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"Send 'Em In." Major 1958 tasks came in the field of foreign policy. But by standing firm on the principle of preserving the peace by deterrent power, the President and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defended the free world's defense perimeter from Lebanon to Quemoy. Always the final decision and responsibility were Ike's, and he measured up. "All right," he said sharply as the U.S. Marines were poised to move into Lebanon, "we'll send 'em in."
At home, the President moved aggressively to push his program through the Democratic Congress, laid down three legislative "imperatives": defense reorganization, an extension of reciprocal trade, and an adequate foreign-aid program. He got them, and he got them by fighting for them. On Pentagon reorganization he deployed his personal prestige —"It just happens that I have got a little bit more experience in military organization than anyone else on the active list"—and at the same time took care to court the House Armed Services Committee's recalcitrant Chairman Carl Vinson, several times inviting Vinson to drop by the White House for a down-to-earth talk. On reciprocal trade and foreign aid, he received public support from Democrats Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson, himself wrote to influential business, political and civic leaders around the country, enlisting their backing.
"I Am Going to Fight." Even while fighting and winning the battles for his legislative imperatives, Ike was fighting and winning an even greater battle. The enemy: economic recession. At the first signs of recession, liberal Democrats had begun demanding that the President take the easy way out, initiate spending programs and cut taxes so as to shock the economy back to life. As the recession deepened, even some of those in high Administration councils got fidgety; at various times. Vice President Richard Nixon, Labor Secretary James Mitchell, and Interior Secretary Fred Seaton all talked in terms of tax cuts as an economic spur. The President stood firm in his belief in the basic strength of the U.S. economy; beyond recommending a stop-gap expansion of federal-state unemployment compensation and approving long-needed highway construction, he determined to ride out the recession.
It was perhaps the greatest gamble of a life filled with gambles. If he had been wrong in his estimate of the economy, if the nation had indeed fallen into the mire of depression, he would have suffered obloquy as had few Presidents before him. But he was right. In May 1958 he announced: "There is ground to believe that the worst of the recession is behind us." So it was, and from then on the economy righted itself, until by year's end there was good reason to talk of boom.