"The entire decade was one giant bland mashed potato. The '50s were Nixon looking like a used car salesman and Eisenhower standing around being fatherly."

-- Dr. Demento

>>18540957
>inb4 /pol/ starts screaming about Little Rock

>>18540957
Reminder Eisenhower said Mexicans were unethical people. He sent trucks to round them all up and drove them to the middle of Mexican Mountains and left them there no food or water. After the harrowing walk down the mountain they decided they NEVER wanted to try border hopping again. We knew how to handle shit back in the day and were a mostly white nation.

>>18541007
>We knew how to handle shit back in the day and were a mostly white nation.
Ahem. September 23, 1957. That is all.

>The US economy fell into recession in fall 1957; mild compared to the Great Depression, it did however hit certain regions and sectors of the economy fairly hard, especially the automobile industry. Although Eisenhower's January '60 State of the Union address predicted windfall prosperity for the year, the results were not forthcoming. Nixon blamed this on the president's excessively cautious fiscal policy and felt that if it were him, he would have expanded the money supply to stimulate things a little.

>>18540957
lol Ben Shapiro hates him for not letting Israel filch the Suez Canal

>>18541059
Is that really the reason he gave? There is some legitimate controversy over helping Nasser and getting nothing in return except an alienated Western Alliance. Israeli interests were more junior, consequently bullied out of Sinai after the scheme fell apart. One can argue if Eisenhower held a more neutral stance and Nasser was weakened, the Pan Arabist 50s-60s wave that toppled pro West governments in Iraq/Yemen/Libya + destabilized Lebanon may not have taken place. Nixon thought himself it was a mistake.

>>18541059
when are him and Mark Levin going to register as foreign agents for Israel, since that's clearly what they are?

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Yaaaas Queen slay!

Iran and Guatemala are huge black marks on his record.

Kennedy and LBJ would call on Ike for advice, that was back when politics were not as partisan as today.

>>18541752
>Kennedy and LBJ would call on Ike for advice, that was back when politics were not as partisan as today

Not fair assertion as Ike was a national hero who stood above partisan politics, which absolutely did exist and presidents such as Truman were notorious for it.

the interstate highway system was one of his great achievements, he was inspired by an Army trans-continental convoy in 1919 that took 62 days to go from coast to coast, which he found to be ridiculous, as well as the German Autobahns

>>18541752
> back when politics were not as partisan as today.
I know this isn't /his/ but I can't help but be reminded of how Biden called Trump to make sure he was doing okay in the aftermath of that one attempted assassination attempt on him. I can imagine that most of their rivalry is just political theater that goes away behind closed doors

>>18541754
Absolutely so. Truman hated Republicans very intensely because he blamed Hoover for the failure of his haberdashery business in the Depression and was devastated when Eisenhower decided to run for president as a Republican, since he could have gone either way. During the transitional period Truman was very surly and unfriendly to him. Let's also not get started on how Nixon was the devil incarnate for one and all Democrats.

>>18541756
It was planned out very poorly and a lot of people's houses and even historical structures were demolished to make room for highway construction.

I'm disappointed in the whole Dulles brothers thing and how Ike was willing to do sketchy stuff in the name of combating communism, a system that will pretty much collapse under its own weight if left go long enough.

>>18541764
It wasn't planned poorly, it did exactly what it was intended for, to create dedicated routes for tanks in case the Cold War got Hot while also providing an Autobahn-Inspired system of interstate roads subsidized with gasoline taxes. Historical structures were moved or destroyed because they got in the way, if they were considered in any way then as far as the highway engineers were concerned they were a roadblack and they didn't want to compromise on efficiency. Minorities were the most impacted simply because they lived in areas with lower property values so they were the smallest economic losses compared to existing commercial/industrial zones and high-income developments so they were the ones who got shafted by eminent domain but people to this day blame explicit racism in the government. It wasn't explicit racism, it was implicit racism/systemic racism or however you want to frame it.

Eisenhower did just what people wanted, which was restore national stability and economic prosperity not seen since the 1920s.

>>18540957
one of his less edifying moments was trying to arm-twist Earl Warren into not greenlighting Brown v. Board of Education, as he was not enthusiastic about school desegregation and thought the Supreme Court should rule against it

>>18540957
>and the founding of both NASA and DARPA.
These were both started to provide economic stimulus in peacetime. The late 50s recession is often called "The Eisenhower Recession" by contemporary press because it was caused, at least ostensibly, by Eisenhower initially failing to provide an answer for when wartime government contracts finally dried up. DARPA and NASA were the perfect solution because everyone knew that there wasn't going to be a war on the scale of World War II for awhile so having agencies literally dedicated to making contracts with Defense and Aerospace companies during peacetime was the perfect solution.

>>18541773
we forget that there were only three years of his presidency when the economy was red hot (55-57) and the rest was mired in recession compared to the nearly nine years of prosperity in the 60s

>win the war
>go straight to the presidency with no other office in between

Is this the Washington/Grant/Eisenhower club?

>>18541761
Nixon being such a boogeyman to dems and libs is so funny, he was a member of the centrist faction of the GOP and if anything, was closer to their liberal wing than to their conservative wing. If he was alive today he would almost certainly not be a member of the GOP, or be a member in name only, like Schwarzenegger or the McCains.

>>18542378
we had high taxes because the government had to pay off its debts from two wars

>>18541767
>If you kill your enemies, they win

>>18542000
Less his politics than his personality, and for as smart as he was, I don't think he had the personality type that lent itself to elected office.

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>>18541140

>>18540957
It's Eisenhower who's got the power
From '53 to '61

>>18542000
i don't think Nixon would identify with today's Democrat Party at all

i feel as we get to modern era presidents these threads will get steadily worse

>>18542498
Nixon was an aspie sperg. Sure they didn't like Reagan or Bush, but they were effortlessly cool Chads in a way Nixon was not so they were harder to attack.

>>18542000
>was closer to their liberal wing than to their conservative wing

everything i've read about him doesn't suggest that. some people think because some bills passed when he was president like the EPA whatever made him a liberal when it was more likely because Democrats controlled Congress and he could only pass what they wanted.

>>18542660
Assuming OP stops with Clinton, we can't actually discuss Bush yet outside his first couple months in office.

>>18542378
Rightists can’t admit that neoliberal economic policy needs to be counter-balanced with socialism in order to have a functional economy, that’s why they came up with this.

Kennedy proposed tax cuts but he was also more in favor of welfare spending than Eisenhower. Ike was a lot more of a traditional conservative than it appears.

While it's true that Eisenhower continued and strengthened many New Deal polices, he also invested heavily in infrastructure (interstate highways) while maintaining fiscal responsibility. So I can see why looking back that he looks far more left leaning from an economic perspective than his party affiliation would suggest. But its important to understand that both he and JFK relied upon Keynesian economic principles to achieve their economic goals. In the case of Eisenhower he had a good economy and so in line with Keynesian theory he paid down deficits by keeping tax rates, espeically those at the top, high just as his predecessors had. He also was fiscally responsible and vetoed some Congressional spending bills. This appears to be a mixed bag, and while it was, it also follows Keynesian principles. Conversely, JFK faced an economic downturn and in 1963 under the recommendation of Keynesian economist Walter Heller proposed stimulating economic growth through a combination of tax cuts and increased government spending. So I suppose looking back through the lens of today neither really adopted what would today be considered a more right wing approach to economic policy. That said, because JFK also supported things like raising the minimum wage, increasing Social Security benefits. training programs for the unemployed and measures to redevelop depressed areas, etc. I will say that he was more left-leaning economically.

>>18542378
This is a masterclass in begging the question.

>>18542712
>While it's true that Eisenhower continued and strengthened many New Deal policies

say what? the New Deal was long over by then, the last bits of it were killed by the 80th Congress.

>>18542712
>In the case of Eisenhower he had a good economy and so in line with Keynesian theory he paid down deficits by keeping tax rates, espeically those at the top, high just as his predecessors had. He also was fiscally responsible and vetoed some Congressional spending bills. This appears to be a mixed bag, and while it was, it also follows Keynesian principles. Conversely, JFK faced an economic downturn and

'Hol up there. Ike had two recessions when he was president, but the economy under Kennedy took off after his first couple months.

>>18542707
As anon said, the 90% tax rate that Bernouts have a weird fetish for was to pay for the cost of WW2 but by 1960 it had clearly served its purpose and both parties wanted to cut taxes.

Eisenhower was very much a fiscal conservative. He had a Democrat Congress for six of his eight years (and the two years his own party was in control they only had a very slim margin) so he couldn't move too far to the right and had to play their game to a large extent, but his actions within the limits he had to work with were clearly one of keeping spending down and not expanding the role of government. JFK clearly did believe in a more active government role in the economy, although he wasn't actually very good at passing legislation even with a government trifecta.

>>18542724
>As anon said, the 90% tax rate that Bernouts have a weird fetish for was to pay for the cost of WW2 but by 1960 it had clearly served its purpose and both parties wanted to cut taxes.
the top marginal rate was higher, but they both also taxed the poor like it was a blast - the lowest rate was literally 100% higher than it is today and did not contemplate a system with many if any refundable tax credits. There was an inherent, limited, rationale in the higher marginal rates - remaining war debts needed to be retired.

I recently finished Master Of the Senate by Robert Caro and it seems that the Republican Congressmen actually disliked Eisenhower and LBJ used it as an opportunity to bolster the Dems as Eisenhower was so universally loved.

>>18541761
>Truman hated Republicans very intensely because he blamed Hoover for the failure of his haberdashery business in the Depression and was devastated when Eisenhower decided to run for president as a Republican

Eisenhower was always a Republican though, he voted Republican in every presidential election since he was an adult and able to vote excepting 1944 because he didn't want to change presidents during a world war. He was moderate and not an especially partisan guy like Truman or Bob Taft, but clearly a committed Republican.

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>>18542747
>I recently finished Master Of the Senate by Robert Caro and it seems that the Republican Congressmen actually disliked Eisenhower and LBJ used it as an opportunity to bolster the Dems as Eisenhower was so universally loved.

Ike was not actually super well-loved in D.C. because he had no connections to the political system and also grew up in modest circumstances as a Midwestern farm boy. The political elites kind of treated him and Nixon as bumpkins and were relieved when Kennedy was elected. Eisenhower did have some celebrity friends like Jimmy Stewart, Roy Rogers, and Bob Hope, but the general takeaway is he was popular with Main Street, some entertainers, and a decent chunk of the business community, but the Ivory Tower rich kids in D.C. couldn't stand him or Nixon. You could find parallels today where the same type, regardless of party affiliation, always much preferred Obama and hate Trump. That even though Main Street and some celebrities love Trump, he's hated by the D.C. in-crowd because he's an outsider to them.

how much people forget that Eisenhower was not a fan of civil rights or integration and really did not want Brown v. Board of Education, even though once it came down he accepted it as a fate accompli and helped enforce it.

>>18542712
>>18542716
afaik Social Security was meant as a temporary Depression relief measure and not a permanent thing

>>18542772
Earl Warren had sought the presidency not CJOTSC. He was a potential Republican candidate in '52 and Eisenhower offered him a Supreme Court seat in exchange for dropping out of the race. BTW there's no evidence that he actually told Warren to not rule against segregation, that was a claim Warren made up that must be taken with a grain of salt.

The Brown case was already being considered when Eisenhower appointed him to the Court, so clearly he would have done so fully expecting Warren to back integration. He also appointed the liberal Potter Stewart to the Court a few years later. His dislike of Warren could be for other reasons than civil rights as the Warren Court was willing to push boundaries in a lot of areas.

>>18540957
Ike was raised by a Mennonite mother and it clearly influenced a lot of his mentality.

>>18542778
That was true, but as an adult he was a practicing Presbyterian. He rejected the Mennonite faith of his childhood and was a fedora tipper for years before having a born-again Christian conversion and embracing Presbyterianism.

>>18542773
Absolutely not. FDR always did intend it to be permanent and Frances Perkins said the same thing.

>>18542781
granted, but you could still see the influence of his mother's beliefs on a lot of his actions

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

>>18542790
I take that remark with a grain of salt and it comes across as more pragmatic than anything since he mostly had a Democrat Congress and couldn't stray too far from their platform.

Eisenhower nostalgia was definitely a thing during the Reagan years, though people still couldn't go too far into it because that would also imply wanting to go back to pre-Civil Rights Act times.

>>18542798
i feel if Ike isn't as loved today it's because of recency bias

>>18542806
>i feel if Ike isn't as loved today it's because of recency bias
but Democrats still admire FDR and he was even longer ago?

>>18542810
The Democrats' platform, at least on economic issues, hasn't changed that much since FDR though whereas there's a huge dividing line between pre- and post-Reagan Republicans. Reagan clearly targeted the Archie Bunker working class meathead voter who believed if only black people were put back in chains, then everything would be ok.

nah it seems more to me that Ike accepted the post-New Deal political order when there were still paleocons like Taft and Goldwater who wanted to go back to pre-1930s times. that as well as his enforcement of civil rights would put him at odds with post-1980 Republican ideologies.

>>18542819
I think his enforcement of civil rights would have had a lot to do with it, enforcing school desegregation was obviously very unpopular in the South but also some parts of the North.

>>18542816
i hate to say eet, but if you visit the Reagan presidential library it's 100% this "Rah rah USA gunz n freedumb" message they're sending there while ignoring the more dark sides of his presidency like Iran-Contra and the AIDS epidemic, and also all mention of his marriage to Jane Wyman is scrubbed from history--she didn't exist.

otoh the Eisenhower presidential library is more stuff like "women's participation in Ike's presidential campaigns" and a celebration of his early life and military career. his presidential policies especially his domestic ones are mostly ignored and anything they do talk about is foreign policy achievements.

Eisenhower also banned gay Federal employees and I don't think that would come off as a liberal action.

>>18542806
He didn't have influence on shaping modern politics that much, but he did bring back two party politics after a generation of Democrat rule and ran because he opposed the Taft paleocon isolationist wing of the GOP (so did Nixon for that matter).

Eisenhower seems to be the last non-incumbent president whose election was essentially a gimme the moment he was nominated.

>>18542826
Grover Norquist has been singlehandedly keeping the Reagan cult alive since he left the White House.

>>18542826
>the Eisenhower presidential library is more stuff like "women's participation in Ike's presidential campaigns" and a celebration of his early life and military career. his presidential policies especially his domestic ones are mostly ignored and anything they do talk about is foreign policy achievement

It would probably be bad optics if they mentioned Ike's quotes about how every bomb and bullet takes money from education or other non-destructive uses or showed pics of the National Guard integrating schools since the 1980 to present GOP is more like "rah rah bomb random Middle Eastern countries and put black people back in chains USA USA USA!"

>>18542842
fuck off LBJfag

>>18542378
It's a perverse thing everyone does. "The other party's past presidents were the paragon of decency and civility compared to the current guy, even though I said the exact opposite when they were in office."

>>18540957
Eisenhower's legacy has grown over time but when he left office he was not highly regarded.

even people on the left like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said, correctly, “this is not radical, 60 years ago the things we’re proposing were mainstream Republican policies.”

>>18542665
Nixon really ruined his own legacy. If he had been slightly less corrupt he would have been the president who put a man on the moon, ended Vietnam and began rapprochement with China.

That’s impressive, even with the Kent State shootings and the race riots.

But Watergate stands over it all.

>>18543369
You can’t really give Nixon any credit for ending Vietnam. He intentionally sandbagged peace negotiations as early as '68 (he lied to the Vietnamese telling them he could get them a better peace deal if they waited for him to be elected), and then massively escalated the war in 1970, by bombing two neutral countries, Laos and Cambodia. And he probably would have continued the war indefinitely if it hadn’t become logistically impossible. By the early 70s, massive numbers of US troops were addicted to and even trafficking heroin, and were murdering their superior officers in so-called “fraggings.” The war was lost, and he still managed to drag it out until '73.

Guy sent troops to protect black children’s right to an education. I don’t think any president save perhaps Johnson and his civil rights act, did anything remotely close to that.

Civil rights were in an awful place under Eisenhower, and he certainly didn’t fix things, but I feel he made more progress than, say, Nixon towards improving social equality.

>>18542729
>He had a Democrat Congress for six of his eight years (and the two years his own party was in control they only had a very slim margin) so he couldn't move too far to the right and had to play their game to a large extent
the average person doesn't understand how government works, they assume president waves a magic wand and does this and that

He was also boring ..people like Moderate Presidents. Not game shows. The media reported on policies ..not personalities.

When ...Presidents act like Dictators to just please one group of citizens over the other and need to use media and roots everyday ...it divides the country more than unite it.

>>18540957
some of Eisenhower's achievements are overstated. he has quite a few negatives including Iran and Guatemala, Executive Order 10450, and his support for Christian nationalism. his two biggest successes (the interstate highway system and enforcing civil rights) were less than commonly asserted as well. the highway system demolished a lot of people's homes and contributed to the evil of car-centric suburbia, and Little Rock was theater of sorts, more a way of slapping down states for defying the government than anything, and he also targeted a small, safe state (Arkansas) that Republicans weren't likely to win in 1960 nor did they need it to win instead of a big, electorally important one like Texas.

Judging on his presidency alone, he (and Truman) saw the world change in technology and global political alignment more than any of his predecessors. He presided over the rise of the Cold War, beginning of the nuclear age, and the space race. He was able to navigate these events with such an even hand and cool temper that many American remember this turbulent period as “the good ol’ days.”

Oddly enough, I think I kind of see Eisenhower as the bizarro Clinton. I’ve said before that Clinton’s presidency was during a period so prosperous that it’s hard to tell how much credit to give him. He led well, but to say the Pax Americana was due to his presidency is likely a stretch, and to detract from his global legacy is a mistake. Eisenhower’s era, especially given his centrist similarities to Clinton, has a similar feel, but there was a global undercurrent of dread and wariness, as opposed to the 90s end-of-history vibe under Clinton.

>>18544010
Eisenhower and Clinton were also relatively moderate representatives of their own parties who followed transformative political shifts and chose not to roll back most of those changes. Neither were themselves transformative presidents, but they rolled with the changes rather than trying to roll them back.

Eisenhower, a Republican, followed the transformative administrations of Roosevelt and Truman. Eisenhower chose not to roll back all the transformations of the New Deal wra, even though the right wing of his party was eager to do so. Eisenhower’s moderation put a Republican seal of approval on most of the New Deal.

Clinton, a Democrat, followed the transformative administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Clinton chose not to roll back all the transformations of the '80s, when the country had moved sharply to the right. Clinton actually worked well with Republicans in Congress even in his second term, when they took the House and impeached him. Clinton’s centrist “Third Way” put a Democratic stamp of approval on most of the Reagan Revolution.

To be clear, I myself wish Clinton could have been a combative president who pushed back hard against the Reagan Revolution, as well as the Gingrich Revolution. I’m not sure it was politically possible, but I wish he had tried harder. My observation is not meant as an endorsement. I’m not a fan of Clinton’s Third Way.

>>18544014
Eisenhower did oversee the construction of the modern Republican Oarty behind the scenes and DID seek to role back New Deal programs, especially in the context of the Red Scare, which sought to demonize public programs. The following is a quote from J Edgar Hoover:

One thing is certain. The American progress which all good citizens seek, such as old-age security, houses for veterans, child assistance, and a host of others, is being deployed as the window dressing by the communists to conceal their true aims and entrap gullible followers

>>18544018
Gilbraith's "The Affluent Society" criticized the neo-conservatism of the Eisenhower years and argued that too much of the American economy was based on shallow consumerism instead of public works programs or education, and that income inequality increased during those years.

>>18544022
>Gilbraith's "The Affluent Society" criticized the neo-conservatism of the Eisenhower years and argued that too much of the American economy was based on shallow consumerism instead of public works programs or education, and that income inequality increased during those years.

Not that Gilbraith realized it, but women exist and control most consumer spending, and women want to buy new pairs of shoes or redecorate their living room constantly and so the barrel of Diogenes existence he envisioned wasn't really tenable.

Reminder that Eisenhower's interventions in Iran Guatemala and DRC were in the classic early 20th century mold of robbing Third World countries to enrich corporations, whether it was oil (Iran), the United Fruit Company (Guatemala, and the Dulles brothers literally had UFC stock) or DRC (mineral reserves had been found in the separatist Katagna state)

>>18540957
He took office with 2.6% unemployment and left office with 6.6% unemployment, and unemployment peaked at 7.7% in late summer '58. The nationwide poverty rate in the '50s was around 22%.

>>18544038
>The nationwide poverty rate in the '50s was around 22%
that was before LBJ redefined "poverty" to exclude anyone on welfare, so instant drop in poverty figures