Eisenhower's Farewell Address
We’ve argued repeatedly in this space that part of Washington’s greatness as president was his willingness to walk away from power, even in circumstances where the opportunity to expand power was handed to him. He established a model that all future presidents were expected to follow. He also established another important and in many ways counter-intuitive example: that military chieftains could be trusted with executive power.
Eisenhower possessed many of Washington’s qualities. Like Washington, he had a vicious temper that he had to learn to control (as did Ford). Like Washington, he made his mark as a general before he did as a politician. Like Washington, he was something of a reluctant politician. Like Washington, his intellectual abilities were frequently underestimated. Like Washington, he understood the importance in a republic of the peaceful transferring of executive power. And, like Washington, he delivered one of the most important farewell addresses to the nation on his last day in office.
Just as Washington’s advice to the nation in his farewell address has stood the test of time, so too has Eisenhower’s. Delivered over 60 years ago, the combination of encouragement and warning remains relevant to us today.
Note the Eisenhower begins his address by thanking Congress and describing his sometimes tenuous but essential relationship to Congress. Rather than seeing the duty of the President to bypass Congress — or, more controversially, for Congress to simply yield its power to the President — Eisenhower draws our attention to a fundamental feature of our Constitutional system. We often describe it as a “separation of powers,” but the more accurate way of stating it is that we have separate institutions sharing power, and the cooperative sharing of that power can further the interests of the nation.
He then turns his attention to an important aspect of the presidency: Presidents may run for office on a domestic agenda, and that may be what gets them elected, but their time in office is both dominated and defined by foreign policy. Sixty years into the last century, this man of war lamented war's pervasiveness. Against that backdrop, Eisenhower offers this observation:
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
The claim that we are a “religious people” is typical of Eisenhower, and says a lot about mid-century American culture and a supposed (according to Will Herberg) “Protestant, Catholic, Jew” consensus. Robert Wuthnow in his The Restructuring of American Religion does an admirable job of both demonstrating this consensus and its rapid decline.
Without nodding in the direction of religion, we would have difficulty understanding Eisenhower’s most well-know part of his speech: the warning against the rising “military-industrial complex.” You want to talk about threats to our democracy? Ike saw the biggest one 60-plus years ago.
He begins this way:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
Note how Eisenhower refers to plowshares and swords. This reference to the book of Micah in the Hebrew Scripture was assumed by Ike to be both recognizable and intelligible to most Americans. He reverses the image: Micah describes what a peaceful society looks like — swords turned into plowshares — and Eisenhower suggests that we resist such a vision in favor of creating more and more swords. Those who defend republican government have always elevated the charms of rural life over the glories of battle, the bucolic plowshare over the bloody sword. Eisenhower, nodding to that tradition, reminds us that we can be a republic or we can be a great military power, but we can’t be both.
He continued:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Part of this complex was to place weapons-manufacturing or military personnel in every Congressional district in America, thus making military-related jobs a part of the constituency of every member of Congress, making it less likely they could ever get a majority committed to cutting military spending. The implications go far beyond direct influence, however. Eisenhower noted the ways in which all social institutions feel the affects — for example, educational institutions.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Eisenhower’s status as a general resulted in part from his natural political skills. Those skills translated well into the presidency, demonstrated in his understanding of what leadership in the executive branch required:
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
I think this is, in many ways, as succinct and apt a description of what is expected of our presidents as any I’ve read. If only we insisted that our candidates live up to that.
Image Courtesy of the National Archives
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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