Eisenhower: The White House Years

Abstract

Eisenhower: The White House Years by Jim Newton New York: Doubleday, 2011 451 pages $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 2009, the Eisenhower Presidential Library revealed .the prolific historian and Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose fabricated interviews he claimed to have had with the former president. Ambrose's biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower had long been regarded as the definitive biography because of the author's unique access to the 34th president. The discovery of Ambrose's deception has made his biography suspect for both scholars and leaders seeking to understand Ike, while opening the door for new and more genuine appraisals of the former president. Jim Newton offers one such appraisal with a new biography of Ike in Eisenhower: The White House Years. The author of the previous work, Justice for All, a historical account of Chief Justice Earl Warren, is the latest Eisenhower biographer seeking to rehabilitate the image of a supposed caretaker president. Contrary to contemporary critics like Marquis Childs, who portrayed Eisenhower as "indecisive and lazy, stodgy and limited ... a weak president," Newton argues Ike was "certain, resolute, and, though respectful of his advisers, commandingly their boss." In offering the thesis that President Eisenhower was an active leader in his administration, Newton builds upon the work of diplomatic historians and political scientists, notably Fred Greenstein, and does so in a very sympathetic fashion. As the title suggests, however, the author delivers not so much a biography of President Eisenhower but a biography of his presidency. The story begins with Ike's childhood and passes rapidly through adolescence, tracing his path to the United States Military Academy, where Ike was both average and memorable." An assignment in Texas followed graduation, where he met Mamie Doud. They married, welcomed and then lost a son, and decamped for Panama, where Eisenhower served under the tutelage of mentor General Fox Connor. That apprenticeship on the perimeter of the American empire kept Ike out of troop command in World War I. In the interwar period he served a second apprenticeship under the gimlet eye of General Douglas MacArthur. Service with MacArthur in Washington and later in the Philippines made Eisenhower wary of theatrics. When war broke out in 1941, General George Marshall selected the young general to head the War Plans Division on the Army Staff and then, ultimately, to lead Allied forces to victory in Europe. The author covers all of this background rather quickly, driving the narrative toward Eisenhower's presidential years, which comprise 85 percent of the biography. The theme throughout is Ike's search for a "middle way," an attempt to steer policy between perceived extremist positions on the political right and left. Seeing as The Middle Way is the title of Eisenhower's presidential papers, it is an easy assertion to accept, though there are holes in every story. Newton gives cautious credit to Ike for his civil rights record, asserting that by supporting Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the president was practicing a calibrated strategy for easing racial tensions in the fullness of time. A more critical biographer might interpret Ike's record on civil rights as an abdication of presidential responsibility to enforce the law. Other domestic topics include Eisenhower's appointments to the Supreme Court, the administration's assertion of executive privilege, and the president's refusal to confront Senator Joe McCarthy during the height of the Red Scare, where Newton asserts "nothing was inevitable, even Ike's break with McCarthy. …