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Among our postwar Presidents, both Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower stand significantly higher today than when they left the White House. Eisenhower probably could have been elected on any platform he chose in 1952, but he and his Republican handlers relished running against the Truman "mess in Washington," and poor Adlai Stevenson, from Springfield, Ill., was not allowed to change the subject. Today that mess ("Communism, Corruption, Korea") is largely forgotten; we have seen worse. And Harry Truman has a reputation as a statesman—for the first postwar line drawing against the Soviets, the Truman Doctrine covering Turkey and Greece; for the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe; and for the founding of NATO. He was prompt and courageous in moving to the defense of South Korea (though less effective in prosecuting the war); he lost no sleep over the decision to drop the A-bomb and later to build the H-bomb. Indeed, one school of revisionist historians now holds Truman just about as culpable as Stalin for the starting of the cold war. The more general view among scholars is that he belongs among the near great Presidents. In the popular memory, the intensely partisan and sometimes petty politician has now blended into the endearingly plain-spoken and gutsy "common man" rising to awesome responsibility.
History has its various authors, custodians and constituencies. Eisenhower retained an immense personal popularity throughout an Administration that academic intellectuals (mainly Democrats) disdained. The caricature was the amiable old soldier out on the golf course. So John Kennedy said, "Let's get America moving again," and won (barely) against Richard Nixon the man and the "passive" record of the Eisenhower Administration. Today Ike's presidency is more highly regarded, mainly because of subsequent history. Liberals can now see virtue in an eight-year presidency in which nothing really bad took place or was laid down as a time bomb for the future.
There were two very important things that didn't happen during Ike's years in the White House. The U.S. didn't get into any war, anywhere. And inflation was barely a topic of conversation. It averaged 1.4% a year from 1953 to 1960.
Some of the new Eisenhower literature goes much beyond a claim that he did nothing harmful. In Eisenhower the President, William Ewald Jr., one of his speech writers, contends that Ike was a masterly administrator and a subtle protector of presidential authority and options, with a sure instinct for when finally to commit. He also argues that the legislative record was at least as constructive as that of various "activist" Administrations of the recent past. All in all, says Ewald, "eight good years—I believe the best in memory."