Sublime

“I am unalterably opposed to the Bricker Amendment,” the president wrote Senate majority leader Knowland. “Adoption of the Bricker Amendment by the Senate would be notice to our friends as well as our enemies abroad that our country intends to withdraw from its leadership in world affairs.”

Jim Farley, still bleeding from his dissection by Moses in the mayoral campaign, wandered into the gubernatorial contest with a quiet little statement of support for Lehman and promptly found himself back on Moses’ operating table.

Johnson may have been aware before the convention of the depth of northern antipathy to him, of the implacability of liberal resolve to deny power to him, or to any other southern candidate. He could hardly have been unaware of this reality, having watched from a ringside seat as it crushed Richard Russell in 1952. But just as Russell had not under

The president, who had a thicker skin than Ike, closed his letter, “From a man who has always been your friend and who always wanted to be.”13 Truman still liked Ike, and it was Eisenhower who was playing politics. His campaign hinged on differentiating himself from the Truman administration, and he feared the president’s embrace.

discomfiture.

Contrary to President Truman’s assertion that “a bunch of screwballs” were coming between them, it was Eisenhower who chose to engineer the break. As the Republican commander, Ike needed to get his troops in line before he could take on the enemy. Taft’s disgruntled supporters were sitting in their tents nursing their wounds, and Eisenhower had to

This was Ike’s first introduction to atomic weapons, and he was appalled.