that Ike had in mind what had happened during the forty months from the launching of Sputnik to the end of his administration: “The people who irritated him were the hard-sell technologists who tried to exploit Sputnik and the missile gap psychosis it engendered.… They invented all sorts of technological threats to our safety and offered a thousand

Eisenhower also warned against the growing power of a “scientific-technological elite.” Herbert F. York, an academic physicist who served Eisenhower as director of defense research and engineering, explained

Eisenhower said America “must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

Eisenhower’s fear of the garrison state also manifested itself in his warning against excessive government influence in the world of scholarship. “The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Because of the huge costs involved, a government

Ike, and he was especially sensitive to the possibility that he might not recognize his own disability.

I then consider the immediate problem and what solution we can get that will best conform to the long term interests of the country and at the same time can command a sufficient approval in this country so as to secure the necessary Congressional action.

tending to strip each problem down to its simplest possible form. Having gotten the issue well defined in my mind, I try in the next step to determine what answer would best serve the long term advantage

It was one of the great victories of his career, and the key had been his coolness under pressure—his calculated use of ambiguity and deception. Eisenhower was comfortable wrestling with uncertainty.

Ike noted that the Joint Chiefs had a lot to learn. “Each of these men must cease regarding himself as the advocate for any particular Service; he must think strictly and solely for the United States. Character rather than intellect, and moral courage rather than mere professional skill, are the dominant qualifications required.”21