The Eisenhower Cohort

The Eisenhower Cohort

          General Dwight David Eisenhower (a.k.a. Ike) was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces throughout its existence.  That is when we all know he guided the efforts of Operation Overlord 75 years ago and pushed for the reclamation of continental Europe from the clutches of the fascist Nazi war machine. The books and stories that recount those daring days are plentiful and we have almost all seen some version of the events played out on one film or another with great drama.  In every instance, Ike’s presence behind the scenes in England, masterminding the war is one of stalwart patience and profound and consistent perseverance through all the vagaries thrown in front of such a grand initiative.  That was a two-year effort start-to-finish. Between then and his run for the Presidency in 1952 he served as Army Chief of Staff, President of Columbia University and Supreme Commander of NATO.  In a post-war America you could hardly imagine a better and sounder preparation for the rigors of leading the country at a critical and foundational moment of growth.

Now think about the eight years of leadership that Ike endured as President from 1953 to 1960. He entered the presidential race as a Republican (as a non-political military man he could have gone either way) because he stood for blocking the isolationist foreign policies of Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed both NATO and all foreign entanglements. That means Ike was a globalist versus nationalist. His main goals were to contain communism (he was not a supporter of Joseph McCarthy) and constrain federal deficits. He was tough on China based on Korea and then Vietnam. He was pro-Shah and pushed back against Israeli/British/French aggressions against Egypt and in favor of the Syrian invasion in 1957. On the domestic front, Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who was pro Social Security and pro Civil Rights Act of 1957. His largest and most lasting infrastructure program was the Interstate Highway System, which dominated American road culture for several generations.

The Ike years were relatively quiet years for America where prosperity, peace and rebirth of the nation were the priorities.  I was born in 1954 and therefore consider myself a member of the Eisenhower Cohort of the Baby Boom (as opposed to the Truman Cohort of our older brothers and sisters).  My cohort is just now coming of retirement age and we are daily wondering what has happened to this world gone mad.  A world where all the ideals that Ike stood for are being thrown out the window.  I know that Ike was a Republican, but when you look at the Electoral College maps for the 1952 and 1956 elections, all of the now-blue states voted for Ike.  It was the deep-south and it’s vestigial Land of Dixie pattern of voting as Democrats that had that area as the stronghold for Adlai Stevenson.  The truth is that the ideals of Dwight Eisenhower were well-aligned with the ideals of America, especially that America that had fought and won the war against fascism and wanted peace more than ongoing war. The theaters of war in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific had given us a crash-course in globalization and we had come to realize that we were not so different from them if we could all work together in harmony.

I watched the movie USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage last night and despite bad cinematography and acting (Nicholas Cage as Captain McVay) the message that came through in the end was the mutual respect and support from the Japanese submarine Commander Hashimoto.  The point made by the movie is that they may have been enemies as soldiers, but they were all alike as men of compassion.

Then, as a member of the Eisenhower Cohort, I am part of a cohort that believes in social consciousness and equality, a cohort that values the globalization of mankind, a cohort that believes in collective effort for the common good in areas ranging from domestic to global infrastructure and a cohort that is dovishly anti-war and anti-aggression, not out of weakness, but out of strength and righteousness. This valuable membership allows me to stand up and say that what I see going on in the world at large is simply not right.

          Look at the run-up to the weekend’s G-7 gathering in Biarritz, or Trump’s lobbying for the next G-7 to be at his Doral Resort in Florida where he can choose to invite Mr. G-8 Putin himself.  There are so many things wrong with how Trump is conducting himself in Biarritz and beyond that they are too plentiful to mention.  Angela Merkel is a member of the Eisenhower Cohort (especially so since she was born and raised in East Germany and understands the struggle quite well).  Emmanuel Macron seems like a member of the Eisenhower Cohort even though he missed it by fifteen years (Maybe on average with his wife he is).  His values are very aligned with Ike’s.  And then there is Trump and Boris, Bozo and Bojo.  One is a Truman Cohort and the other is a post-Ike Cohort.  Neither of them can think past their own selfish wants and needs to any sort of collective value added.  Their respective political status dominates their thinking even to the exclusion of supporting one another’s similar but not always perfectly-aligned needs.  Trump had the audacity to call climate change a “niche” issue.  G-7 leaders have decided that Trump is not worth angering, because he has shown that he will say and do anything to lash out against opponents and the sycophantic Republican establishment will cow to his ego.  Therefore, this gathering got less done as they   sought to register their policy differences with Trump in the most flattering of tones. Even Macron held his hand and tried to avoid divisiveness by sidestepping the usual concluding statement from the group.  Meanwhile Bojo was courting the President of the EU, Donald Tusk, pandering for a solution to the crisis of his own creation for which he cannot find a Brexit.

Back at the ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, at the annual conference of central bankers and economists, policymakers, both foreign and domestic, rallied around the Federal Reserve chief, Jerome Powell (he’s an Ike Cohort), who they feel does not deserve the political whipping-boy status that he receives regularly from Bozo Trump. Trump thoroughly enjoys beating those who he tethers to himself.  It makes the sport so much easier, right Mr. Sessions?

I am glad that Donald does not belong to my Eisenhower Cohort.  I’m sure there are some who do belong that I might feel are not worthy of membership (Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, come to mind), but mostly I believe that those who stop and think about the ideals of our Supreme Commander and President Dwight Eisenhower and think about the good that his stable and unpretentious thinking gave us in terms of leadership and policies to live and grow by, will recognize how far we have strayed.  Labels like Democrat and Republican change.  So do labels like conservative and liberal.  Angela Merkel was a communist. Emmanuel Macron is a Socialist.  Trump is…well, Trump is Trump, defies all labeling,  and I’m not even sure he would know who Dwight David Eisenhower was if he wasn’t in front of a teleprompter.