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

by William I. Hitchcock

Like Eisenhower, they started out in life with little and had grown up as outsiders, working in small towns in the Midwest or South. They had little formal education and considered themselves men of action rather than ideas. Like Eisenhower, they were workaholics, intensely competitive, and demanding. Deeply hostile to the New Deal and its expansive federal programs, they shared a profound belief in what Eisenhower liked to call the “American system,” that is, capitalism tempered by personal responsibility and good corporate governance. They felt that government interference in the free market they had mastered was a kind of betrayal of the American ideal. Although they behaved like elitists, retreating behind a high wall of wealth and privilege, they held themselves up as proof that pedigree was no requirement for success in America. They had earned their status by working hard for it, and this developed in them a zealous belief in free enterprise and a guiltless devotion to luxuries that their fabulous wealth allowed.