Remembering Dwight David Eisenhower, Part 2: The Presidential Years

Teamwork & Prudent Decision-Making

Dwight David Eisenhower was known as a man of dispassionate and independent judgment. Even his political opponents acknowledged that he placed the nation’s vital interests ahead of personal gain or partisan advantage. He enjoyed great acclaim and broad public support upon taking office as President of the United States. He was a highly confident individual who approached the presidency as a collective institution and delegated broadly to his subordinates while keeping all of the truly important decisions of the day in his own hands.

Eisenhower’s approach to decision-making was not just dispassionate, it was also wise. As General of the Army, Eisenhower sought broad advice from his top officers during the war years. As President he skillfully utilized his cabinet and National Security Council to draw on the broad advice of experienced individuals. He insisted on broad debate and probing discussion of issues, and he showed an impressive ability to synthesize a broad array of advice in order to render prudent decisions.

Robert Bowie, who served as the State Department’s representative on the Planning Board of the National Security Council (NSC) and observed the president firsthand in meetings of the NSC, had this to say about Eisenhower’s approach to decision-making as president:

Often the discussion would be marked by impressive analysis by various individuals who, as intellectuals, struck you as sometimes more articulate than he. But at the end, I felt that he frequently came out with a common-sense appraisal . . . which was wiser than the input which he’d received from the separate advisors. Somehow, almost in an intuitive way, in a way which quite clearly wasn’t a one, two, three lawyer’s type of analysis, nevertheless he came out with a net judgment which often struck me as wiser or more sensible than the specific positions taken by any individual.[i] 

Unlike his immediate predecessors and successors, Eisenhower harked back to George Washington’s example by calling weekly meetings of the cabinet accompanied by written position papers to shape cabinet discussion. In order to facilitate the preparation of formal agendas and cabinet papers, Eisenhower created the first cabinet secretariat in American history. Modeled after the British cabinet secretary system, which Eisenhower worked with and admired during World War II, the cabinet secretariat enabled Eisenhower’s cabinet to foster broad, statesmanlike debates on the key issues of the day.

Former Attorney General Herbert Brownell said of Eisenhower: “He appreciated comments that were made on all subjects that came up. I think that’s one reason he liked [Secretary of State] Foster Dulles and [Secretary of the Treasury] George Humphrey. They freely commented on other department’s operations.” The cabinet meetings, Brownell concluded, “created a sense of unity in Washington that was almost unprecedented. We felt a loyalty to our colleagues as well as to him.”[ii]

A collegial and corporate sense of responsibility pervaded Eisenhower’s approach to administration. Eisenhower was emphatic in discouraging special pleading by members of the cabinet. As he put it: “I do not believe in bringing them [cabinet officers] in one at a time, and therefore being more impressed with the most recent one you hear than by earlier ones. You must get courageous men, men of strong views, and let them debate and argue with each other. You listen, and you see if there is anything that has been brought up that changes your view or enriches your view or adds to it.”[iii]

Under Eisenhower’s leadership, the National Security Council became the principal forum for the formulation and implementation of national security policy. His NSC met 366 times, with Eisenhower personally chairing 329 of those meetings—more than any other administration in American history. He created the position of Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, which the press later called the “National Security Advisor.” He expanded the professional staff of the NSC, and established two major NSC adjuncts: the Planning Board and the Operations Coordinating Board. To assist the president in administering the NSC, Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs became the principal executive officer of the council with responsibility for formulating, with the president, the agenda for NSC meetings and briefing the president on papers prepared by the Planning Board on key issues debated in the NSC. Eisenhower’s meetings of the NSC and the cabinet routinely fostered open, uninhibited discussion and debate. As political scientist Richard Fenno noted in 1959, Eisenhower was eager to “pass problems around for discussion among his advisors, listen carefully to their debates, and use them as a sounding board for his own ideas. He is apt, in other words, to do his thinking in the presence of others, in a group meeting. Most important of all, he frequently if not usually makes his final decision on the spot.”[iv]

Eisenhower’s Relations with Congress: A Leadership of Moderation and Prudence

The transition from military to political leadership was easier for Eisenhower than many observers assumed at the time. Some historians may consider it ironic that Eisenhower had such a fierce temper yet was a champion of moderation and prudence in politics. There is less irony when one considers how Eisenhower tried, usually with success, to restrain and control his temper. The search for control of his temper may in fact explain why he sought moderation as a political leader. Indeed, an essential characteristic of the leadership style of Eisenhower was his insistence on moderation, cooperation, and nonbelligerent discourse in his relations with Congress and the executive branch.

In 1963, Emmet Hughes wrote that “there may have been no aspect of Eisenhower’s presidency misunderstood so widely” as his relationship with Congress. The caricature of Eisenhower was that of a president “too lazy to lead . . . He lacked both the interest and the ingenuity to work with congressional leaders. Or, he really was intimidated by the arch-conservatives with the loudest voices in his party. Or, he was a helpless amateur ringed by professionals far more tough and determined. Or, he simply was slack of spirit and tired of body.”[v]

“All such images,” Hughes wrote, “were oddly, but profoundly, false. Far from reflecting either acquiescence or abdication, the conduct of Eisenhower’s congressional relations bespoke a most deliberate intent.”[vi] Although Eisenhower relied heavily on the cabinet and White House legislative liaison staff to foster a good working relationship with members of Congress, his personal involvement in legislative affairs was extensive and profound. Throughout his presidency he made skillful use of cabinet meetings, legislative leaders’ meetings, and private diplomacy to inform, persuade, and mobilize support for his legislative program.

From the very start, Eisenhower pursued good relations with the legislature. During his first weeks in office, he invited every member of Congress—more than five hundred in all—to a series of luncheons at the White House. Wisely, biographer Peter Lyon suggests, Eisenhower’s courtship with Congress was bipartisan in nature. He would call on Democrats no less than fifty-eight times to support the administration, “their votes providing the margin of victory when Republican defections or absences imperiled” the chances of success.[vii]

Eisenhower understood legislative politics far better than surface appearances may have suggested to less discerning observers. He was not beyond issuing instructions to his subordinates, even mild reprimands to members of his cabinet, when relations with Congress seemed strained. Such was the case in 1958 when Eisenhower wrote his secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, suggesting that greater cooperation in dealing with congressional leaders was necessary. Of particular concern to the president was Secretary Benson’s dogmatic behavior in dealing with members of Congress on the issue of price supports for farmers. Eisenhower’s carefully crafted letter to Benson stated his desire to avoid extremes in his legislative program. More importantly, Eisenhower urged Benson to develop a more flexible approach in his relations with congressional leaders, stating:

In your efforts to improve Federal programs affecting agriculture I have always supported you enthusiastically; I shall continue to do so. But in what follows I shall attempt to give you some of my thinking about the legislative procedures through which we hope to secure an improvement in those and other necessary laws. I think my text could well be the old German aphorism, “Never lose the good in seeking too long for the best,” or as some say it, “The best is always the enemy of the good.”

I was impressed by the apparent attitude of some of the leaders at the [legislative leaders] meeting Tuesday. They, while announcing their continuing approval of the flexible price support system, believe that we, the members of the Administration, are now guilty of inflexibility.[viii]

Eisenhower concluded his letter to Secretary Benson by stating: “All I want to say here is that I believe it is not good Congressional politics to fail to listen seriously to the recommendations of our own Congressional leaders . . .  I do believe that in future planning we should avoid advanced positions of inflexibility. We must have some room for maneuver, or we shall suffer for it.”[ix]

Eisenhower’s letter to Benson conveys his general philosophy of moderation in politics. He believed that leadership involves teamwork, persuasion, and, where possible, political accommodation. In his wartime working relationship with Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery, General George Patton, and other strong-willed personalities, Eisenhower had learned to grant concessions where possible but to be firm where compromise was not possible. The complexities of Eisenhower’s leadership in World War II prepared Eisenhower extraordinarily well for nearly any political scenario that he would face as president. As Blanche Cook writes, “Eisenhower’s military strategy depended on his ability to secure the trust of both Churchill and Stalin, negotiate with all the bitterly contending French factions, coordinate the frequently opposing political and military interests within his own command, and convince all the delicate personalities of the international anti-Fascist forces that he was sensitive to their specific and personal needs.”[x] Eisenhower performed these tasks brilliantly. His skill as a political as well as a military leader, which had so impressed Franklin Roosevelt, was inexplicably lost on scholars who wrote about Eisenhower’s presidency in the 1950s and 1960s.

In his widely cited book Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt argued that Eisenhower brought with him the skills of a military commander with no appreciation for the differences between military command and political persuasion. Yet Eisenhower brought to the presidency vast experience in political persuasion and articulated a sophisticated understanding of the role of persuasion in leadership long before Neustadt wrote his seminal study on presidential leadership and power. In a letter to William Phillips of June 5, 1953, for example, Eisenhower wrote: “I think it is fair to say that . . . only a leadership that is based on honesty of purpose, calmness and inexhaustible patience in conference and persuasion . . . can, in the long run, win out.”[xi] In the same letter, Eisenhower wrote: “I deplore and deprecate the table-pounding, name-calling methods that columnists so much love. This is not because of any failure to love a good fight; it merely represents my belief that such methods are normally futile.”

Eisenhower elaborated on his philosophy of leadership at a presidential press conference on November 14, 1956, in words that discredit Neustadt’s widely read criticism of Eisenhower as a military man who was in over his head in the White House. As Eisenhower put it: “Leadership is a word and a concept that has been more argued than almost any other I know. I am not one of the desk-pounding types that likes to stick out his jaw and look like he is bossing the show. I would far rather get behind and, recognizing the frailties and the requirements of human nature, I would rather try to persuade a man to go along—because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.”[xii] It is perplexing that for two decades after Eisenhower left office, scholarship in general, and Neustadt’s work in particular, did not provide a clue as to how sophisticated Eisenhower’s approach to leadership was, even though much of his wartime and presidential leadership was a matter of public record.

He succeeded in getting Congress to create an interstate highway system that created thousands of valuable jobs, enhanced commerce, and facilitated the interconnectedness of the United States for decades to come. The Eisenhower administration also worked hard to balance the books fiscally, achieving two balanced budgets. Under Eisenhower’s leadership, unemployment was consistently low, averaging 3 percent, and his policies helped keep inflation in check, averaging just 1.5 percent. These were impressive accomplishments by any standard of analysis.

Unlike many recent presidents, Eisenhower had little use for notions of a leadership dependent on charismatic popular appeals to the public in order to pressure Congress to enact the president’s program. Despite the fact that he did not believe in “going public,” and he did not create an office of public affairs to claim credit for his accomplishments, Eisenhower sustained greater popularity during his presidency than any post–World War II president other than John F. Kennedy. In the Gallup poll surveys, Eisenhower averaged a remarkably high job approval rating of 65 percent over the eight years of his presidency. His approval fell below 50 percent for only two months out of the ninety-six months that he served as chief executive. In contrast, Bill Clinton’s job approval rating, though quite good, was ten percentage points below Eisenhower’s—averaging 55.1 percent over the eight years of his presidency.[xiii] Eisenhower’s first term approval rating was a striking 69.6 percent, fully twenty points higher than Barack Obama’s first term job approval average of 49.1 percent.[xiv] President Obama’s Gallup poll approval rating for his entire eight years in office averaged 47.9 percent, seventeen points below Eisenhower. Several of Eisenhower’s Republican successors, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, plunged to abysmally low public approval ratings by the end of their presidencies. George W. Bush, for example, reached his lowest job approval rating of 25 percent in October 2008, three months before leaving office. Donald Trump’s first year job approval ratings ranged from a low of 35 percent to a high of 46 percent (during his first week in office).[xv] Ronald Reagan is the only Republican since Eisenhower to come close to his predecessor’s public approval, averaging a 52.8 percent job approval rating. And among Democrats, John F. Kennedy is the only postwar president to surpass Eisenhower with an approval rating of 70.1 percent.[xvi]

Celebrity status meant very little to Eisenhower, but dignified stature, constitutional propriety, and selfless duty meant a great deal to him. Eisenhower had of necessity relied on teamwork with the Allies to achieve victory in World War II, and he readily applied the lessons of teamwork to his leadership as chief executive of the federal government. With extraordinary adeptness and a genius for organization, Eisenhower transformed a languishing cabinet and National Security Council (NSC) into institutions of significant stature and authority. Indeed, he made more effective use of the cabinet and NSC as advisory bodies than any of his predecessors in the twentieth century, and nearly all of his successors. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush (41) came closest to Eisenhower in effectively utilizing the cabinet and NSC.

Eisenhower’s collective and institutionalized leadership helped him bring about a quick end to the war in Korea, fostered adept decision-making in keeping American forces from active engagement in Vietnam, and facilitated his ability to resist British and French colonial assertiveness during the Suez crisis of 1956. His collegial leadership also provided international support in dealing with Nikita Khrushchev’s bombastic threats against the West during the last four years of his administration. Eisenhower innovated a national security decision-making apparatus that is still a model for effective operations in the National Security Council.

The comedian and actor, Bob Hope, summarized Eisenhower’s ennobling qualities of leadership in a speech at Gettysburg College in 1990 celebrating the 100th anniversary of Eisenhower’s birth. As Hope put it:

He demonstrated that the old values such as decency, kindness, loyalty, honesty, and love of country still count for something in America. A man whose greatness . . . was made up of little things. Little things like simple and complete faith in God, faith in the fundamental goodness of his fellow man . . . integrity, compassion, humility. Some of the little things which made that smile one of the warmest smiles on earth—a smile as broad as the plains of Kansas from where he came. Ike not only represented all things American, he was America. In 1952, the most popular campaign slogan in the history of presidential politics appeared across the land—“I LIKE IKE”—from bumper stickers to balloons, TV ads to campaign buttons. Those three simple words really summed up everything that a grateful nation felt about that simple farm boy from Abilene. When all was said and done, America not only liked Ike; it loved him.[xvii]

The late Stephen Ambrose enjoyed ending some of his talks on Eisenhower by quoting what Ike had said to another biographer, Peter Lyon. In a statement that quite possibly reflects frustration with early accounts of his presidency by historians and journalists, Eisenhower said: “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration. People asked how it happened—By God, it didn’t just happen, I’ll tell you that.”[xviii]

[i] Bowie, quoted in Greenstein, Hidden-Hand Presidency, 33–34.

[ii] Herbert Brownell, Oral History Interview, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, 37–38.

[iii] Dwight D. Eisenhower, Columbia Oral History Interview, July 20, 1967, 103, Eisenhower Library.

[iv] Richard Fenno, The President’s Cabinet (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), 41.

[v] Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (New York: Atheneum, 1963), 123.

[vi] Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 123.

[vii] Peter Lyon, Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 501.

[viii] Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ezra Taft Benson, letter of March 20, 1958, Folder: DDE Diary: March 1958; Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, Box 31, Eisenhower Library.

[ix] Eisenhower to Benson, letter of March 20, 1958.

[x] Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 64.

[xi] Dwight D. Eisenhower to William Phillips, June 5, 1953, Folder: Phillips, William, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States, 1953–1961, Ann Whitman File, Letter Series, Box 25, Eisenhower Library.

[xii] Quoted in R. Gordon Hoxie, “Eisenhower and Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 4 (Fall 1983): 605.

[xiii] “Presidential Approval Ratings—Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends,” Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/Presidential-Approval-Ratings-Gallup-Historical-Statistics-Trends.aspx.

[xiv] Jeffrey M. Jones, “Obama Averages 49% Approval in First Term,” Gallup, January 21, 2013, http://www.gallup.com/poll/159965/obama-averages-approval-first-term.aspx.

[xv] “Trump Job Approval,” Gallup, http://news.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx.

[xvi] See “Job Approval Averages for U.S. Presidents Since World War II” table in Jeffrey M. Jones, “Obama Averages 47.9% Job Approval as President,” Gallup, January 20, 2017, http://www.gallup.com/poll/202742/obama-averages-job-approval-president.aspx.

[xvii] Bob Hope, “America Loved Ike,” in “The Eisenhower Centennial Celebration: A Retrospective View,” October 10–14, 1990, Gettysburg College, The Dwight D. Eisenhower Society. Former President Gerald R. Ford delivered the keynote address at the five-day Eisenhower symposium in Gettysburg.  

[xviii] Quoted in Charles W. Corddry, “He Balanced the Budget and Kept the Peace,” Baltimore Sun, October 22, 1990, 7-A.

By Phillip G. Henderson

Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the Catholic University of America.

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