1890-1969
President of the United States, 1953-1961

Ike's Presidency Reconsidered.

Dwight D. ("Ike") Eisenhower was once portrayed as a dull, somewhat lazy president; in a 1962 poll of historians he was ranked twenty-second of thirty-one presidents. In the minds of more-recent historians, however, Ike is considered to have been a shrewd, moderate, sensible, deeply patriotic man — and today is ranked often among the top ten of U.S. presidents. Eisenhower could campaign with Richard Nixon but distance himself from Nixon's partisan and often inflammatory rhetoric. Eisenhower, above all others, could warn of the threats posed by the "Military-Industrial Complex" at a time when the American public was responding favorably to calls for increased defense spending.

Role as President.

His reputation as a do-nothing president in part was due to his belief in governmental noninterference in state and local politics. He did not believe that as...