The Golfing Years
By D. W. BROGAN
Tot: note of the second volume* of General Eisenhower's presidential memoirs is struck by the dedication to his grandchildren, in which he expresses the hope that in the future `they will enjoy no less freedom, opportunity, and liberty of action than are now possessed by all American citizens.' One is tempted to ask the question, whether General Eisenhower would be content for his grandchildren to have no more of these good things than the average rural Negro in Alabama or Mississippi, but it would be unkind to scrutinise too carefully the vague rhetorical phrases in which this second volume of memoirs is unfortunately so rich.
Unfortunately, for the complacency is, if not necessarily irritating, at any rate a barrier be- tween a candid and deeply useful account of the second half of the Eisenhower presidency and the readers of this book. They will be numerous, as is right. They will occasionally be given new information or a new point of view. They will very seldom be amused and very seldom excited. This is a pity, for in the first volume of the memoirs, Mandate for Change, there was some novelty and some candour.
There, some of President Eisenhower's dis- illusionments with the American party system and with the limitations of the presidential office were revealed. Here we have only a number of petty grumbles and some rather ungenerous com- ments on people who did not see eye to eye with the incumbent of the White House. It is possible that one of the reasons for the rather drab character of this book is that the campaign for raging peace between 1956 and 1961 was not conspicuously successful. Another may be that General Eisenhower took very much to heart the failure of the American people to pass a vote of confidence in his administration by giving him in 1954 a Republican Congress and in 1960 by electing a Republican successor.
In a sense this attitude is creditable, for it shows that General Eisenhower is still unwilling to admit that he was far stronger than his party and far stronger than anyone else his party could have nominated. Instead of noting the fact that the American public did not give any vote of confidence to the Republican party. but did give it to himself, General Eisenhower has added a superfluous obfuscation to his narrative. Because he does not face as candidly as he has done in the past the ambiguities of his relationship to the Republican party. it is difficult to understand nos account of the various Congressional manoeuvres and moves with which the book is so plentifully supplied. No one who knew Washington during the Eisenhower years will recognise the dignified, loyal and helpful Repub- lican leaders who appear in these pages. No one +till recognise the idealised portrait of John Foster Dulles, for example.
The account of the downfall of Sherman Adams is far better told by the victim himself than 'I E by his patron, who seems still not to be aware how very unpopular Adams had made himself, and with what rejoicing his downfall was wel- comed by many victims of his arrogance and bad mariners. His downfall was no doubt rough ',rice. but it was justice. Nor does General Embower seem to 'notice that a great deal of Till: WHITE HOUSF. YEARS: WAGING PEACE. 1956- PM! . By Dwight D. Finenhower. Ineine- 9)
the official high moral tone of the administration was the subject of a hostile irony in Wash- ington, if not in the boondocks. I can remember hearing a Washington correspondent comment- ing when 'Engine Charlie' Wilson had again put his silver foot in his mouth: `I like Charlie Wilson. He is the only member of this adminis- tration who never mentions God.'
For the British reader, the account of Suez is possibly the most interesting part of the book. It does not tell us much that is new by this time. It makes the enterprise, in my opinion, look even more foolish than it seemed when I was in Washington in the autumn of 1956. General Eisenhower does comment with a certain amount of irony on the firm assertion that the Egyptians could not run the Suez Canal. He comments, with an insufficient acceptance of their plausi- bility, on some of the British and French ex- planations of their policy. But there is really not much here that is new, and the defence of John Foster Dulles does not meet the main charge that he never inspired confidence and that it was always necessary to read the fine print in any legal bargain he offered.
There is, of course, a case for saying that in both his administrations some real achieve- ments were ignored by critics. What made this more unpleasant was that these achievements were often ignored by the official supporters of the administration. President Eisenhower did not try to dismantle the welfare state; there were some serious improvements in its administration. He ended up with a good Secretary of Labour, James Mitchell, and he ended up with a good Secretary of Defence, Thomas Gates. But General Eisenhower did not get adequate credit for either of his appointments or for the sup- port he gave to his appointees. Thus since Mr Gates is given exactly the same amount of praise as is given to his predecessor, Mr McElroy, a
detergent magnate, the praise is not treated as seriously as it deserves.
The impression made by the two volumes, and especially by the second volume, is of a desperate attempt to go neither up nor down on an escalator which might reverse itself at any moment—and sometimes did. Events were always taking the administration by surprise. The famous U2 episode was an example of that breakdown in American political intelligence, as apart from technical intelligence, whose impor- tance General Eisenhower still seems to under- estimate. Of course it was impudent of Khrush- chev to go into violent tits of indignation about the use of high-flying planes to spy on the Soviet Union. The U2 was quite as legitimate as many of the activities of the Soviet espionage system. But General Eisenhower is still puzzled that the whole world does not give to the United States that clean bill of moral health which he so generously awards to his country and to him- self. This may be unjust, but so it is1 Thus when he reproaches himself for not en- tering the campaign on behalf of Mr Nixon soon enough, he is repeating criticisms made at the time and perhaps he does not know what an im- pression of lack of enthusiasm for the candidate some of his own entourage conveyed. Yet this will be a useful book for historians and it is of some interest for the intelligent reader who wants to find out not so much what happened under the Eisenhower presidency as what Presi- dent Eisenhower thought was happening. His reflections on what might be done to reform the American constitutional system suggest that if he had applied his mind to these problems sooner, he might have made a more impressive record in the White House. But he failed to do what he had hoped to do, make the Republican party again the great national party.
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