The goal of his farm policy was to get government out of agriculture and strengthen the family farmer. He failed at both.

This was a personal goal of Eisenhower's. He wanted to reenergize and modernize the Republican Party, making it less conservative and more acceptable to mainstream America. His failure became evident when Republicans nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater as their presidential candidate in 1964.

He did not actively support the 1954 Brown decision abolishing segregation in public schools. In fact, he believed that to immediately enforce the Court's ruling was a mistake and would only lead to conflict. Critics suggest that if he had expressed a personal commitment to civil rights, the Court's ruling would not have met with such defiance in Little Rock, and Central High could have been integrated without the employment of the U.S. Army. To his credit though, he did sponsor and sign the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Had he publicly condemned McCarthy and his investigations, there would have been much less damage inflicted on innocent lives and the country's morale. But Eisenhower believed that to personally confront McCarthy would demean the Presidency and give McCarthy exactly what he craved: more publicity.

He certainly tried. And he seemed to be on the verge of success when the Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, visited the U.S. in 1959 and agreed to a Paris Peace Conference for the following spring. But then the Soviets shot down the U-2 spy plane, Khrushchev scuttled the peace conference, and all hope of deflating the Cold War ended. When Eisenhower left office, the Cold War was even more threatening than when he embarked upon the presidency eight years before.

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