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

by William I. Hitchcock

Then too there was Eisenhower’s mistrust of Nixon. The infamous remark in the news conference—“If you give me a week, I might think of one”—may have been a lapse, but it told a deep truth about the relationship. William Ewald explained the problem well: “Eisenhower did not so much wish victory for Nixon [as] he wished defeat for Kennedy.” When he went into battle in the last week of the campaign, Eisenhower fought to defend his own record, not to clear a path for Nixon as his successor. Ike never believed in Nixon and did not particularly like him, and he was unable to keep his feelings hidden.

Eisenhower knew the invasion of Cuba would not commence on his watch; the inauguration was only a few weeks off and there was still much planning to be done. But he could take one decision that would bind Kennedy’s hands and make it difficult for him to back away from the plan: he could break off diplomatic relations with Cuba, a move widely understood as a harbinger of armed conflict. He told Livingston Merchant on December 29 that he wanted this done “before January 20,” when he left office.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” It was in a way a paradoxical send-off. Eisenhower had worked so hard to build this massive warfare state, even as he worried about its cost.

Those seemingly charmed years would be forever invoked as a time of peace, prosperity, security, and confidence. The ugly realities of the 1950s—the war in Korea, the shame of McCarthyism, the persistence of Jim Crow, the deadly CIA plots, the nuclear fears—drifted out of focus. Instead popular memory dwelled happily on kitschy ephemera like Father Knows Best, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and men in fedoras.