Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following his landslide victory over Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1956 presidential election, he defeated Stevenson again, to win re-election in a larger landslide. Eisenhower was constitutionally limited to two terms (the first re-elected President to be so) and was succeeded by Democrat John F. Kennedy, who won the 1960 presidential election.

Eisenhower held office during the Cold War, a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Eisenhower's New Look policy stressed the importance of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to military threats, and the United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems during Eisenhower's presidency. Soon after taking office, Eisenhower negotiated an end to the Korean War, resulting in the partition of Korea. Following the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower promulgated the Eisenhower Doctrine, strengthening U.S. commitments in the Middle East. In response to the Cuban Revolution, the Eisenhower administration broke ties with Cuba and began preparations for an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, eventually resulting in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Eisenhower also allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in covert actions, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.

In domestic affairs, Eisenhower supported a policy of modern Republicanism that occupied a middle ground between liberal Democrats and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Eisenhower continued New Deal programs, expanded Social Security, and prioritized a balanced budget over tax cuts. He played a major role in establishing the Interstate Highway System, a massive infrastructure project consisting of tens of thousands of miles of divided highways. After the launch of Sputnik 1, Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act and presided over the creation of NASA. Eisenhower signed the first significant civil rights bill since the end of Reconstruction and although he did not fully embrace the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, he did enforce the Court's ruling.

Eisenhower maintained positive approval ratings throughout his tenure, but the launch of Sputnik 1 and a poor economy contributed to Republican losses in the 1958 elections. His preferred successor, Vice President Richard Nixon, won the Republican nomination but was narrowly defeated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. Eisenhower left office popular with the public. Eisenhower is generally ranked among the 10 greatest presidents.

Going into the 1952 Republican presidential primaries, the two major contenders for the Republican presidential nomination were General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Governor Earl Warren of California and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota also sought the nomination. Taft led the conservative wing of the party, which rejected many of the New Deal social welfare programs created in the 1930s and supported a noninterventionist foreign policy. Taft had been a candidate for the Republican nomination twice before but had been defeated both times by moderate Republicans from New York: Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Dewey, the party's presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948, led the moderate wing of the party, centered in the Eastern states. These moderates supported most of the New Deal and tended to be interventionists in the Cold War. Dewey himself declined to run for president a third time, but he and other moderates sought to use his influence to ensure that 1952 Republican ticket hewed closer to their wing of the party. To this end, they assembled a Draft Eisenhower movement in September 1951. Two weeks later, at the National Governors' Conference meeting, seven Republican governors endorsed his candidacy. Eisenhower, then serving as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, had long been mentioned as a possible presidential contender, but he was reluctant to become involved in partisan politics. Nonetheless, he was troubled by Taft's non-interventionist views, especially his opposition to NATO, which Eisenhower considered to be an important deterrence against Soviet aggression. He was also motivated by the corruption that he believed had crept into the federal government during the later years of the Truman administration.

Eisenhower suggested in late 1951 that he would not oppose any effort to nominate him for president, although he still refused to seek the nomination actively. In January 1952, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. announced that Eisenhower's name would be entered in the March New Hampshire primary, even though he had not yet officially entered the race. The result in New Hampshire was a solid Eisenhower victory with 46,661 votes to 35,838 for Taft and 6,574 for Stassen. In April, Eisenhower resigned from his NATO command and returned to the United States. The Taft forces put up a strong fight in the remaining primaries, and, by the time of the July 1952 Republican National Convention, it was still unclear whether Taft or Eisenhower would win the presidential nomination.

When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, Eisenhower's managers accused Taft of "stealing" delegate votes in Southern states, claiming that Taft's allies had unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters and put Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the pro-Taft delegates in these states and replace them with pro-Eisenhower delegates; they called this proposal "Fair Play." Although Taft and his supporters angrily denied this charge, the convention voted to support Fair Play 658 to 548, and Taft lost many Southern delegates. Eisenhower also received two more boosts: first when several uncommitted state delegations, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, decided to support him; and second, when Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower. The removal of many pro-Taft Southern delegates and the support of the uncommitted states decided the nomination in Eisenhower's favor, which he won on the first ballot. Afterward, Senator Richard Nixon of California was nominated by acclamation as his vice-presidential running mate. Nixon, whose name came to the forefront early and often in preconvention conversations among Eisenhower's campaign managers, was selected because of his youth (39 years old) and solid anti-communist record.