Dwight Eisenhower is not the subject of any episode represented in these excerpts. He is mentioned in four episodes, in each case as an illustration of a larger argument advanced by a guest. The excerpts therefore support only a fragmentary account: Eisenhower as a figure of republican modesty, as a self-described progressive, as the issuer of executive orders on contractor discrimination, and as a president whose private assessment of the Soviet threat diverged from the defense spending he permitted.
Republican virtue and the ceremonial presidency
In a discussion of whether America has become an elective monarchy, Frank H. Buckley placed Eisenhower alongside Harry Truman as an admirable president, contrasting both with Thomas Dewey, whom Buckley called imperious and full of himself. Buckley’s point was about the veneration of the office: he said the ceremonial, Roman-emperor side of the presidency had increased of late, and he wondered whether this represented a permanent change in the American voter. In the same exchange, Buckley noted that George III said George Washington was the greatest man in the world because he did not become king when he could have, and that Washington and Lincoln had a sense they should not do anything that looked king-like. Bob Zadek said Truman was the last small-r republican president; Buckley agreed and extended the admiration to Eisenhower Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014).
Eisenhower as a progressive
Frank H. Buckley, discussing his book Progressive Conservatism, argued that there is an important history of progressivism in the Republican Party, found in Lincoln’s internal policies, in Teddy Roosevelt, and in Eisenhower. Buckley said Eisenhower called himself a progressive and that at one point Eisenhower said the Republican Party must become progressive or it was going to die. Buckley described the 1950s as a good time to be a kid, an American, and certainly a Republican, and said he had a coonskin cap as a child. In the same episode he identified the progressive conservative element as expressed in Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022).
The same material appears in a second episode drawn from the same book. There Buckley again located progressivism in Lincoln’s internal policies, in Teddy Roosevelt, and in Eisenhower, and again reported that Eisenhower called himself a progressive and said the party must become progressive or die Trumpism After Trump (2022).
Executive orders and racial classification
In an episode on the legal history of racial classification, David Bernstein said the first group of laws requiring statistical information about race and ethnicity were federal executive orders from the president in the 1950s — first Truman, then Eisenhower, then later Kennedy — prohibiting government contractors from discriminating based on race and other qualifications. Bernstein said that to ensure contractors were not discriminating, each contractor was asked to fill out a form stating how many employees it had of different minority groups. At the time the categories included Catholics and Jews, but Bernstein said those groups proved hard to enumerate because the policy and law of many states forbade asking people about their religion or ethnicity. Contractors therefore resorted to visible minorities, recording how many looked to be of African descent, how many looked Oriental, and how many looked Mexican, and Bernstein said the present classifications of Asian American, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latino arise out of those original government contracting classifications Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022).
The military-industrial complex
The most extended treatment of Eisenhower in these excerpts comes from John Mueller, discussing the exaggeration of national security threats. Mueller said he documents extensively in his book that one of the few people who would agree with his position was Dwight Eisenhower. Mueller described what he called the traumatic experience: in 1945, while still a general, Eisenhower flew to Moscow to talk with Stalin, and on the way back, flying low or with no clouds, he looked down and said the whole place had been destroyed from one end to the other and that they were never going to want to do that again. Mueller said Eisenhower really believed that through his whole presidency.
Mueller then drew a distinction between Eisenhower’s private belief and his public conduct. When Eisenhower left the presidency, Mueller said, he argued that the reason so much money was spent on defense was the machinations of the military-industrial complex — but the reason the military-industrial complex succeeded in obtaining huge defense expenditures was that its members believed the Soviet Union was going to attack Western Europe or perhaps the United States, something Eisenhower did not believe. Mueller’s conclusion was that Eisenhower was being a political coward: he was afraid, even going out of office, that he could not say what he truly believed, namely that they were not going to start another war, and he let the military-industrial complex have the argument that made their efforts a success China & the Stupidity of War (2022).
Mueller’s broader argument in the same passage was that threats successfully sold are then exaggerated, and that the Cold War was the most impressive area of this. He said the argument was that because the Soviet Union had allowed North Korea to attack South Korea, it was therefore hell-bent on conquest throughout the world and would soon be willing to attack Western Europe, which is why NATO, previously a thing on paper, suddenly escalated massively and particularly militarily. Mueller said George Kennan and Bernard Brodie, two important defense analysts, said the Soviets never had the slightest interest in anything resembling World War II again, much less one with nuclear weapons, and were not likely to attack Western Europe, though they were interested in supporting revolutionary movements and civil wars in other countries. He said information from Soviet archives after the Cold War indicated they had no plans whatever to attack Western Europe and were planning to defend themselves if attacked. He cited Khrushchev: “Comrades abroad say that Khrushchev’s afraid of war. I’d like to see the bloody fool who isn’t afraid of war. I lost my son in that war. Every Russian family lost somebody in that war, except for those families which lost the whole families. We never want to do anything like that again.” Mueller said one calculation put the amount spent on nuclear weapons and delivery systems during the Cold War at about enough to buy everything in the United States except the land.
Across episodes: no development
Eisenhower is touched on in four episodes — the elective monarchy discussion, the two episodes drawn from Buckley’s Progressive Conservatism, the Bernstein episode on racial classification, and the Mueller episode on threat exaggeration — and the excerpts show no development between them. Each mention serves the guest’s separate argument; no episode revisits or revises an earlier treatment, and no speaker responds to another’s characterization.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Eisenhower’s titles, dates in office, party affiliation as a matter of record, or the names of any legislation, doctrine, or speech associated with him. They do not describe his military career beyond Mueller’s reference to him as a general in 1945, and they do not say what became of the executive orders Bernstein attributes to him. Nothing in the excerpts addresses his presidency as a subject in its own right, and no excerpt identifies a book, article, or episode devoted to him.