Guest columnist: Trump can learn from Eisenhower.
All the comparisons of Donald Trump as president with his predecessors have largely ignored the chief executive most like Trump, namely, Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961). Both men had no backgrounds in politics — Trump, the businessman; Ike, the military leader. Both had controversial roles in New York City — Trump in his real-estate dealings; Ike as nonacademic president of Columbia University, which drew the unmitigated wrath of the faculty.
Both won their elections to the White House handily, although Ike's was an unbelievable landslide over Democrat Adlai Stephenson, with 442 electoral votes.
Even in the appointment of their Cabinets, both men relied upon business leaders. Ike's first secretary of defense, Charles E, Wilson, had been a former president of General Motors, best known for his quip, “What is good for our country is good for General Motors and vice versa.” Both men urged big-time military spending.
Both had a Republican Congress. Both had major issues with the two Koreas and Russia. Both wanted to slim down the federal bureaucracy. Both were avid golfers — and were criticized for their many days on the fairways. Finally, both were old men when they assumed office — Trump, the oldest, Ike No. 6 among presidents. Now the differences. Trump wants lower taxes. Eisenhower kept the top tax rate at 91 percent for high-rollers. Yet not only did the economy do well (slowly, at an annual average of 2.4 percent growth rate), but Ike was the last president to reduce the national debt from year to year. And his administration began the Interstate Highway System critical to the nation's infrastructure. Average Americans benefited from the economic policies, buying cars, TVs and homes. About half of all the housing in the United States in 1960 had been built in the 1950s.
Ike kept — and tweaked, even expanded — virtually all the New Deal reforms that conservatives in his party railed against, calling it “Modern Republicanism.”
Although he had his demagogic critics, such as Sen Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, who accused the State Department of employing numerous communists, Ike refused to pay any heed to him. He argued that it would be inappropriate for a president to “get down in the gutter with that guy.” And McCarthy eventually destroyed himself.
It was in their means of communicating to the American people that the two leaders differed the most.
Of course, Eisenhower could have been hardnosed and brash, for, as a military man he could have bristled at reporters with questions he deemed insubordinate. And although his syntax was sometimes twisted, he worked on his speaking ability, so much so that he was not afraid of having regular news conferences (he had 193 by the end of his second term, identical to the sum held by the more loquacious Bill Clinton). Moreover, beginning in January 1955, he held the first-in-history televised news conference.
The rub, of course, was that the media thought Ike was not their intellectual equal. No matter, Eisenhower was the epitome of propriety in dealing with the press. He didn't show up late. The confabs lasted for 30 minutes, from 10:30 to 11:00 in the morning, and questions were expected to be jam-packed, meaning that those with a soft underbelly were politely dismissed, as illustrated by a query from a New York Herald Tribune reporter on Jan. 25, 1956:
“On the basis of your three years' contact with politics and politicians, could you tell us, sir, some of your present impressions about the business of politics; specifically, do you like it any better, do you feel more proficient, and do you have any advice for professional politicians?”
Ike’s response: “Would you mind asking me that question some time at the beginning of a conference where everybody will agree we can talk the whole half hour? After all, it is very long.”
Although Ike's rating by historians wasn't impressive when he left office, the presidents who succeeded him gave him an enormous spike in assessment because their records couldn't match his. Today, Eisenhower consistently ranks among the 10 best chief executives, and the proof of the pudding is that a memorial in his honor is in the works in Washington.
They share many similarities, but also key differences.