America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (13 page)

Because of this enormous voter popularity, FDR was able to pass more legislation – in his first term alone – than most Presidents pass in two.  The Democratic gains in the House and Senate under Roosevelt's term yielded the largest partisan margins ever in the history of the United States Congress.  The Democrats held super majorities in Congress through all of Roosevelt's first term in office.  Lasting partisan strength is a significant item associated with great Presidents.  After Lincoln's election, Republicans held the Presidency for all but 16 years between 1860 and 1932.  Roosevelt halted this trend, and the Presidency has since been split quite evenly between Democrats and Republicans since 1932.  The House and Senate, on the other hand, were controlled overwhelmingly by Democrats between 1932 and 1995, with only a few short years of Republican control in those years.

Other pieces of the Roosevelt legacy are less easy to quantify.  The First and Second New Deals ushered in landmark legislation that continues to have an impact on the American economy.  Most importantly, the Social Security Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission all continue to affect the fabric of American life and the nation's political debates.  Other domestic legislation of a more temporary nature left an enduring impression on American society.  Among these, the GI Bill allowed for the continued expansion of the US economy and the growth of the all-American suburb.  Millions of Americans were catapulted into the middle class because of their service to the country in World War II.  On the economy, Roosevelt's presidency was an enormous success, ending the Great Depression, and bringing unemployment from a high of 25% when he entered office to a low of less than 2% when he left.  The nation went from bust to boom in just over 12 years.

On foreign policy, Roosevelt mobilized Americans effectively and won World War II, though not without some defeats along the way.  Roosevelt's enormous popularity helped him to mobilize the nation in support of war, and prepared the nation for the later attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Roosevelt's legacy is not without critics, however.  Because Roosevelt's enormous expansion of the Federal Government is still hotly debated today, FDR is assessed differently by partisans.  With the Great Recession of 2008, President Obama looked to the FDR legacy as a guide.  Republicans and conservatives suggested he look elsewhere.  Some historians and their GOP allies contend that the American economy did not recover because of the New Deal, but only because of the massive industrial build-up brought by the US' entry into World War II.  Critics point to the “Depression within a Depression” that occurred in 1938, when unemployment actually increased from about 14% to 19% within a year.  Unemployment was never able to get below 14% until 1941, when the U.S. entered the war, at which point unemployment rapidly declined much faster than it had in Roosevelt's first two terms in office, down to less than 2% by 1945.

Even on foreign policy, Roosevelt's legacy is not immune from criticism.  The impending Cold War becomes crucial to assessing Roosevelt's legacy.  Was Roosevelt strong enough in opposing Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe and Asia?  Some view Roosevelt's concessions to the Soviets at the final Yalta Conference as horribly unwise.  The US was winning the war in Japan, and with the British freed up by an impending victory in Europe, it wasn't clear that the Soviets were needed all that much.  The Manhattan Project was progressing steadily, and the US would soon have a nuclear bomb.  Perhaps FDR could have limited the Soviets more effectively.

Regardless of these criticisms, there is no doubt that Franklin Roosevelt's lengthy Presidency was one of the most transformative in history, for better or for worse.  The size and role of the Federal Government took on its greatest expansion in history, and became responsible for ensuring basic minimum economic guarantees to its citizens.  With the end of World War II, the US was positioned as the world's most viable super power, with the Soviet Union a rapidly expanding second.  The collapse of the British Empire ensured that the US would replace it as the leader of the Western free world.  The United States we know today – the most powerful nation in the world – owes its origins almost directly to Franklin Roosevelt, whose political courage on the New Deal and support for military mobilization, coupled with his enormous popularity, ensured that the US was well positioned to lead the world anew.

FDR Bibliography

Brinkley, Alan and Davis Dyer. 
The American Presidency: The Authoritative Reference. 

             
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Smith, Carter and Allen Weinstein. 
Presidents: Every Question Answered. 
New York: Hylas

              Publishing. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Chapter 1: Birth and Education, 1890-1915

Family Background

Among US Presidents, David Dwight Eisenhower had a unique familial background.  Whereas the vast majority of White House occupants were of British, Irish or Dutch background, Eisenhower's lineage was decidedly German.

His last name says it all. 
Eisenhower
was a foreign-sounding name to many Americans at the time of his election.  The President's family had origins in Germany, but also in Switzerland.  The early Eisenhower's fled Germany in the 17
^th
century due to religious persecution and sought refuge in Switzerland, where they stayed for another century. 

From there, however, Eisenhower's exotic background merges smoothly with a little-known subset of American history: the Pennsylvania “Dutch.”  Despite the name, the Pennsylvania Dutch have no relation at all to Holland; instead, their origins are, like Eisenhower’s, in Southwest Germany and Switzerland.  The Eisenhower family story is a perfect example of the story of the Pennsylvania Dutch: fleeing religious persecution, first from Germany to Switzerland, and then from Switzerland to Pennsylvania, where they created a unique cultural subset within the predominantly English-held American colonies.

The Eisenhower's fled Switzerland in the 1740's, along with waves of other religious refugees.  They arrived near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a modern-day center for the Amish.  Religious persecution in Europe was not limited to one group: Lutherans, Anabaptists, Amish and others all helped settle early Lancaster County as a result of leaving the mother continent.

For the next century, the Eisenhower's were firmly embedded in the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Like most, they were farmers, and their preferred language was not English but Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German, which until recently was spoken widely in the area.  Today, it is limited predominantly to Amish sects.

Despite this background, in the decades after the Civil War, however, Dwight Eisenhower's parents were eager to move on.  Dwight's father had received a college education in engineering, a grand departure from the farm-based family heritage, and afterward he moved to Kansas, where he opened a store. Hard economic times, however, forced the closing of the store, and the family became nomadic, moving to Texas in search of a stronger economy.  This was in the late 1880's, just in time for the birth of a son, Dwight David Eisenhower.

Birth and Upbringing

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14
^th
, 1890, in Dennison, Texas, the third child of Ida Elizabeth Stover and David Jacob Eisenhower. Originally, Dwight’s parents planned to name him David after his father, but Ida decided to switch David Dwight to Dwight Davis in order to avoid having two men named David under one roof. And though Eisenhower is just as well known as Ike today, he wasn’t the only one who went by Ike in the family; in fact, all of the boys had the nickname Ike, based on a shortened version of their last name. They were distinguished by their age, going by the nicknames “Big Ike” and “Little Ike”, but by the time they were young children, only Dwight was still called Ike, and the name forever stuck.

With the family's financial situation precarious, the infant Eisenhower would spend little time in Texas, as the family was gearing up to relocate another time. When Eisenhower was just over a year old, the Eisenhower's head back to Abilene, Kansas, which Eisenhower forever considered his home town. 

Religion was an important part of the Eisenhower household.  Coming from a Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, the Eisenhower's in Kansas were initially Mennonites.  A sect of Anabaptists, the Mennonites throughout the United States frequently resembled their Amish relatives, refraining from technology and other markers of modern society.  Some Mennonites, including the sect to which the Eisenhower's belonged, were moderate on the issue, using technology sparingly.  The one point that all Mennonites agreed on was the need for a peaceful world.  Like their other religious relations, the Quakers, the Mennonites were fervently opposed to all forms of warfare, and were frequently allowed to abstain from the military draft on religious grounds.

The Eisenhower's, however, wavered on religion.  They frequently attended other religious groups, and Dwight was actually baptized in the Presbyterian Church, a “high church” Protestant sect not very similar to the Mennonites.  His mother, meanwhile, wavered in her commitment to the Mennonites, who lacked a solid religious community in Kansas, and became a Jehovah's Witness, a much more popular sect on the prairie. Still, Ike would later recount that family dinners and breakfasts invariably included bible readings. And though Eisenhower’s faith was officially unsettled, he remained spiritual throughout his life, once commenting that he was
"one of the most deeply religious men I know".

As a child growing up with a handful of other boys, it’s not surprising that young Dwight was adventurous in his youth. As a kid growing up in Kansas, Dwight developed strong interests in outdoor activities, including exploring the wilderness and hunting and fishing, One episode proved disastrous for his younger brother, however, who lost an eye in an accident. And when Dwight was a freshman in high school, he injured a knee and developed an infection that nearly cost him the leg, forcing him to take his first year over again.

Eisenhower’s youthful adventurism may have had unfortunate endings, but he also applied that same zeal to reading, becoming a voracious reader of the books contained within his household. Among those books, the ones that most intrigued him were military books, which ironically belonged to his mother.

West Point

After successfully completing high school, Eisenhower initially wanted to go to college. There was just one problem: money, or lack of it. Simply put, the family did not have enough money to send all of the kids to school, forcing Dwight to work out an arrangement with his older brother Edgar that the two would alternate between going to college for a year and working full time for a year, thereby earning enough tuition for the both of them to eventually finish school. Naturally the older brother went first, and Edgar soon found that he preferred school to the arrangement he and Dwight had reached. After asking Dwight if he could go to school a second straight year, Dwight relented, forever altering his own destiny. Edgar eventually used the opportunity to become a lawyer.

While Dwight continued to work a menial job as a night watch
at the Belle Springs Creamery, he was persuaded by a friend to try applying to the Naval Academy, where he wouldn’t have to pay tuition. Though he requested an appointment from Kansas’ U.S. Senator, Joseph L. Bristow, Ike was already too old to attend the Naval Academy. He was, however, eligible to go to the military academy at West Point, and he entered the famous school in 1911 at the age of 21.

At West Point, Ike liked the school and academic nature of it, but he had qualms about some of its rules, regulations and practices.  Though he cherished the traditions of the institution, he detested the hazing he received as a freshman. Moreover, in sports, as elsewhere, Eisenhower was unsuccessful, failing to make any of West Point's major athletic teams, to his dismay.  He was truly saddened that his athletic abilities weren't up to par with his West Point counterparts.  Eventually, he was able to make the junior varsity football team, and though he enjoyed playing the sport, he had a relatively undistinguished football career.

Even in academics, which Ike liked, he proved to be less than a star student.  He struggled at West Point, barely passing many of his classes, despite the fact he had always had a fondness for writing and arithmetic.  Ike succeeded in English and enjoyed his studies, but he was unable to achieve strong grades, sinking increasingly towards the bottom of his West Point class.

While Eisenhower's early years at West Point were weak both academically and athletically, by the time graduation came around, he had recovered somewhat.  He graduated on schedule after four years, in 1915, solidly in the middle of his graduating class. To Ike, that was an achievement that made him proud, given his standing earlier on in his academic career. And as it turned out, Ike was in historically distinguished company, because his class produced a record number of generals, including men like Omar Bradley and
Joseph T. McNarney, who like Ike would have monumental roles in World War II. Over 1/3 of the class eventually attained the rank of general, earning the Class of 1915 the praiseworthy nickname “the class the stars fell on”.