In the Search for Greatness, Is Eisenhower the Answer?

What kind of history is President Bill Clinton making? Since winning reelection, the president has reportedly been obsessed with how he can reach the “second tier” of chief executives--that symbolic perch occupied by such men as Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman who “did great things” but were not tested, as Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt were, by a major war or a national crisis. In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Clinton’s declaration, “we do have an enemy: The enemy of our time is inaction” was clearly designed to polish his reputation as a vigorous chief executive with an ambitious agenda.

But assuming the president sticks to his centrist course and avoids the morass of scandal, he is more likely to be compared to a less distinguished predecessor: Dwight David Eisenhower.

Based on their pre-presidential lives, the parallel seems absurd. Aside from a love of golf, what could a man who opposed the Vietnam War and then single-mindedly pursued his electoral ambitions have in common with a West Point graduate and military hero who identified with no party until he agreed to run for the White House?

Put the personal details aside: Every president is, above all, a politician. Each man inherits certain programs and attitudes about the role of government. Each also assumes leadership of a party that can aid or hinder his plans. What he makes of this inheritance largely determines his place in history. To achieve greatness, a president must be able to convince a majority of Americans, and often many activists in his own ranks, to take the nation in a new direction--requiring bold moves that, decades later, most historians judge to have been decisive, if not always correct in every detail.

Thus, Teddy Roosevelt challenged “malefactors of great wealth” to stop abusing workers and consumers; while Truman began the nuclear age and initiated a broad and expensive policy of containing the Soviet empire. Each man faced an intraparty revolt that threatened his hold on power, but neither allowed it to slow or alter his transformative course. And, today, most Americans still applaud their different legacies--the need to regulate corporate behavior and to aggressively pursue the Cold War.

But Eisenhower, like Clinton, was a cautious moderate. Though he was the first Republican president in 20 years, Ike had no inclination to roll back the New Deal during a period of rapid economic growth. “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,” he wrote to his conservative brother Edgar, “you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

Ike dubbed “New Republicanism” his acceptance, albeit at a lower spending level, of the state that his liberal Democratic predecessors had built. In foreign affairs, he continued Truman’s tough stance toward the Soviet Union, though Eisenhower preferred to use the CIA and the threat of nuclear missiles rather than deploy U.S. troops. Eisenhower did voice a memorable critique of the “military-industrial complex.” But he said this just three days before he left office; the size of what he called this “immense” establishment had mushroomed during his own administration.

Eisenhower was also a clever, nimble politician. After allowing Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy to destroy himself with charges that the Army was harboring communists, Ike formed a bipartisan alliance with the Democratic majority in Congress, thus marginalizing and embittering right-wing critics in his own party. This early episode of “triangulation” required a mastery of public relations. Eisenhower’s warmth and confidence were prime assets on television, and, with the help of savvy aides from private industry, he carefully avoided taking confrontational stands that would jeopardize his middle-of-the-road image.

When he first come into office, Clinton did have a few grander purposes in mind, particularly universal health care. But he purposely rejected stereotypical liberal stands on such basic issues as welfare and capital punishment. And, since the GOP captured Congress in 1994, the president has played the role of a Democratic Eisenhower, whose party also lost control of the House and Senate in his first midterm election. As Ike smilingly acquiesced to liberalism with a wave and a smile, Clinton co-opted the right’s tough talk on crime, its support for a balanced budget and its enthusiasm for “family values.” As Eisenhower kept his distance from GOP conservatives, so Clinton has avoided identifying with the liberal stalwarts in his own party, who last year swallowed their anger and helped vanquish the “greater evil,” Bob Dole.

In the short run, artful centrism clearly yields political benefits. Both presidents easily won reelection, in part, because they abandoned partisan ideologies. Eisenhower’s popularity helped the GOP shed its reputation as a haven for paranoid reactionaries. In 1956, he became the first Republican candidate in the 20th century to capture Florida, Tennessee and Texas--pillars of the modern, urbanizing South. Similarly, in 1996, “New Democrat” Clinton won majorities in white suburbs that had long been safe territory for the GOP.

For a president angling for “greatness,” however, the parallel is less comforting. Eisenhower’s bland, moderate Republicanism barely survived his term in office. Liberal Democrats surged back into power in the early ‘60s, when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon, Eisenhower’s loyal vice president. Soon after, conservatives in the GOP rallied behind Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who had once accused Eisenhower of running “a dime-store New Deal.” Though Goldwater was crushed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, his loyalists went on to transform the face of U.S. politics. Conservatives who had never liked Eisenhower were willing to put forth their ideas boldly and lose--confident the nation would listen and reward them in the future.

Clinton is risking an analogous fate. Armed with only the cloudiest of visions and an agenda of mini-desires that do not challenge received opinion, the president has a weak grip on both his party’s core activists and the nation’s good will. He has no shortage of opportunities to take bold stands on problems that will bedevil American society into the next century: the dominance of big money in politics; the widening gap in incomes; the lack of secure health-care benefits, and tensions over race and immigration.

But Clinton shows no signs of wanting to take any chances--with his rhetoric, his popularity rating or the modus vivendi he has crafted with the GOP leaders of the Congress. As a result, he is likely to be remembered as a well-meaning figure who left no imprint of consequence on the future.