Sublime

Eisenhower did not always agree with the decisions of the Warren Court, but he accepted his constitutional responsibility to “take care that the laws be faithfully enforced.”

“Columbia’s disappointment in Eisenhower stems not so much from any administrative ineptitude as from his inattentiveness to the problems of administration. It isn’t so much that he is a bad president as that he hardly ever functions as president.”

Unlike Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who spearheaded the fight for racial equality, Eisenhower sought to stake out a nonpartisan position grounded in the president’s constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully enforced. He eschewed the bully pulpit and preferred to remind the nation of its duty to obey the law.

The country was ready for a change, and Eisenhower seemed the ideal candidate to provide that. The most successful military commander of World War II, he never romanticized war. And the Korean War, now entering its third year, loomed large in voters’ minds.

Eisenhower, who was solicitous about the welfare of his staff,

But at a time of international crisis, the overwhelming majority of Americans preferred to keep Eisenhower in the White House. When the votes were tabulated on election night, Eisenhower swamped Stevenson 35 million to 26 million—the largest presidential majority since FDR routed Alf Landon in 1936. Ike carried forty-one states to Stevenson’s

On the other hand, when the time comes that he feels he must make a decision, he must make it in a clean-cut fashion and on his own responsibility and take full blame for anything that goes wrong; in fact he must be quick to take the blame for anything that goes wrong whether or not it results from his mistake or from an error on the part of a