Sublime

Eisenhower saw Taft as the key to obtaining a domestic consensus for the idea of collective security. On his own authority, and without discussing the matter with President Truman, Ike invited Taft to the Pentagon for a private chat.

Stalin’s death on March 4 was providential for the Republicans, since it allowed them to declare that in such unsettled times it served no useful end to pass a resolution that would make it harder to establish a relationship with the new Soviet leadership. When Eisenhower told a news conference that all “I really want to do is put ourselves on reco

Shortly before Clinton left office, Arafat called Clinton to thank him and told the president that he was a great man. President Clinton replied, “Mr. Chairman, I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.”

Eisenhower at the time was the oldest president to occupy the White House, and would be the last to be born in the nineteenth century. John F. Kennedy, at forty-three, was the youngest ever to be elected.

THOUGH TRANQUILLITY DESCENDED BRIEFLY on Washington after Andrew Johnson’s acquittal, he disappointed Republicans who imagined he would prove more pliant on Reconstruction.

WHILE ISRAEL HAD PEACE (even if a “cool” peace) with Egypt, new threats continued to emerge. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was threatening to “drown” the Jewish state “with rivers of blood.”22 Toward that end, Iraq—with the active assistance of the French—was building a nuclear reactor.

In 1954, the Eisenhower administration introduced a reinsurance plan to backstop private insurance companies against “abnormal loss” if they expanded their coverage to individuals not adequately covered by health insurance. The reinsurance plan, in Ike’s view, was a “middle way” between government and private insurance.

Insofar as Iranian national aspirations were concerned, Eisenhower was sympathetic. But he had a blind spot. He worried about the shutoff of Iranian oil to the West.

But for the Virginia-born Wilson, the New Freedom was for whites only. The first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor, Wilson immediately segregated the government’s workforce.