Dwight Eisenhower
By : Mike Breton
Election of 1952 and 1956
· The Republicans chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
· Richard M. Nixon was chosen as Eisenhower's vice president.,
· reports of Nixon secretly taping government funds arose.
· Nixon went on television and apologized in the Checkers speech.
· This apology kept him on the ballot.
· Eisenhower was extremely popular.
· The slogan "I like Ike" bolstered his popularity.
· Eisenhower’s last-minute pledge to go personally to Korea to end the war gave him an edge.
· He garnered 33,936,234 votes to Stevenson’s 27,314,992.
· He was popular in the South with 442 electoral votes to 89 for his opponent.
· Republican Nominees- Dwight D. Eisenhower with running mate Richard Nixon
· Was popular among African Americans
· Democratic Nominees- Adlai Stevenson with running mate Estes Kefauver
· Eisenhower was very popular during his first term, earning an approval rating between 68 and 79 percent in 1955
· There was peace and economic growth after Eisenhower agreed to sign armistice that ended Korean War in 1953 called "Eisenhower's Prosperity"
· Eisenhower carried forty-one states
· He received nearly 58 percent of the popular vote.
Cold War
By 1954 American taxpayers were financing nearly 80 percent of the costs of a hopeless French colonial war in Indochina.
Eisenhower promised economic and military aid to the Western-friendly, Vietnamese Diem regime.
In the Middle East, the US was interested in Iran and its oil.
The CIA engineered a coup in 1953 that installed Shah Pahlavi, a US sympathizer.
Eisenhower commissioned NASA to compete with the Soviets in the space race.
In February 1958 the United States managed to put into orbit a satellite.
President Eisenhower hoped to get along better with the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev who was against Stalin's bloody tactics.
Hope was lost after an American U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia.
Eisenhower later accepted responsibility after the pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured.
The Soviets crushed the Belgian resistance and uprisings and further alienated the United States.
Eisenhower's Policy and Joseph McCarty
- Ike backed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956
- A $27 billion plan to build forty-two thousand miles of road.
- This created many construction jobs and speeded the suburbanization of America.
- Eisenhower managed to balance the budget only three times in his eight years in office
- 1959 he incurred the biggest peacetime deficit in American history.
- Was a general term for making ruthless and unfair charges against opponents.
- Based on the antics of Joseph McCarthy, a demagogic Wisconsin senator in the 1950s
- Republican.
- He was a stanuch Anti-Communist.
- Had a prominent role in the Second Red Scare.
Desegregation
Unfortunately Eisenhower was not a strong proponent of racial integration
He was raised in all white town and served in a segregated army
He was forced to act when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus nationalized the National Guard to prevent nine black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock
Eisenhower sent troops because the Governor was challenging Federal Authority
Space Race
Soviet scientists on October 4, 1957, launched into orbit a “baby moon” (Sputnik I)
This amazing scientific breakthrough shattered American self-confidence.
There were significant military gains to be made by going in space.
The Americans realized that the Soviets could possibly deliver long range missiles and there were many military implications of satellites.
Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and directed billions of dollars towards missile development.