Eisenhower’s Relevance to Today

Having just completed reading a one thousand plus page, two volume biography of Dwight Eisenhower by Stephen Ambrose, my view of his presidency and importance to the twentieth century is greatly enhanced.  For twenty years he dominated American life, first in his role as Supreme Commander in World War II, followed by his presidency from 1952-1960.  Because of his role in WWII he towered over his contemporaries like no President has since.

Despite being a Republican, the right wing of the party, while respecting Eisenhower, never really embraced him.  In many ways, the reason is summed up best by Eisenhower in his farewell address when he warned about the power of the military industrial complex.   Simplifying greatly, the right (and Democrats for that matter, hard to believe in today’s world where Democrats support next to nothing defense related) criticized Eisenhower’s unwillingness to blow out the budget for uncontrolled defense spending.   Defense spending, especially on nuclear weapons, grew exponentially during these cold war years, but enough was never enough for Congress or the Department of Defense.  Only Eisenhower’s stature as the man who won WWII, which put him out of all reach to be criticized as weak on defense, allowed him to win enough of these defense versus budget battles to actually achieve a balanced budget.

His warning against the power of the military industrial complex is the most famous aspect of his farewell speech.  He was genuinely and rightly concerned that, to paraphrase Ambrose, the total influence of the military establishment and the arms industry permeated all levels of government and such influence presented enormous potential for misplaced power and corruption, not to mention endangering our liberties.  While conservatives today have a knee jerk response to always support anything labeled defense, they have lost connection to an American tradition stretching from Washington to Eisenhower, a belief that liberty itself could not survive in a state dominated by military focus, nor could a country survive long term economically if too much of its resources were devoted to military rather than more productive economic utilities.

Modern Democrats, on the other hand, interpret Eisenhower’s warnings in a vacuum.  They conveniently forget he was a military man, who believed deeply in having a strong military to protect our interests.  He knew personally what it meant to fight the most horrific battles and understood the importance of troops having what it takes to win.  He understood and believed greatly in deterrence, in what Reagan would later call peace through strength (he would fit into Teddy Roosevelt’s “talk softly and carry a big stick” where as today’s left speaks loudly usually against their own country and carries no stick).  In a simplistic summary, Eisenhower simply believed that having enough weapons to destroy the world 25 times over was 24 times more than what was needed and understood to his core that it would do no good to have massive stockpiles of weapons and huge standing armies stationed around the world if the country went bankrupt in doing so.  To be strong militarily, you must be strong economically.  If you let the one destroy the other, you lose both.

He was an absolute budget hawk.  A successful GOP or Tea Party candidate has a tall order to accomplish what Eisenhower did on the budget.  Entitlements today are a whole different world than in Eisenhower’s years.  Anyone who understands Eisenhower could have no doubt that he would be warning about a government entitlement complex as being the biggest danger to the future of this country as it is breaking us, without even the side benefit of making us militarily stronger.  Tackling that problem is much more complicated than the defense budget as not only is the other party against all reform, so is the mainstream media and short term self interest of all those who now receive such entitlements.  Besides tackling entitlements, there is no question that defense spending needs to be reigned in and controlled also.  This requires going against the very complex Eisenhower warned against, which now includes most Republicans as well as every Democrat from districts that get millions, if not billions, in defense dollars.

Yes, we have huge responsibilities and a war going on.  A war that I believe we are not fighting aggressively enough.  Still I believe there are billions and billions of dollars that can be saved yearly from defense, both from overlap and waste, but more importantly from us recognizing that we have military objectives far beyond what we should.   For instance, we have troops throughout Europe, in South Korea, and many other nook and crannies of the world.   There are always reasons why we are in these places, but ultimately it comes down to trying to be the world’s sheriff, the world’s disaster preparedness coordinator, and ultimately due to a belief in a domino theory that if we do not controls events everywhere, we will eventually be controlled by events.  History has shown all such attempts by any world power to dominate all aspects of the world to be doomed to failure.  The money needed to support such a role will break us, as surely as the money needed for out of control entitlements will.  Entitlements are the bigger problem, but both need to be slashed and controlled.  To quote Eisenhower:

We — you and I, and our government–must avoid…plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.  We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come.

With a national debt larger than our economy, and growing by well over a trillion dollars a year, we have mortgaged our kids future and time is quickly running out to have any chance to salvage it.  In short, this country needs a leader brave enough, or with Eisenhower/Washington type stature, to tackle spending across the board, with no pet areas protected.  Certainly the left has no such leader, and it is sadly but quite likely true that the right does not either (don’t give me this Ron Paul crap, he is a lunatic).  Maybe, just maybe, the Tea Party will sprout such a leader, or force someone in the other parties that would otherwise not tackle this issue holistically, to do so.

What is forgotten about Eisenhower’s farewell speech is another warning that we all should remember, especially those on the left.  It is prophetic when one thinks in terms of the “science” of global warming, to give just one example.   I will use Eisenhower’s own word’s.  Solitary inventors of yesteryear have been replaced “by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields” so that while in the past individuals and universities “were the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery” using private funding and being driven by private sector motivations, that today “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute  for intellectual curiosity“.  Therefore, “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.”  You want money for that climate (or other) research you are doing, well then you better stick to the government line.  Eisenhower knew that instinctively and it rightly made him shudder.  Meanwhile Obama embraces that very culture.

We could use an Eisenhower today when it comes to sanity on budgets, spending, entitlements, defense and the role of government.  He was grounded in reality, infuriatingly moderate for many like myself, but his very moderation in general allowed him to successfully be a hawk on spending and budget issues as his political give and take to accomplish a balanced budget required members from both aisles, which in our system, is a reality.  Aspiring politicians everywhere would serve themselves well to study his methods, picking what worked and ditching that which did not (like his lack of leadership on civil rights, for one example).

Here is Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in it’s entirety.  It is one of the more important speeches of the twentieth century.  It is really worth watching.

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