POLITICS MARCH 7, 2012
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With its 80-foot-high smokestack columns towering over a four-acre site whose only representation of its subject would be a statue showing him as a barefoot boy, the current design for the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C. manages to be both bombastic and silly. It’s easy to imagine tourists mistaking the memorial as a spectacularly misconceived tribute to Huckleberry Finn.
Which is why it’s entirely appropriate that a dispute has broken out over it. On one side has been Frank Gehry, the postmodernist “starchitect” who won the memorial competition, and his backers in government planning commissions and the artistic establishment. On the other, the Eisenhower family (David Eisenhower, the president’s grandson, resigned from the Eisenhower Memorial Commission in January) and defenders of public spaces such as the National Civic Art Society, who argue that Gehry’s design is an embarrassment to the man it was meant to honor.
But one group has thus far been conspicuously absent in the fight: Eisenhower’s own political party, the GOP. Indeed, Republicans’ silence on the matter of Eisenhower’s legacy says volumes about how far the party has come since his day. Rather than claim ownership over his legacy, they have abandoned it entirely, to the detriment of their party and their country.
IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT that the planners behind the present Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington had hired an architect who proposed to represent FDR only as a toddler, rather than as a wheelchair-bound yet indomitable statesman. Liberal outrage would have rolled across the land like a mighty stream and forced an immediate redesign. Democrats would not have tolerated a literal and figurative belittling of Roosevelt, because Democrats of all stripes still pay homage to the founder and inspiration of the modern party that began with the New Deal.
And yet the leaders of the Republican Party have not uttered a peep about the plan to permanently portray the five-star general and two-term U.S. president as an impoverished child. Clearly, Republicans feel no sense of loyalty toward Eisenhower.
This should probably come as no surprise. The conservative movement that has taken over the GOP was nursed on hatred of Eisenhower’s moderation. The eight years of peace and prosperity he gave Americans are remembered by conservatives as a dark age of “me-too” Republicanism, brightened only by the founding of the Ike-smiting National Review in 1955. The anti-heroic bent of the proposed Eisenhower memorial, with its refusal to acknowledge that there was anything great or admirable about its subject, may well be a source of considerable satisfaction to many on the right as well as the left.
But it’s important to remember that the relationship between the 1950s conservative movement and its contemporaneous Republican President was one of mutual ill-will. Conservatives had expected that Eisenhower, as the first Republican president since 1932, would repeal the New Deal; instead he augmented and expanded programs like Social Security, thereby giving them bipartisan legitimacy as well as added effectiveness. Conservatives had expected that the president would support Senator Joseph McCarthy’s crusade to tar all liberals as pro-Communist; instead he denied McCarthy the authority to subpoena federal witnesses and receive classified documents, thereby precipitating the red-baiter’s overreach and fall.
Eisenhower governed as a moderate Republican. While he failed to take bold action against Southern segregation as Democratic liberals and Republican progressives urged him to do, he helped to cool the overheated partisan rhetoric of the preceding two decades and built a middle-of-the-road consensus that marginalized extremists of left and right. He was well aware that his moderation earned him the implacable enmity of GOP conservatives. As he put it, “There is a certain reactionary fringe of the Republican Party that hates and despises everything for which I stand.” But this did not greatly bother him, since he also believed that “their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
The conservative movement’s tablet-keepers have long memories, so it’s unsurprising that Ike has remained a devil figure for the right. What may seem more surprising is that at a moment when Republicans are posing as stalwart defenders of a balanced federal budget, they dismiss the example of the most fiscally conservative president of the past eighty years. Eisenhower balanced the budget three times in his eight years in office, a feat that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush came close to achieving. Ike cut federal civilian employment by 274,000 and reduced the ratio of the national debt to GNP, though not the absolute level of debt. The economy bloomed under his watch, with high growth, low inflation, and low unemployment.
But Eisenhower’s economic success matters little to today’s Republicans given his deviations from conservative orthodoxy. Ike disdained partisanship, praised compromise and cooperation, and pitched his appeals to independent voters. He approved anti-recessionary stimulus spending, extended unemployment compensation, and raised the minimum wage. He pioneered federal aid to education and created the largest public-works program in history in the form of the interstate highway system. He levied gasoline taxes to pay for the highway construction, and believed that cutting income taxes when the federal government was running a deficit would be an act of gross fiscal irresponsibility. The Republican presidential candidates who are beating the drum to bomb Iran are in stark contrast with Eisenhower’s refusal to intervene in Vietnam. And conservative hawks find something vaguely pinko about Ike’s drive to restrain the pace of the arms race and his famous warning about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”
IN FAIRNESS TO today’s Republicans, Eisenhower’s values—prudence, pragmatism, reasonableness, frugality, and respect for the past—find little resonance on either side of our present partisan divide, or in American culture as a whole. Republicans may have abandoned Ike, but Frank Gehry, and the blingy, egotistical, celebrity-worshipping culture he represents, never could claim any attachment to him to begin with. Gehry’s aesthetic, which seeks freedom from the dead hand of tradition, is the very antithesis of the Eisenhower ethos. The Eisenhower memorial, if approved in its current form, would pay tribute to Gehry’s qualities rather than Ike’s, but it would be a sadly fitting monument to our present national mindset.
The irony of the design controversy is that it’s unfolding at a moment when America, facing a future of painful austerity, would benefit from a recovery of Eisenhower’s virtues. But don’t expect them to be reflected in the Eisenhower memorial, or in our politics, anytime soon.
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
19 comments
Is this article really serious? Stephen Colbert did this, didn't he? Do you really expect today's Republicans to leap to DDE's defense? If so, I have a bridge you might be interested in.
- mlottman
March 7, 2012 at 12:23am
I read something recently that made me think of how 2012 would spit on Eisenhower's grave. Today's GOP is determined that Americans are not going to pay taxes. So under Bush they cut a lot of funding to the IRS. Then, in 2006 alone the IRS fell $385 billion short of taxes due it could have collected, but didn't, because of personnel shortages in the agency. Since 2010 Tea Partiers and other Republicans have cut funding to the IRS even more. Will we have a year soon when the IRS is unable to collect $1 trillion worth of taxes due, because they're been underfunded? And Republican lie that they want to balance the budget. Grover Norquist and other GOP operatives will be thrilled when the U.S. government goes broke. Republicans have also cut funding to the SEC, to make sure that Dodd-Frank is not able to be implemented. They want Wall Streeters to go insane with economy-crashing greed again. And they refuse to let America's infrastructure be rebuilt--something that would appall Ike. And at the same time they're funding the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure, which they destroyed with their pet war. Eisenhower would view today's Republicans as closet communists, out to destroy America from within. I wouldn't argue with him.
- magboy47.
March 7, 2012 at 1:11am
I take issue with only one part of this article: "The anti-heroic bent of the proposed Eisenhower memorial, with its refusal to acknowledge that there was anything great or admirable about its subject, may well be a source of considerable satisfaction to many on the right as well as the left." I'm a lifelong Democrat and bleeding-heart liberal, but I take no satisfaction in the belittling of Dwight Eisenhower. He was a capable, honorable, and worthy President whose memory deserves respect from both parties--one of a number of Republican Presidents of whom the same could be said, most notably Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Sad to say, he was the last of that number.
- Dausuul
March 7, 2012 at 1:23am
Should read "I read something recently that made me think of how 2012 Republicans would spit on Eisenhower's grave."
- magboy47.
March 7, 2012 at 2:33am
Also "And Republicans lie..." That one stands by itself.
- magboy47.
March 7, 2012 at 2:36am
Well-written piece. Eisenhower was the only post-FDR president to never dip below 50% in approval ratings (except JFK, who only served three years), and even though he temporized on civil rights matters, when push came to shove in Little Rock, he sent in the troops. I do take issue here: "IN FAIRNESS TO today’s Republicans, Eisenhower’s values—prudence, pragmatism, reasonableness, frugality, and respect for the past—find little resonance on either side of our present partisan divide, or in American culture as a whole." You are not being "fair" to Republicans to assert everybody today is partisan, because it's not true. (Classic false equivalency.) Take the presidential comparison. Both President Eisenhower with President Obama live on the moderate side of the dial. Regardless, partisan era or not, it's no excuse for Republicans to erase Eisenhower from their own history books. Worse, Republicans today name-drop Ronald Reagan if he were Our Lady of Guadalupe, with stopping to consider than many of his policies (e.g., raising taxes), not to mention his bonhomie, are taboo within the confines of today's Republican Party. Dan
- dbuck1
March 7, 2012 at 8:42am
Oops, should read: Both President Eisenhower and President Obama live on the moderate side of the dial. Dan PS Let's take the Ike-Obama thing one step further, One day, people will think about nationally mandated health care insurance the same way they think about the interstate highway system. Which is to say, it will be such a natural, accepted part of our daily existence they won't think about it at all.
- dbuck1
March 7, 2012 at 8:46am
Second oops, should read "without stopping to consider." Motto for the monring: post first, edit later. Dan
- dbuck1
March 7, 2012 at 8:48am
I grew up in the South before the interstate highway system was built, and I can attest that it changed the South, bringing the South into the 20th century. One cannot imagine how remote and isolated was the region without having lived in it. It's southerners who should forever fondly remember Ike and what he did for them, but it's southerners who are least likely to do so. I suppose it's an example of the lesson that ignorance of history, especially one's own, warps everything, including our politics. As we have been mired in the Great Recession, there have been those who looked back to Ike for ideas for a way out, the concept of "super regions" and the high speed rail system to jump start them being the most promising. Yet, it was Ike's party and southerners who killed the idea. I like Ike.
- rayward
March 7, 2012 at 9:32am
magboy47: DDE had it right concerning the right-wing extremists in the Republican Party, during his tenure as POTUS: “their number is negligible and they are stupid.” What has changed is their numbers have grown considerably, but they are still "stupid."
- LawrenceGulotta
March 7, 2012 at 9:43am
"In fairness to today’s Republicans, Eisenhower’s values—prudence, pragmatism, reasonableness, frugality, and respect for the past—find little resonance on either side of our present partisan divide, or in American culture as a whole." With all respect, this is complete hogwash, the sort of hand-wringing "they're all doing it" false equivalence which substitutes for thought in much political commentary. It does not describe the situation in the US today at all accurately. Both parties have not been captured by shrill dogmatic intransigent True Believers, only one. Both parties have not slid further and further into extremism, only one. Both parties have not renounced Eisenhower's virtues, only one. In fact, "prudence, pragmatism, and reasonableness" describe the Obama administration almost exactly.
- K_Wilson
March 7, 2012 at 10:44am
One quibble: The National Civic Art Society, identified in the article as leading the charge against the memorial, is not a run-of-the-mill "defender of public space." Virtually everyone on its roster of directors and advisors is well-credentialed in conservative politics, with professionally affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or other right-leaning entities, The Society's website posts are clearly more anti-Gerhy than pro-Eisenhower but, in the course of attacking the architect, they do give Eisenhower credit as a great man whose stature is diminished by the design.
- EDLWOLF@ALUMNI.BROWN.EDU
March 7, 2012 at 10:50am
There really is no connection between the entity called "the Republican Party" today and the party that went by that name for most of the 20th Century. That coalition of Northeastern, Midwestern and Western moderates, progressives and conservatives (a conservatism that has little relationship to the radical ideology that claims that name today) has been replaced by a new coalition of ideological radicals and oddballs -- McCarthyites, Birchers, Dixiecrats, Wallace voters, NeoCons, Christian Culture Warriors, Apocalyptic Christians (Pat Robertson and followers), and their descendents, plus, more recently and increasingly, Objectivists (Paul Ryan) and Bircher Libertarians (the Koch brothers). This ideological assault on the traditional party began in the 1950s and 60s. Progressive elements of the old coalition were completely routed by the 1980s. And, by the 90s, what was left of the moderates had been crippled. Eisenhower is not part of the lineage of this new "Republican Party." And even the one president of the 20th century they do claim as an antecedent -- Reagan -- would be considered "too liberal" today.
- esmense
March 7, 2012 at 11:18am
I had an I Like Ike button in the Fifties. Eisenhower had a lot of good points. But he also had his faults. He didn't like confrontation, even when it was necessary. It took him too long to go after McCarthy, for instance. I understand it wasn't until Tail Gunner Joe insulted his religion that he decided enough was enough. Ike was actually a pacifist. He saw war as a last resort, unlike most of today's Republicans and many Democrats in the past. Truman got us into a war with the North Koreans and the Chinese, and Ike ended it with a truce, which I remember reading about in the newspaper. Originally a Mennonite and then a Jehovah's Witness, Ike didn't worship the flag and war like many on the Right do. But Billy Graham convinced him to become a Presbyterian, and soon after his first inauguration he converted. The rest is history. A Presbyterian minister then convinced Ike that "under God" should be added to the Pledge of Allegiance. I remember reciting those two words for the first time during our morning pledge in junior high in 1954. Even though I was an enthusiastic, practicing Catholic at the time, they felt strange. Little did I or Ike, a pacifist, know what wars, foreign and cultural, those two words would bring to this country. We may never recover from them. They are proof of the dangers of mixing religion with politics. Religion should be practiced in private. Period.
- magboy47.
March 7, 2012 at 12:30pm
Eisenhower's policy towards Iran is still bedeviling us but otherwise Eisenhower's presidency is looking better and better as time goes by. I admire him and think about the two notes he had in his pocket on the eve of the Normandy invasion. One note if things went well giving credit to the troops and another if all went wrong taking full responsibility. That is strength of character personified.
- paskunac
March 7, 2012 at 12:43pm
After reading this short essay I decided to buy Kabaservice's book. I considered buying it before each time I read his other short essays that have been appearing in TNR, but this one caused me to pull the trigger. I suppose I didn't buy the book before because I assumed Kabaservice had written a book with a story and an ending I already knew. Focusing on Ike, though, made me realize that the story Kabaservice tells in his book is the story of the many possible paths for the Republicans, and it's what made them ultimately choose the path to Ruin that I don't know and wish to know.
- rayward
March 7, 2012 at 12:53pm
actually I did read about this on Frumforum a while back (or maybe it was the DB) so there is a subset of Republicans who are sticking up for Eisenhower, and I think the statue is terrible. But what I see is more appropriate is a statue of Eisenhower talking to the troops just before D-day. I don't think his Presidency is worthy of a memorial but his service in WW2 as Supreme Allied Commander in the European theater qualified. Mac does not deserve one because he screwed the pooch in 1941.
- blackton
March 7, 2012 at 9:01pm
Difficult for me to get my mind around this praise for Eisenhower (though perhaps justified).(Any President who doesn't blow up the world deserves praise and appreciation.) My parents were passionate supporters of Adlai Stevenson. They disliked Eisenhower and detested Richard Nixon. As a child attending junior high in Orange County, California, every other student (parroting their parents) “of course,” supported Eisenhower. Ambiguously loyal to my parents (but just as ignorant), I spoke up for Stevenson. Certainly, there is a need for a “loyal opposition” today. It is strange and tragic that the main opposition today is vicious, stupid, nasty, and dangerous. (Just for starters.)
- skahn
March 7, 2012 at 11:27pm
Still blessing the hole in the soul of Adlai's shoe, I believe he would have made a great president. In my (primarily) liberal milieu back in the day, Stevenson was The Man. But I'll have to admit that Ike appears, in retrospect, like a pretty reasonable guy - especially in contrast to today's rabid right GOP. One thing that still bugs me about him though was his comment to the effect that, in the wake of the '54 Brown vs Board of Ed Supreme Court decision, he rued the day he had nominated Earl Warren for the Court. (I have wondered if her really meant it, or if he said that to merely to mollify the segregationists in his pary, as a tactical political move. I'd prefer to think that, I guess.)
- Haole45
March 8, 2012 at 9:32pm