The Fifties

by David Halberstam

July 1949, some nine months after his own shocking defeat by Harry Truman (which seemed to promise the Roosevelt coalition would go on ad infinitum), Thomas E. Dewey met with Dwight Eisenhower, then the president of Columbia University, to begin the process of coercing Ike to run for the presidency in 1952 as a Republican. Eisenhower’s notes of that meeting are unusually revealing of the Republican dilemma: “All middle-class citizens of education have a common belief that the tendencies towards centralization and paternalism must be halted and reversed. No one who voices these opinions can be elected. He [Dewey] quotes efforts of Hoover, Landon, Willkie, Himself. Consequently we must look around for someone of great popularity and who has not frittered away his political assets by taking positive stands against national planning, etc, etc. Elect such a man to Presidency, after which [N.B.: italics Ike’s] he must lead us back to safe channels and paths.”