He offers a fresh view of the younger Nixon as a striving tactician, as well as the ever more perplexing person that he became. He portrays Eisenhower, the legendary soldier, as a cold, even vain man with a warm smile whose sound instincts about war and peace far outpaced his understanding of the changes occurring in his own country. Eisenhower and Nixon shared striking characteristics: high intelligence, cunning, and an aversion to confrontation, especially with each other. Ike and Dick, informed by dozens of interviews and deep archival research, traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world of recurring crises as Nixon’s ambitions grew and Eisenhower was struck by a series of debilitating illnesses. And, as the 1968 election cycle approached and the war in Vietnam roiled the country, it shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixon’s final attempt to win the White House, a change influenced by a family matter: his grandson David’s courtship of Nixon’s daughter Julie—teenagers in love who understood the political stakes of their union.