https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3SOrYf1_ng
And we think our politics are vacuous. In 1952 the Republicans, for the first time in 2o years, won a Presidential election. Eisenhower as standard bearer was an attractive candidate. As the head of SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, he had headed the successful liberation of Western Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany. As a political candidate Ike said little except that he would fix what was wrong in Washington. As a newcomer he was above the conservative-liberal split in the Republican party. His was a classic personality campaign, relying upon the fact that most Americans liked and trusted him. It worked. Eisenhower won with 55% of the vote, 442 electoral votes, and breached the Democrat firewall of the Solid South, taking Virginia, Tennessee and Florida, commencing the rebirth of the Republican party in the states of the Old Confederacy. The Republicans also took the House, the last time the Republicans would take the House until 1994, and the Senate. For the generation that came of age during the New Deal, this was a change of epic proportions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE9rxYNS1Y0
Suggestion: Buy Eisenhower silver looking dollars. They are cheap on Ebay, etc but should increase in value as the times ahead deteriorate.
Note, the adults were still in the room during the Eisenhower Administration, so three balanced budgets were submitted in eight years. The budgets covering two of the remaining five years were coincident with business recessions. That for another year was coincident with a business recession and the wind-down of the Korean War. NB, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson were in charge of the congressional committee architecture for six of the eight years Eisenhower was in office. We used to be better people than we are now.
Eisenhower in one sense was the most qualified person ever elected to the office. His experience as an executive was second to none. The problem was that he was simply not interested in wide swaths of public policy and had no domestic legislative program at all. After 1954, he likely couldn’t get much past Congress even if he had a program.
One of the recurring themes in Rick Atkinson’s three ETO books is Eisenhower’s development as supreme commander – from rookie in North Africa to high effectiveness in 1944 and 1945. He became less fallible and flawed than others.
George C. Marshall may have been a better over all executive.
During Ike’s eight years, the USA somehow largely climbed out of the huge national debt load from WWII. .
MD – uninvited advice: Be sure those Ike dollars are 90% silver.
Uninvited history lesson: Before Weimar Germany hyper-inflation, a Herr Stinnes borrowed vast amounts of German marks and poured them into his coal, steel, and shipping companies. He kept gold in Switzerland, and made investments in foreign markets. When hyperinflation struck, Stinnes was able to repay his debts with the massively devalued German marks. But Stinnes’ hard and foreign currency assets weren’t affected by the hyperinflation. They held their value. His businesses and investments flourished, making him one of the wealthiest men in the world.
In January 1919, an ounce of gold was worth 170 Mark. In November 1923, it cost 87 trillion Mark.
Does anyone here think Xi Jinping and his puppet Chinese Joe have the answer?
One of the recurring themes in Rick Atkinson’s three ETO books is Eisenhower’s development as supreme commander – from rookie in North Africa to high effectiveness in 1944 and 1945.
As a battlefield commander Eisenhower was worse than useless. As a strategic commander keeping an unwieldy alliance together and giving overall direction to talented and hard to deal with men like Montgomery and Patton, he was superb.
I was told, by my family, that my first complete sentence was “I like Ike.” Eventually, it actually sank in.