The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

The American public seemed to relate to the confident, pragmatic, and accessible Eisenhower style. An admiring account in U.S. News and World Report welcomed the new attitude. “Harry Truman surrounded himself with cronies,” the magazine lamented. “Eisenhower picks men for what they can do. Franklin D. Roosevelt dealt in political theories. Eisenhower distrusts theories. Herbert Hoover held himself aloof from people. Eisenhower is warmly human. Calvin Coolidge was a silent New Englander. Eisenhower talks easily and frankly.” Eisenhower’s traits seemed to align with a new ideal of American masculinity that was visible across the decade of the 1950s.