But in the meantime he set a pattern that would bedevil America for decades: the closing off of national security decision-making from even the most cursory review by elected officials or the public. It is a paradox, hardly the only one of these years, that a man who so ardently championed America’s dynamic, free-market society, and who asserted that America could defy communism while sustaining its democratic values, did so much to obscure the inner workings of the nation’s security from public debate. In this sense the Age of Eisenhower would live on long after Ike had passed from the scene.
