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After the triumph in Europe, it was inevitable that Eisenhower would be considered for the presidency. Scarcely were the guns silenced when a different kind of firing started, this time from home. As Army Chief of Staff (1945-48), president of Columbia University (1948-50) and Supreme Commander of NATO (1950-52), he was under almost constant pressure, from both Republicans and Democrats, to run for the White House. His reply at first was almost Shermanesque. He began nonetheless to think along political lines. "The path to America's future," Ike said in 1949, "lies down the middle of the road between the unfettered power of concentrated wealth and the unbridled power of statism or partisan interests." He was concerned also that the nation might retreat into isolationism and was dismayed by the anti-NATO views of Senator Robert A. Taft, then the leading contender for the G.O.P. nomination. By 1952, he was ready to run, one of a short list of Americans who entered a political campaign with their place in history already assured. After a bruising convention battle with Taft, he won the Republican nomination. The slogan, "I Like Ike," gathered international currency. ("They were my first words in English," a German Hausfrau said last week.) In November, Eisenhower won 55% of the popular vote, to Adlai Stevenson's 44%.
Fulfilling his campaign pledge, Eisenhower went to Korea, and eight months later a truce was negotiated. At home, after the acrid atmosphere of Truman's last months, Americans entered a period of calculated calm. That era of consolidation was one of Eisenhower's great achievements, and is more appreciated today than it was when he left office in 1961. Some critics would speak of "stagnation" rather than "consolidation," and it is undoubtedly true that behind the tranquil exterior of the Eisenhower years, urgent social problems were neglected. Too many old certainties remained unexamined, too much onrushing change was ignored. It is sometimes hard to believe that the Eisenhower era is only a decade distant; at times, it seems more like a century.
More than any other President in modern times, he had the trust of his fellow citizens. More perhaps than any other President since James Monroe, who for a time presided over the "Era of Good Feelings," Eisenhower transcended political parties. People blamed his subordinates, not Ike, for the faults of his Administration. Since the death of Lincoln, as British Historian D. W. Brogan has noted, the presidency has been more than a secular political office. Eisenhower's quiet dignity satisfied the need of the times for a paternal, even majestic figure in the White House.
According to the polls, he could easily have won a third term in 1960 — if he had wanted it, and if the 22nd Amendment had not barred his way.
Above the Battle