Dwight D. Eisenhower’s January 1961 official Farewell Address to the nation is fixed in historical memory as his “military-industrial complex” speech. But once Eisenhower left the White House, historians quickly consigned him to the dustbin of history, as their hero, the young charismatic liberal Democrat, John F. Kennedy, assumed power.
But Eisenhower, who most polls continued to show as the most admired man in America, did not just play golf during the 1960s, become ill, and pass away.
In fact, Eisenhower kept his “hidden hand” — a term which Princeton University historian Fred Greenstein later would use in the early 1980s in his groundbreaking reassessment of Ike’s presidency — intimately involved in Republican Party politics and national affairs for the rest of his life.
Ike never criticized his successor in public. Indeed, JFK sought his advice after Kennedy’s disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. After the JFK assassination in late 1963, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson brought in Ike as a secret adviser on Vietnam. Even though the United States had had military advisers in Vietnam during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, it was LBJ who placed American boots on the ground. Eisenhower, the master architect of D-Day during World War II, urged Johnson toward a massive show of military might against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Instead, LBJ opted for a slow build-up of American forces over two years, which allowed the enemy time to adjust, and the quagmire of Vietnam began.
On the domestic political front, Ike initially was depressed after his vice president, Richard Nixon, had lost the very close 1960 election to JFK. But within a short period of time, Ike got involved again. In 1962 at his Gettysburg farm, he hosted a GOP strategy meeting, the result of which was a little-remembered Republican Party publicity and marketing record, “Mr. Lincoln’s Party Today.” And the narrator of that recording, chosen with the full blessing of Eisenhower, was the rising political star who just had changed parties and become a full-fledged Republican, Ronald Reagan.
Eisenhower stayed neutral in the 1964 GOP struggle between conservative Barry Goldwater and liberal Nelson Rockefeller. Eisenhower did speak on July 15, 1964, at the San Francisco convention. His theme was that one-party rule, which America in effect had experienced ever since Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt first had been elected president thirty years before, must end. Ike emphasized that the party of Lincoln had been born out of a protest against the enslavement of blacks. And its theme of small government meant “in all those things that the citizen can better do for himself than can his government, the government ought not to interfere.”
Eisenhower urged that a “common sense” and responsible government be restored to America. He was against any further “increase in the concentration of power in Washington.” Liberal writer Gore Vidal observed that in the convention audience, Reagan was studying intently Eisenhower’s speech delivery.
After Goldwater lost in a massive landslide to LBJ in the autumn of 1964, Eisenhower began to retake hold of the reins of his party, even though officially he still remained neutral for 1968. And in the summer of 1965, immediately after he had met LBJ about Vietnam, Eisenhower was asked by Reagan for advice on how to enter politics. After penning a multistep plan of specific political steps to Reagan, Ike began to mentor Reagan on domestic politics and world affairs.
Over the next four years, Reagan and Eisenhower would meet in person four times, have many telephone calls, and exchange many letters and telegrams, as well. When Reagan ran for governor in 1966, Eisenhower was a critical hidden-hand mentor on campaign strategy and tactics. Indeed, Ike’s use of that favorite term, “common sense,” would become Reagan’s campaign theme.
Once Reagan became governor of California in 1967, Ike broadened his mentorship of Reagan to world affairs, including how to win in Vietnam and how, ultimately, to defeat the Soviet Union via a strong American military and economy. And Reagan then began a 21-month first quest for the presidency, even though Nixon remained the clear favorite.
In a January 1968 magazine interview, Eisenhower was asked who was the man most qualified to be president. He answered Nixon, his former vice president. But when asked whom the GOP should nominate, Ike answered that his party should not necessarily nominate the man most qualified. Rather, Ike urged his party to nominate the man most likely to defeat the Democratic rival — likely incumbent LBJ, but perhaps Robert F. Kennedy.
The man who recently had been elected governor of the nation’s most populous state by nearly 1 million votes, and who in May 1967 had decisively defeated Robert Kennedy in an international debate on Vietnam, was the man whom Ike had been mentoring: Reagan.
The reporter then turned to Vietnam. Reagan was the only 1968 presidential candidate who, like Ike, wanted American troops to be given the tools to win the war. But when the reporter asked Eisenhower if Reagan was his man for 1968, Ike demurred.
By July 1968, Nixon finally had asked Eisenhower for his endorsement, which — with his grandson David about to become engaged to Nixon’s daughter — Ike finally gave. But as the Miami Beach convention was about to begin, Nixon was not a shoo-in. During the primary season, Reagan actually had received more votes overall than Nixon. And many delegates were only obligated to vote for Nixon on the first ballot and might have gone for Reagan after that, if Nixon could be stopped on the first ballot.
Eisenhower had been very ill; indeed he had been hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. But on Aug. 5, 1968 as the GOP convention was about to begin — with favorite Nixon still holding up the barricades against a growing Reagan juggernaut, Eisenhower, from the hospital, addressed his party, and his country, for the last time.
Rather than deal with domestic politics, as he had done at the 1964 convention, Eisenhower turned to the main danger affecting his country: international communism. Unlike the national unity Eisenhower had seen in World Wars I and II, now Ike was distressed at seeing major politicians not supporting the war efforts to defeat North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Ike, the man who first had promulgated the “domino theory,” saw Vietnam as but one small hot war in a decadeslong struggle of Western democracy against communism’s “expansionist tyranny.” And Ike wanted his country to win in Vietnam and ultimately the long Cold War against the Soviet Union.
He saw that what was new in America was “a growing disposition … to ignore these aggressive moves, to discount the blatant threats, to seek, in effect, for surface accommodations.” Eisenhower looked ahead: “It is one thing to call for a peaceful settlement of this struggle. It is quite another to call for retreat by America. The latter is the best way I know to stockpile tragedy for our children.” He concluded his address by stressing that only his party could find the needed solutions in both domestic policies and in world affairs that was eluding the Democrats.
Shortly thereafter, Eisenhower would suffer another heart attack, which would require 17 defibrillations and resuscitations. Amazingly, he would survive the ordeal with his mind intact. Ike would never leave the hospital. But he would live to see his vice president finally win the White House. He succumbed at last in March 1969, not long after Nixon’s inauguration. He would not live long enough to see his protege, Reagan, defeat communism without firing a shot.
With few exceptions, Eisenhower’s post-presidential involvement in politics, foreign affairs, and in guiding his party has largely been ignored by historians. There is no better starting point to reassess this forgotten aspect of Eisenhower’s life than his true last address to the American people and the country he loved, on Aug. 5, 1968.
Historian Gene Kopelson is the author of Reagan’s 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan’s Emergence as a World Statesman.
