The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Adams asked what was the matter. “All they talked about was how they would win with my popularity. Nobody said I had a brain in my head,” Eisenhower answered. It was, in fact, Eisenhower’s independence and the fact that he was new on the political scene that made him an ideal candidate: He served as healer to a badly divided and frightened nation. Richard Nixon was assigned the job of reconciling the irreconcilable within the Republican Party. Dewey had recognized in him the ability to balance the internationalism of the Eastern wing with the anti-Communism and conservatism of the old isolationist wing. His economic policies were essentially Republican centrist leaning toward liberal. If there were occasional doubts about him in some of the old isolationist circles—a belief that he had sold out to the Eastern wing or that he was too pragmatic—then he immediately set out to silence such criticism by being a party workhorse, by going out and making endless speeches at county Republican dinners, by collecting due bills, becoming the ultimate party loyalist.