*A decade of shaky peace and shining prosperity following the Great Depression and World War II
Eisenhower's strongest commitment during his presidency was to social harmony
McCarthyism - led by Senator Joseph McCarthy ( R ) who was an anti-Communist crusader playing on suspicion and fear during the Cold War period with the support of a majority of the American people
- The question: "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?" ruined the careers of many innocent people
- When he attacked the U.S. Army, however, he was condemned by his fellow Senators
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, May 1954: ruled that segregated schools system were " Inherently Unequal " (reversed a previous court decision. Plessy v. Ferguson)
Eisenhower had little sympathy for integration . He had advised against the integration of the armed forces in 1948 and criticized Truman's call for establishing a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. But in September 1957 he has forced to send federal troops into Little Rock, Ark, to insure the integration of Central High School
December 1955 - Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Park's refusal to give up a seat in the "Whites Only" section of a public bus led to a yearlong Black boycott of the city buses led by a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Eisenhower's domestic policy: New Republicanism - "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. But when it comes to people's money , or their economy, or their form of government, be conservation."
- strove to balance the federal budget and guard against "creeping socialism" But he extended Social Security benefits and raised the minimum wage to $1 an hour
- launched the largest public works project in our history: construction of the interstate highway system (I-80, I-50, etc.)
- failed to solve the personal economic problem of the 1950s: low farm prices
Eisenhower's "New Look" foreign policy: led by Secretary of State John Foster Dulies, we pledged to "roll back" communism and "liberate captive peoples". By building up an air fleet of superbombers carrying nuclear bombs, we would threaten "massive retaliation" against the Soviets.
* Both aspects of this policy proved to be delusions.
Origins of the Vietnam War:
1945 - Nationalist movement since World War II was led by Ho Chi Minh, a communist
1955 - French defeat at Dien Bien Phu led to the Geneva Conference which divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel with Ho Chi Minh in charge of the North and a pro-Western government led by Ngo Dinh Diem in the South
- Elections were promised within two years to reunite the country under one government but were never held
Cold War thaw in 1955 when the Soviet Union agreed to end its occupation of Austria but it soon ended when the Soviets brutally crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered two political coups in the 1950's:
1953 - Installed a youthful Shah of Iran as a pro-western dictator who guaranteed Iranian oil for the West
1954 - ousted a leftist government in Guatemala
1956 Suez Crisis - Egyptian leader, Nassar, nationalized the Suez Canal owned chiefly by British and French stockholders which led o a joint British-French attack on Egypt that was condemned by the U.S.
March 1957 - Eisenhower Doctrine was passed by Congress which authorized the president to extend economic and military aid to nations in the Middle East if they were threatened by Communist aggression
October 4, 1957 - Soviet launched the first satellite into space called Sputnik I followed by Sputnik II a month later
- America's confidence was shattered by the so-called "missile gap" and Congress authorized the National Defense Education Act to improve the teaching of sciences and languages
1958 - Communist threats against Lebanon led to the sending of U.S. troops by Ike (his doctrine) to restore order
1960 - The Paris "summit conference" was aborted in May by the U-2 spy plane incident in Russia
59/60 - Fidel Castro gained control of Cuba and turned it into a communist satellite of Moscow
1960 Election: Kennedy (D) v. Nixon ( R)
- the electoral scales were probably tipped in favor of Kennedy by the 3 televised presidential debates
- Kennedy became the youngest man and the first Catholic to be elected president
* The Eisenhower Legacy - p. 857