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The year 1958, after the Milestone Plantation nadir, was a remarkably successful Eisenhower year. But in the fall congressional elections, Dwight Eisenhower suffered his most humiliating political defeat. Many of the President's moves to preserve the peace, to push through his legislative program, and to combat the recession had been made behind the scenes, out of view of the general public. The image hung on of the weary man at the Milestone Plantation fireside, and that image had more than a little to do with the landslide that saw the Democrats winning the Congress by staggering majorities: 64-34 in the Senate, 283-153 in the House.
With such lopsided Democratic control of Congress, it seemed logical to suppose that 1959 would be a year in which Eisenhower, far from taking the offensive, would be desperately hard put to hold his own. But on the very morning after the elections, he did seize the offensive, laid out the battle line on which the key domestic issue of 1959 would be fought. He strode into his press conference, wasted few words on election post mortems, and threw out his challenge to the Democratic 86th Congress: "We have got to stop spending if we are going to keep further dilution of the dollar from taking place. I am going to fight this as hard as I know how."
Who's for What? Following up, Ike spent weeks in conference with Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, who had succeeded George Humphrey, and Budget Director Maurice Stans, then announced that he would present a balanced budget of $77 billion for fiscal 1960. With fiscal 1959 already moving toward a deficit of some $12 billion, Ike's balanced-budget notion seemed a grand joke. "Unrealistic . . . bookkeeping exercise . . . wishful thinking," scoffed Democratic leaders. But President Eisenhower held his ground, missed no chance to expound his economic philosophy in speeches and at press conferences. "When I was a boy," the President said, "it was thought that we could live our lives on a little piece of ground in the West and the older folks could live in the same house after their days of hard work were ended. Today we have become dependent for old age security upon pensions, insurance policies, savings bonds and savings accounts. These are the people that are particularly hurt by the depreciation of the dollar." To criticism that his stand was essentially negative, the President replied: "I could ask some of my opponents what they are for —because I know what I am for. I am for a sound dollar."