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5. He Failed to Improve the Plight of the
American Farmer. 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. IKE'S
TOP 5 PRESIDENTIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS |
