Securing the Nomination and the Presidency

The 1952 Republican presidential nomination was a long-delayed battle between two factions for control of the party. An attempt to compete with Franklin Roosevelt’s immense popularity had led to a string of liberal Republican presidential nominations: Alf Landon (1936), a former Bull Moose Progressive who had endorsed many New Deal programs; Wendell Willkie (1940), a former Democrat who had voted for Roosevelt in 1932; and Thomas Dewey (1944 and 1948), who supported the New Deal but thought that Republicans could administer it more efficiently. These candidates’ failure to defeat Roosevelt, and Dewey’s particularly embarrassing loss to President Truman in 1948, had made party conservatives determined to run one of their own—Ohio senator Robert Taft—in 1952.

As we have seen, Eisenhower’s decision to enter the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 was based, in large part, on his determination to prevent the nomination of Taft. His primary concern was Taft’s refusal to support NATO and U.S. participation in the collective security of Western Europe. He also believed that Taft’s conservative positions on domestic issues were out of step with the views of most Americans. Taft’s nomination, Eisenhower believed, would assure another Democratic victory and the breakdown of the two-party system, perpetuating the centralization of power in the federal government. Although he would have preferred to stay out of the campaign for the nomination, Eisenhower was ultimately convinced by his political advisers that doing so would assure Taft’s nomination.

Herbert Brownell’s warning to General Eisenhower that he would have to fight for the nomination proved correct. The lead story going into the Republican National Convention in Chicago was the large number of contested delegates. Texas had the most with thirty-eight, but six other states plus Puerto Rico brought the total number to seventy-five. The Republican National Committee (RNC) temporarily settled the issue of contested delegates in Taft’s favor. This made the preconvention delegate tally 527 for Taft and 427 for Eisenhower, with 604 needed for the nomination. The final decision regarding contested delegates, however, would be determined by a series of votes from the convention floor. In these votes, contested delegates could vote on the status of contested delegates from other states, but not their own. To improve their chances of winning those votes, the Eisenhower campaign introduced an amendment to the rules of the convention that they called the “Fair Play Amendment.” The Fair Play Amendment would prohibit the contested delegates from being seated at the convention until the issue had been settled. More important than the contested delegates themselves were the uncommitted delegates and those pledged to Harold Stassen and Earl Warren. How these delegates voted on the Fair Play Amendment would be a good indicator of who the nominee would be.

Throughout the complicated process, Eisenhower’s convention team, particularly Lodge and Brownell, proved themselves more adept than the Taft forces at using parliamentary procedure to their advantage. They were also more mindful of the importance of maintaining the ethical high ground, which was an important factor for uncommitted delegates. In what proved to be a test vote for the Fair Play Amendment, the convention rejected—648 to 548—a motion by Taft campaign manager Clarence Brown to have Louisiana, one of the states with contested delegates, excluded from the Fair Play Amendment. The uncommitted delegates sided with Eisenhower in this vote. After the rejection of Brown’s motion, the Fair Play Amendment was adopted unanimously. With the Fair Play Amendment in place and the uncommitted delegates on his side, Eisenhower’s convention team successfully challenged the RNC’s decision on the contested delegations from Georgia and Texas. The momentum had clearly swung from Taft to Eisenhower.

On July 11, the convention voted on the presidential nomination. At the end of the first ballot, Eisenhower had 595 votes, Taft had 500, Warren 81, Stassen 20, and Douglas MacArthur 10. Eisenhower was nine votes short of the number needed for nomination. Stassen released his delegates, prompting the head of the Minnesota delegation to rise and ask for the floor. Earlier he had cast nineteen votes for Stassen and nine votes for Eisenhower. He now wished to change his vote, giving all twenty-eight to Eisenhower—more than enough for the nomination.⁶ The general had unexpectedly won a first-ballot victory.

Despite a hard-fought battle for the nomination, Eisenhower’s first instinct was to mend fences. Disregarding objections from some of his advisers, Eisenhower phoned Taft and asked to meet him at his hotel. A surprised Taft agreed and in “a trip that proved to be far more difficult physically” than he imagined, Eisenhower made his way down to the lobby of the Blackstone Hotel and across the street to the Conrad Hilton. The mood was much different there with “the crowds noticeably sorrowful and even resentful.”⁷ After a brief meeting with the senator, the two men spoke to reporters. “I want to congratulate General Eisenhower. I shall do everything possible in the campaign to secure his election and to help in his administration,” Taft said graciously. Eisenhower responded in kind: “I came over to pay a call of friendship on a very great American. His willingness to cooperate is absolutely necessary to the success of the Republican party in the campaign and in the Administration to follow.” Eisenhower’s statement “brought a chorus of cheers” from Taft supporters. This was a welcome change from the “mixture of cheers and boos” that had greeted his arrival.⁸

Eisenhower had won the Republican nomination by a slim margin, but his victory in the general election was a landslide by any measure. In the Electoral College, Eisenhower defeated the Democratic candidate, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, 442–89. In the popular vote, Eisenhower had 34 million votes (55 percent) to Stevenson’s 27.3 million (44.5 percent). A record 62 million Americans had voted (63.3 percent of eligible voters). Of particular note was Eisenhower’s success in the South where he won four states of the former Confederacy, more than any Republican since the end of Reconstruction.

The Politics of the Middle Way

Republican success in the general election masked intense factionalism within the party. Eisenhower would be the first Republican president in twenty years, but he was at odds with a growing faction of his own party. Conservatives, who had a considerable base of power on Capitol Hill, were eager to overturn a generation of liberal domestic policies and internationalist foreign policies. Central to the factional differences was the role of the federal government. Conservatives preferred free enterprise and individual initiative to federal programs and the taxes necessary to support them. When government action was unavoidable, they favored state or local control in areas where the federal government had no explicit constitutional power. In foreign policy, conservatives had not reverted to the isolationism they espoused before World War II, but they had not completely converted to internationalism either. They virulently opposed communism but did not see the benefits of collective security alliances or foreign aid programs.

Eisenhower, despite some of his campaign rhetoric, supported a more active role for the federal government in both domestic and foreign policy. He supported the continuation, and in some cases the expansion, of popular New Deal programs. When new programs were necessary, however, Eisenhower supported those that would allow the federal government to act as a catalyst for change without adding significantly to its responsibilities. This would allow government to look after the welfare of individuals and still maintain fiscal responsibility. It was, according to Eisenhower, “a liberal program in all of those things that bring the federal government in contact with the individual,” but conservative when it came to “the economy of this country.”⁹ Somewhat less enthusiastically, Eisenhower also supported federal legislation that would protect the economic interests of farmers and organized labor, and the civil rights of African Americans. On foreign policy issues, Eisenhower was a committed internationalist.

To conservatives, the promotion of active government, both at home and abroad, seemed like a mere continuation of the Democratic policies of the previous twenty years, but that was not Eisenhower’s intention. The key to understanding how Eisenhower distinguished his policies from those of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans is his philosophy of the Middle Way. After he had secured the Republican nomination, Eisenhower began to speak more frequently about the Middle Way. In an October campaign speech, Eisenhower warned his audience about the dangers of going too far to the political left or right. Those on the left, he said, believed people were “so weak, so irresponsible, that an all-powerful government must direct and protect” them. The end of that road, he warned, was “dictatorship.” On the right, were those “who deny the obligation of government to intervene on behalf of the people even when the complexities of modern life demand it.” The end of that road was “anarchy.” To avoid those extremes, he said, “government should proceed along the middle way.”¹⁰

Many of Eisenhower’s domestic policy proposals provide examples of his Middle Way philosophy.¹¹ It is the field of social welfare, however, that provides the sharpest contrast between Eisenhower and Republican conservatives who opposed him. Conservatives referred to his proposals in social welfare as “creeping socialism,” but Eisenhower believed that by addressing the problems that threatened American society his programs would stem—not encourage—the impetus toward socialism. Eisenhower saw these programs as a safety net, “a floor over the pit of personal disaster in our complex modern society.” Unlike socialism, however, they did not create a “ceiling” that limited initiative and industry.¹² They did not interfere with “the right … to build the most glorious structure on top of that floor.”¹³

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

Searching for the Middle Way in the field of social welfare, Eisenhower attempted to provide for the general welfare, as called for in the Constitution, without taking on the enormous financial burdens of an ever-expanding welfare state or significantly encroaching on the responsibilities of local government. He was continually frustrated when his moderate programs were opposed by conservative Republicans anxious to overturn the legacy of the New Deal and by liberal Democrats unwilling to settle for less federal intervention than they would like. Eisenhower’s only first-term social welfare success came in Social Security, an area where a program was already in place. His initiative in health insurance, which required a new program, failed at the hands of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Leading the way in the formation of policy in this field was the new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower promised to study the problem of federal waste and mismanagement and, if elected, make recommendations for government reorganization.¹⁴ Eisenhower asked Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, to chair a new Special Committee on Government Organization (SCGO). The other members of the committee were the president’s brother Milton Eisenhower, president of Pennsylvania State University; and Arthur Flemming, president of Ohio Wesleyan University and former director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. The SCGO had a broad mandate to study and recommend changes in the organization and activities of the executive branch in order to promote economy and efficiency. Eisenhower’s Middle Way served as the blueprint for the committee’s recommendations. “We have been guided by your own expressed determination to avoid any actions which tend to make people ever more dependent upon the government and yet to make certain that the human side of our national problems is not forgotten,” noted the committee’s report.¹⁵

The first recommendation of the SCGO was the creation of a new cabinet-level department to absorb the functions of the Federal Security Agency (FSA). The FSA, created by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, had thirty-eight thousand employees representing the Social Security System, the Food and Drug Administration, the Public Health Service, and the Office of Education. Despite a budget of $4.6 billion the FSA lacked cabinet status. The creation of a new department, the committee believed, would be “an important milestone on the road to social progress,” making clear that the Republican Party recognized that the government responsibilities embodied by the FSA were permanent, providing “an excellent example of the beneficial functioning of our two-party system.”¹⁶ On March 12, 1953, Eisenhower delivered a special message to Congress requesting approval for the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).¹⁷

Republicans had opposed President Truman’s attempts to elevate the FSA to cabinet status in 1949 and 1950. For many Republicans, health and education were not legitimate areas of federal concern. Placing the Public Health Service and the Office of Education under the supervision of a cabinet department, particularly one oriented toward welfare, would only strengthen the federal bureaucracy’s claim to legitimacy in these areas. The SCGO overcame these objections through decentralization. The plan for HEW did not place all of the department’s powers in the hands of the secretary. The functions of the Public Health Service and the Office of Education, for example, remained in those agencies, which were subordinate divisions of the new department; the secretary would have only supervisory control.

There was very little opposition from either party to the creation of HEW. The measure won bipartisan support, and Eisenhower signed the bill creating the new department on April 11, 1953. Although Republican congressmen participated in the creation of HEW, they did not see themselves as acquiescing in the creation of a permanent welfare state. Rather, they were admitting that Social Security, the Food and Drug Administration, and the other components of HEW were an accepted and popular part of American society. Only the most conservative Republicans still favored their elimination.

Oveta Culp Hobby, whom Eisenhower had appointed head of the FSA, became HEW’s first secretary. Hobby was a registered Democrat from Texas, but she had endorsed Eisenhower for president on the front page of the Houston Post, which she and her husband owned. Her appointment would reward the many southern Democrats who had crossed over to vote for Eisenhower and solidify the bipartisan credentials of the new department. Nelson Rockefeller, who had served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, would serve as undersecretary. Rockefeller believed that it was important for the Republican Party, which was so often associated with preserving the status quo, to demonstrate that the social gains of the New Deal era had bipartisan support and would be not only retained but improved upon by the Republican Party. “A Republican administration couldn’t be seen to be trying to turn back the clock,” he later recalled.¹⁸

As Eisenhower asserted in his campaign statements, he was definitely not in favor of turning back the clock. “I believe that the social gains achieved by the people of the United States, whether they were enacted by a Republican or a Democratic administration, are not only here to stay but are to be improved and expanded,” Eisenhower noted during an October campaign stop. “Anyone who says it is my purpose to cut down Social Security, unemployment insurance, to leave the ill and aged destitute, is lying.”¹⁹ Despite these general principles, however, it was unclear to Hobby and Rockefeller where Eisenhower stood on the specific domestic policy debates that concerned HEW.

Expanding Social Security

Among the issues up for immediate consideration was the expansion of Social Security. Throughout the campaign, Eisenhower had promised, if elected, to extend coverage to groups not currently eligible for benefits.²⁰ He repeated this pledge in his first State of the Union address on February 3, 1953.²¹ What was unclear was whether Eisenhower favored expansion of the system in its current form or if he preferred the “pay-as-you-go” plan that the 1952 Republican platform said deserved a “thorough study.”²² Under the current system, benefits for the elderly were paid using the same framework that had been established by the Social Security Act of 1935. This act created a federally operated, compulsory, old-age pension program. Qualified workers paid for the program with a payroll tax matched by their employer. Proceeds were placed in a federal trust account. At the age of sixty-five, those workers became eligible for monthly payments relative to the amount they had contributed to the program over the years.

The pay-as-you-go plan, promoted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and endorsed by many conservatives, was an attempt to create a universal coverage, old-age pension funded by current revenues. Under this plan all employed workers would be subject to the existing payroll tax and all elderly persons would be eligible for a flat-rate pension, regardless of their employment history. The cost of starting up the program would be paid for with the existing trust account, and all future benefits would be paid from that year’s contributions. In his 1953 budget message, Eisenhower had shown interest in the pay-as-you-go model.²³

HEW, however, recommended expanding the system based on the current model. Hobby and Rockefeller argued that under a current financing system, such as the one proposed by the Chamber of Commerce, business interests and others seeking lower taxes would pressure Congress to keep the program’s costs down, preventing future benefits from keeping pace with inflation. Eliminating the trust fund aspect of Social Security, they argued, created the possibility that it could be dismantled by future politicians who did not want the responsibility of collecting the taxes to pay for it.

On November 20, 1953, Hobby and Rockefeller outlined HEW’s proposal for expanding the current system to Eisenhower and the cabinet.²⁴ This meeting is often credited with convincing Eisenhower to abandon pay-as-you-go plans and endorse expansion of the current system.²⁵ Other evidence, however, suggests that by this time Eisenhower may have already made up his mind. On October 7, 1953, in a letter to financier Edward Hutton, Eisenhower anticipated HEW’s contention that eliminating the trust fund would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the system. “It would appear logical to build upon the system that has been in place for almost 20 years,” he wrote, “rather than embark upon the radical course of turning it completely upside down and running the very real danger that we would end up with no system at all.”²⁶

On January 14, 1954, Eisenhower submitted the HEW plan to Congress.²⁷ He followed up with several public speeches. “We want to preserve and strengthen its [the Social Security System’s] reliance on a contributory system, in which workers and their employers share the obligation to make payments,” Eisenhower said the following month in New York City. “Equally firm in our thinking is the belief that the benefits paid to workers … should bear a definite relation to their earnings in their years of activity. To scrap either of these underlying principles would move the system in the direction of charity and undermine the social insurance concept.”²⁸ Although many Republicans still preferred a pay-as-you-go scheme, most were reluctant to vote against expanding one of government’s most popular programs. The administration’s proposal was, therefore, overwhelmingly approved by both houses, and Eisenhower signed it into law as the Social Security Amendments Act on September 1, 1954. This act brought nearly ten million additional people under the protection of Social Security. These included self-employed professionals and small farmers, agricultural and domestic workers, employees of state and local governments, and U.S. citizens employed outside the United States. Another important provision was a 16 percent increase in benefits.²⁹ The New York Times proclaimed, “In strictly human terms this was perhaps the most significant achievement of the administration in the 1954 session of Congress.”³⁰ Not only had the new Republican presidential administration refused to dismantle one of the New Deal’s most popular programs, under Eisenhower’s leadership it had expanded it.

Health Reinsurance

During the 1952 campaign Eisenhower continually stated his opposition to any form of federal compulsory health insurance, such as that proposed by President Truman in 1949 and 1950. These plans he condemned as examples of “creeping socialism.” Eisenhower believed that plans offered by commercial and nonprofit insurance carriers, together with locally administered programs for those unable to afford insurance, could best meet the needs of the American people. “Any move toward socialized medicine is sure to have one result,” he said. “Instead of the patient getting more and better medical care for less, he will get less and poorer medical care for more… . We must preserve the completely voluntary relationship between doctor and patient.”³¹ Eisenhower’s stand clearly reflected the Republican Party line as stated in the 1952 platform.³²

Eisenhower did admit that the existing system was in need of improvement, but during the campaign he did not offer any specific suggestions.³³ HEW brought the problem into sharper focus. In 1952 only 17 percent ($1.6 billion) of all private expenditures for medical care ($9.4 billion) were paid by insurance.³⁴ Insurance carriers were, understandably, reluctant to offer policies that would place them at great financial risk. Some of the specific shortcomings in coverage identified by HEW were the following: age restrictions that prevented elderly Americans from getting insurance; inadequate coverage of low-income families and those who lived in rural areas; the characterization of certain individuals as “uninsurable” based on a preexisting condition; total benefit limits that fell short in cases of catastrophic illness; limits on the number of days of hospitalization covered; exclusions that limited coverage to specific procedures and treatments; and coverage for early diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease.³⁵ With the help of HEW Eisenhower sought a middle way between federally sponsored health insurance—a system he thought of as socialized medicine—and the existing system, where insurance carriers covered only a small percentage of health-care costs.

Once again Rockefeller played an important role in Eisenhower’s pursuit of the Middle Way. The answer to bringing adequate medical care within the means of all Americans, he argued, was not to institute federally sponsored health insurance but to provide incentives for health insurance companies to expand their coverage. Rockefeller came up with a plan to do that without committing the federal government to a predominant role. The plan was known as health reinsurance. Under Rockefeller’s reinsurance plan, the federal government would insure commercial and nonprofit insurance companies against “abnormal losses” associated with offering policies to individuals not adequately covered by health insurance, or for costs not widely covered by insurance policies.³⁶ The plan would not pay benefits to individuals or reimburse companies for benefits paid to any individual policy holder. Nor would the plan reimburse companies for their overall losses. Rather, insurance companies would propose that a particular type of policy be eligible for reinsurance. If the policy promoted the overall goals of the plan, reinsurance would be offered at premiums set by the secretary of HEW. Insurance carriers could then offer these policies without fear that doing so would financially jeopardize the company. If the company did experience an “abnormal loss” associated with a reinsured policy, they could file a claim with HEW. The plan was meant to be self-supporting. An initial appropriation of $25 million would be necessary to get the program started, but after that it would be paid for by the premiums. To protect the principle of free enterprise, the plan was subject to a no competition provision. Reinsurance would be offered only if insurance was not available commercially at a premium rate comparable to that offered by HEW. Regulation of the insurance industry was not the purpose of the plan. Participants need only demonstrate that they were financially sound and operating according to the law and in a manner entitling them to public confidence.³⁷

Eisenhower approved the reinsurance plan. Its delicate balance between government involvement and private enterprise appealed to his sense of the Middle Way. As he would later say, it allowed the federal government to “fulfill its responsibility for leadership in these matters but in such a way that demagogues could not make the government responsible for all activity in them.”³⁸ He began preparing the way for an administration-backed health-care bill with a special message to Congress in January 1954 and a series of public speeches emphasizing that health care should be accessible to Americans of all classes and races and in both rural and metropolitan areas.³⁹ Although the reinsurance plan had the administration’s backing, it was not without its detractors in the cabinet. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, one of the most conservative members of the cabinet, and Budget Director Joseph Dodge were both against the plan but consoled themselves in their belief that it would not pass.⁴⁰

The Department of Treasury and the Budget Bureau were not the only opponents of the health reinsurance plan. Like many Middle Way initiatives, an unlikely coalition of the right and left wings of the political spectrum opposed the administration’s health-care plan. Conservative groups such as the American Medical Association (AMA) opposed the plan on the grounds that it was an “opening wedge” for socialized medicine and would lead to a decrease in the quality of medical care.⁴¹ On the other hand, liberal groups such as Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) opposed the plan out of fear that it might prevent passage of compulsory national health insurance.

In an effort to win support for the bill, Eisenhower hosted a luncheon for insurance company executives on May 17, 1954. In his address, the president emphasized that the majority of Americans believed that the insurance industry was doing an inadequate job of meeting their needs. Of these, he pointed out, a substantial number, including organized labor and the ADA, were in favor of a national compulsory health insurance system. The reinsurance plan, he argued, was a way to help the insurance industry better meet the demands of the people. By stemming the tide of support for a compulsory system, reinsurance would save the insurance industry and, indirectly, the health-care providers represented by the AMA.⁴²

Secretary Hobby, in addition to making a national television address, also met with AMA executives in an attempt to win them over with Eisenhower’s lesser of two evils approach.⁴³ Hobby tried to convince the AMA representatives that reinsurance was in the interests of the doctors since it would provide a buffer against compulsory health insurance and because better insurance coverage would assure payment of doctors’ bills.⁴⁴ AMA intransigence, however, continued. Dr. Walter Martin, president of the AMA, reiterated the association’s fears that comprehensive care would lead to a decrease in the quality of medical care.⁴⁵

Despite Eisenhower’s personal backing, on July 13, 1954, the House rejected the health reinsurance plan by a vote of 238 to 134. Seventy-five of those who voted against the bill were Republicans.⁴⁶ Eisenhower did not take the defeat lightly. He asked his press secretary, James Hagerty, to get a breakdown of the roll-call vote and bring him the names of Republicans who had voted against it. “If any of those fellows who voted against that bill expect me to do anything for them in this campaign, they are going to be very much surprised,” Eisenhower told him, referring to the 1954 congressional election campaign. “This was a major part of our liberal program and anyone who voted against it will not have one iota of support from me.”⁴⁷ The next day he went public with his criticism. “The people that voted against this bill just don’t understand what are the facts of American life,” Eisenhower told the White House press corps. “There is nothing to be gained, as I see it, by shutting our eyes to the fact that all of our people are not getting the kind of health care to which they are entitled.”⁴⁸

Eisenhower did not limit his anger to House members. He blamed the AMA for waging a campaign to portray the bill as socialized medicine. When Senate majority leader William Knowland (R-CA) tried to defend the AMA position at a legislative leaders meeting, Eisenhower cut him off: “Listen, Bill… . We said during the campaign that we were against socialized medicine… . As far as I’m concerned, the American Medical Association is just plain stupid. This plan of ours would have shown the people how we could improve their health care and stay out of socialized medicine.”⁴⁹

Health reinsurance was an excellent example of Eisenhower’s Middle Way. By using government resources to encourage the insurance industry to expand health coverage, it would act as a catalyst for improving the system without assuming primary responsibility for it. Eisenhower vowed to continue the fight: “I am trying to redeem my campaign promises, and I will never cease trying. This is only a temporary defeat; this thing will be carried forward as long as I am in office.”⁵⁰ The Eisenhower administration’s attempts to revive the reinsurance plan in the Eighty-Fourth Congress, however, failed.

Eisenhower Republicanism

Secretary Hobby blamed congressional Democrats for the failure of Eisenhower’s social welfare proposals. She believed they were “attempting to ensure that this administration got no glory for any legislative accomplishments in this field.”⁵¹ Eisenhower, expecting no help from Democrats, blamed conservatives in his own party. Many of these Republicans were, indeed, unhappy with the policies proposed by their president. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who became the leading conservative spokesman after the death of Robert Taft in July 1953, wrote: “It is obvious that the administration has succumbed to the principle that we owe some sort of living … to the citizens of this country, and I am beginning to wonder if we haven’t gone a lot further than many of us think on this road we happily call socialism.”⁵² He later recalled that he was “deeply disappointed when the Republican administration under President Eisenhower, with a working majority in both houses of Congress, proposed to continue the old New Deal, Fair Deal schemes, offering only a modification in scale and no change in direction.”⁵³

The president could not even get a word of support from his brother Edgar who wrote that many of his friends could see “very little difference between the policy of your administration and that of the former administration.”⁵⁴ The president replied: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things… . Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.”⁵⁵ Eisenhower’s experiences in the field of social policy gave added meaning to a remark he had made to his secretary, Ann Whitman: “You don’t have very many friends when you’re walking a decent middle way.”⁵⁶

As Eisenhower contemplated whether to retire at the end of his first term, he feared that the conservative wing would capture the party in his absence. “If they think they can nominate a right-wing, Old Guard Republican for the presidency, they’ve got another thought coming,” he told press secretary James Hagerty. “I’ll go up and down this country, campaigning against them. I’ll fight them right down the line.”⁵⁷ Eisenhower believed that the political thinking of the party’s right wing was completely out of step with the times. “I believe this so emphatically,” he wrote in his diary, “that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary, repudiate it… . They are the most ignorant people now living in the United States.”⁵⁸ After a disappointing midterm election in 1954, Eisenhower said that aside from keeping the world at peace, he had just one purpose for the next two years: “to build up a strong, progressive Republican Party in this country… . If the right wing wants a fight, they’re going to get it. If they want to leave the Republican Party and form a third party, that’s their business, but before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism, or I won’t be with them anymore.”⁵⁹

In private conversations, Eisenhower contemplated further the possibility of leaving the Republican Party. “If the right wing really recaptures the Republican Party,” he told his friend Gabriel Hauge, “there simply isn’t going to be any Republican influence in this country within a matter of a few brief years.”⁶⁰ After one legislative defeat, he discussed with White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams whether he belonged in the Republican Party. He thought that perhaps the time had come for a new party that would accept a leadership role in world affairs, a liberal stand on social welfare policy, and a conservative stand on economic matters.⁶¹ After a talk with the president on this subject Bill Robinson wrote in his diary that Eisenhower had said that if the die-hard Republicans fought his program too hard, he would have to organize a third party. Later, according to Robinson, Eisenhower smiled and admitted that this was an impractical alternative, but that he was not willing to give it up entirely.⁶²

In Eisenhower’s attempt to revitalize the party, many of his friends and advisers urged him to use the term “Eisenhower Republicanism,” but he was against it. He agreed that personalizing the effort would be the easiest and perhaps the most successful way to reform the party, but he feared that if the effort revolved around him then the movement would collapse in his absence. “The idea,” he thought, “was far bigger than any one individual.”⁶³ He wanted to broaden the party’s appeal, not personalize it. Although he would later take up the term “modern Republican,” the president resisted the use of any descriptive adjectives to define his wing of the party. His opinion on this issue is apparent in a letter to his brother Edgar, who had referred to himself as the only “real Republican” in the family. “I am a little amused about this word ‘real’ that in your clipping modifies the word ‘Republican,’ ” the president wrote. “I assume that Lincoln was a real Republican— in fact, I think we should have to assume that every president, being elected leader of the party, is a real Republican. Therefore, the president’s branch of the party requires, for its description, no adjective whatsoever.” Rather, he believed, “the splinter groups, which oppose the leader, would be the ones requiring the descriptive adjectives.”⁶⁴

Eisenhower was convinced that the only way for the Republican Party to remain a vital force in American politics was for it to take a liberal approach to its domestic problems: “This party of ours,” he explained to James Hagerty, “will not appeal to the American people unless [they] believe that we have a truly liberal program.” He was convinced that “unless Republicans make themselves the militant champions of the Middle Way, they are sunk.”⁶⁵ He had little sympathy for the reelection bids of conservative congressmen who did not agree. He could not understand why they failed to see that “the best way they can get re-elected is by supporting the liberal program we have submitted to them.”⁶⁶ Eisenhower even expressed indifference as to whether or not conservatives were reelected to Congress, asking why he should bother campaigning for conservative Republicans when he was just as satisfied to have the Democrats in control.⁶⁷

Eisenhower’s attempt to find a middle way for social welfare policy was only partially successful. Like the majority of Americans, Eisenhower accepted the contributions made by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman to social welfare. In these areas, where programs were already in place, he sought to strengthen and expand upon them. In this he was successful. His creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare gave cabinet status to the Federal Security Administration, and his amendments to the Social Security Act gave more than ten million additional workers access to retirement insurance. Where new programs were necessary, however, Eisenhower was far less successful. Eisenhower’s proposal for health reinsurance was an attempt to use the resources of the federal government to encourage progress in this area. Eisenhower was seeking balance, a middle way between conservatives, who believed that health care was outside the scope of federal responsibility, and liberals, who would have preferred that the federal government accept primary responsibility for them.

Eisenhower ultimately failed in his attempt to change the direction of the Republican Party. His failure was due primarily to his belief that the change he desired could be achieved on the strength of his policies alone. Eisenhower believed so strongly in the Middle Way that he could not understand why others did not. For eight years he battled conservative opposition to his programs in Congress, which rarely gave him the opportunity to show what they might do. Without a body of successful domestic legislation, the Middle Way could never achieve the status of a New Deal or Fair Deal and, in doing so, change the direction of the party. Eisenhower’s inability “to build up a strong, progressive Republican Party” has tremendous relevance in our time. The defeat of liberalism within his party, followed by the defection of conservative, mostly southern, Democrats to the Republican Party in the decades that followed, left the country with a rigidly ideological two-party alignment.

Opposition from conservatives in his party made it necessary for Eisenhower to seek Democratic support for his legislative agenda. This was already a difficult strategy in Eisenhower’s time, and increased political polarization has made it even less likely to succeed now. The Pew Research Center has concluded that in Congress, “Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.” Both parties have moved away from the ideological center, with Democrats becoming “somewhat more liberal” and Republicans becoming “much more conservative.” By Pew’s account, this leaves only two dozen moderate members of Congress amenable to bipartisan legislative negotiations.⁶⁸ Participating in such bipartisan activity, however, leaves members from both parties open to primary challengers.

Further complicating matters is the proliferation of filibusters in the Senate. In Eisenhower’s time, when use of the filibuster required the minority party to hold the Senate floor during debate, filibusters were relatively rare. Since 1970, however, the minority party can impose a filibuster by merely submitting a letter to the chair. Initially, this rule change led to only a moderate increase in filibusters. After 2008, however, increased partisanship and ideological polarization caused a dramatic increase. It is now assumed that sixty votes are necessary for nearly anything to pass in the Senate. So, even a president with a majority in both houses cannot count on legislative success. Given the difficulty of one party achieving a supermajority, the need for moderation and bipartisanship has never been more apparent.