Dwight E. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States
Election of 1952
- Republican Dwight E. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon against Democratic Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman
- Eisenhower chooses Nixon to appease the anti-communists
- Nixon gets involved in Watergate scandal, which involved him tapping into government funds for his own benefits
- Nixon apologized in his Checkers Speech, allowing him to stay on the ballot: significant as this was televised across the country
- Eisenhower wins by a landslide
Democrat Electoral - 89 Popular - 27,375,090
Republican Electoral - 442 Popular - 34,075,529
Election of 1956
- Ran against Adlai Stevenson again but with vice president nominee Estes Kefauver
- Eisenhower had health issues during the election
- Wins once again by a majority vote
- People were assured 'Ike' could lead them to a victorious fight against communism
Democrat Electoral - 73 Popular 26,028,028
Republican Electoral - 457 Popular 35,579,180
Cold War
- major buildup and race between the major superpowers, US and USSR, militarily and economically to spread democracy or communism around the world. It was a 'cold' war as no actual battles took place, but the threat of nuclear war was always on the horizon.
- Geneva Summit Conference - Eisenhower discusses peace talks with the USSR
- Lebanon asks for help from US to fight communism in 1958
- Both agree to suspend nuclear testing in 1958
- US U2 plane shot down in 1960
- Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy started going on an accusing spree deciding who was communist: most of these accusations were false and he had no evidence
- McCarthy's reign fell when he attacked the Army in 1954, losing his position as Senator
Desegregation in the South
- Segregation had been in place for 2 generations
- 1955 Rosa Parks doesn't give up her seat in the bus for a white man
- Sweatt vs. Painter decided black schools were not equal
- Brown vs. Board reversed Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling segregation in schools unconstitutional
- Congressmen in the Deep South opposed desegregation, and signed the Declaration of Constitutional Principles in 1956
- Little Rock High School Crisis - 9 African Americans were enrolled in Little Rock High School, blocked by Orval Faubus, the Governmor of Arkansas
- Eisenhower himself intervened and sent federal troops to aid in escorting the 9 students
- Martin Luther King Jr. Forms the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose goal was to achieve civil rights with nonviolence
Eisenhower's Republicanism
- Dynamic Conservatism
- Cut military spending
- Liberal with human resources, but conservative with economic resources
- Operation Wetback - deported 1 million illegal Mexican immigrants back because he feared that it might affect the US Bracero program
- Wanted to avoid "creeping socialism"
- cut back "Indian New Deal", unsuccessful as Indians didn't want to
- Interstate Highway Act: ironically went against his conservatism, used more money than Truman to achieve this
Vietnam War
- Ho Chi Minh shifts toward leftist values
- US aided France financially in their resistance against the Viet Cong
- French were trapped at Dien Bien Phu
- South Vietnam led by Ngo Dnh Diem is pro-western and democratic
Space Race
- October 4, 1957 USSR launches Sputnik into orbit, first satellite in space
- Also sends first animal, dog, to space 'Mutnik'
- Eisenhower creates NASA to compete with USSR
- 1958, US sends satellite into orbit, but still behind USSR
- US in a scramble to one-up USSR