Roughly a million people lined the streets to praise Eisenhower—“definitely the biggest crowd in the capital’s history,” according to the city’s police department. Here was “Iron Ike,” who had led Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in the fall of 1942; who had commanded the 1944 D-day invasion of Normandy; who had served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. When he marched down the aisle in the House Chamber to the speaking platform, a who’s who of political and military power was there to see him: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Court justices,
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