Greatness of Eisenhower

                    Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States during my childhood and youth, and I remember that he was well liked and respected.  I also remember that there was fear that the Soviet Union would attack our nation. 

Ike was inaugurated in 1953 and left office in 1961 and is the very first President that I remember.  Since I included many of the facts of Eisenhower's life in a previous article, I will not include them in this article.  I will merely say that Eisenhower was a great hero from World War II and was encouraged to run for President for the good of the country.  He was President when the Korean War ended in 1953 as well as when the Vietnam War began in 1961.

                    President Eisenhower gave his "Eisenhower Doctrine" in a speech on January 5, 1957, including a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East".  "Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state.  Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces `to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against covert armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.'"

Since we can learn much about a man by listening to his words and observing the patterns of his conversations, Ike's words illustrate what he considered to be important.  Judge for yourself whether you consider Eisenhower to have been a great President. 

Here are some quotes attributed to President Eisenhower, and others can be found at this site. 

                    "A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."

                    "Americans, indeed all free men, remember that in the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains."

                    "An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."

                    "Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God."

                    "I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens."

                    "When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose."

                    "When you are in any contest you should work as if there were - to the very last minute - a chance to lose it."

                    "Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage."

                    "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

                    "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

                    "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

                    Here are just some of the interesting Eisenhower quotes that can be found at this site.  

                    "Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy."

                    "Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative."

                    "From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard."

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women

who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine.  As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

                  "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

"How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"

"Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends."

Here are a few more quotes from this site.  

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."

"This is what I found out about religion.  It gives you courage to make decisions you must make in a crisis, and then the confidence to leave the result to a Higher Power.  Only by trust in God can a man carrying responsibility find repose."

"No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves."

As we can see from his words, Eisenhower was a warrior that preferred peace, a President that knew the strength of the nation lies in its people, and a man humble enough to believe in God.  I consider Eisenhower to have been a great President.