Eisenhower
Paul Zaidins

Elections
Election of 1952
- Republican Dwight D Eisenhower versus Democrat Adlai E Stevenson
- Richard M Nixon declared Eisenhower's Vice President for anti-communist party members
- "I Like Ike" buttons
- Supreme Allied Commander of WWII
- President of Columbia
- Nixon was the attack dog
- Eisenhower was dignified
- Nixon tarnished by "slush fund" scandal and saved by his Checkers Speech
- Eisenhower did brief pre-recorded television "Questions and Answers"
- Eisenhower pledged to end Korean War
- Eisenhower won by a large margin and made large party gains in the South
Election of 1956
- Republican Dwight D Eisenhower versus Democrat Adlai E Stevenson
- Seen favorably due to peace and prosperity
- Had undergone recent major surgery, but was still fit
- Won by an even larger margin, but lost House and Senate majorities
Cold War

- Worsened tensions with USSR
- Ended Korean War with stalemate
- Built up nuclear arsenal
- Sponsored development of H-Bomb
- Called for open skies, but was rebuffed
- Let Hungarian Revolution fail
- NATO and the Warsaw Pact formed in opposition of each other
Joseph McCarthy
- Red Hunter (Strong Anti-Communist)
- Senator from Wisconsin
- "Tailgunner Joe"
- Senator Joseph McCarthy accused Secretary of State Dean Anderson of employing 205 in February 1950
- Later failed to give any solid evidence after falling back to there only being 57 communists
- Accused Democrats of sheltering communists
- Accused General George Marshall of committing to a communist conspiracy
- Purged State Department of Asian specialists
- Eventually discredited by his own attack against the army

Desgregation
- Two-Thirds of African Americans still lived in South
- Jim Crow Laws in the South enforced segregration
- Vigilante lynch mobs common
- Explored by An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal
- NAACP devoted to improving lives of colored people
- 1944- white primaries ruled unconstitutional
- Thurgood Marshall made separated profession schools illegal in Sweatt v Painter
- Brown v Board of Education of Topeka forced degradation of public schools
- Southern representatives and locals would hold of desegregation for over 10 years
- Ike forced to send armed forced to protect black students in Arkansas during the Little Rock Crisis after the governor attempted to gather armed forces in opposition
- Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed, but was very watered down
- The Montgomery Bus system was also boycotted into desegregation after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man
- White flight began as whites fled the cities, which would become predominately black in many areas
Republicanism
- Dynamic conservatism
- Economic conservative, social liberal
- Balanced budget
- Slowed military growth
- Sponsored competitor to TVA
- Secretary condemned Salk's Polio vaccine
- Operation Wetback fought illegal immigration
- Attempted to terminate Indian tribes
- Interstate Highway Act
- Highest deficit in peacetime despite promises to balance the budget
Vietnam
- Response to French imperialism
- Communist Ho Chi Minh asked for independence
- America sponsored France due tof ear of communism
- French forced to surrender after Dienbienphu
- South Vietnam became US sponsored and North communist
- US would continue to sponsor South Vietnam despite totalitarian government
Space Race
- Soviet rocketry alarmed America with first satellite in 1957 named Sputnik I
- Gave credence to ICBMs
- NASA founded in response
- Failed Vanguard missile
- NDEA created to sponsor science and industry in education