Eisenhower's Stand

At SHAPE headquarters just outside of Paris, one of General Eisenhower's daily chores is to wave aside invitations to speak his mind on U.S. politics. At home, this determination to keep SHAPE out of politics has been exploited by both the Taft and Fair Deal camps to their benefit. Both pass the word that Eisenhower is too much of a mystery man to be trusted with the 1952 presidential nomination. But Ike's views on U.S. Government are a mystery only to people who were not listening two years ago when President Eisenhower of Columbia University, dressed in civvies, delivered a series of speeches on public affairs.

Imprisoned Security. Eisenhower talked mostly about what he called "ideas and ideals--not individuals." But he made it clear enough that he was opposed to the basic domestic doctrines of both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He warned of the dangers of expanding Federal Government, the delusions of the welfare state, the fallacy of the class struggle, and the perils of loose spending. Said he in New York in 1949: "Jefferson [was] a man we recognize as the great liberal of his time, a man who could say, 'The best government is the least government.' Now we recognize the degree to which we have changed when we come to see that the definition of a liberal is a man who, in Washington, wants to play the Almighty with our money."

At Columbia in 1948, he said: "All our cherished rights--the right of free speech, free worship, ownership of property, equality before the law--all these are mutually dependent for their existence. Thus, when shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and that, without it, all rights would soon disappear."

He told the combined Galveston luncheon clubs: "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison . . . But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." In New York he declared: "Possibly we have become too regardful of things that we call luxuries . . . Maybe we like caviar and champagne when we ought to be out working on beer and hot dogs. Whatever it is, the thing that has happened to us is of the spirit."

"Millions of us today," Ike warned the 1949 Columbia graduating class, "seem to fear that individual freedom is leading us toward social chaos; that individual opportunity has forever disappeared ... that we have reached the point where the individual is far too small to cope with his circumstances; that his lifelong physical security against every risk is all that matters. More than this, we hear that such security must be attained by surrendering to centralized control the management of our society . . . On every count, the fearful men are wrong . . ."

Republican Direction. Before the American Bar Association in St. Louis in 1949, Ike tagged himself as a middle-of-the-roader, but his road seemed to be going in a Republican direction. Said he: "We will not accord to the central government unlimited authority, any more than we will bow our necks to the dictates of the uninhibited seekers after personal power in finance, labor, or any other field."

Eisenhower's critics argue that he has never had to face the specific hazards of a congressional voting record. This is true, but Eisenhower is no stranger to the hard choice. When asked about federal aid to higher education in 1948, Columbia's Eisenhower said: "So that no one will misunderstand where an old soldier stands on that question--I will have no federal money in higher education as long as there is one single iota of federal control coming with it ... The Federal Government has no right to take tax money out of our pockets and give it back to us . . ."

Western Union. Ike's views of foreign affairs are better known. He is the embodiment of U.S. determination to defend Western Europe and an ardent advocate of "one federal union" for Western Europe. "I believe it so strongly," he told a congressional committee, "that I do not believe real security is going to be felt in the United States, in the British Empire and other nations of the globe until that comes about . . . Once it gets united, the Soviets will never be able to hold the East Germans out of it."

Eisenhower thinks "there was no recourse but to do what President Truman said and did" after the Korean invasion. But Ike is, by implication, a strong Europe-First man and has yet to outline an Asian defense plan as concrete as Bob Taft's. Ike is a believer in the United Nations: "However halting its progress may be, however much its sessions are torn by the jeers and vetoes from one sector, [it] is a visible and working entity--substantial evidence of developing hopes and purposes, an earnest of better things to come."

Ike's old speeches are far from being a firm, complete political platform. But they reflect a basic political philosophy that could easily provide underpinnings for a candidate who wanted to build a platform in a hurry.

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