#204 Age Of Eisenhower - William Hitchcock
The Not Old - Better Show
Paul Vogelzang
4.7 • 107 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Age Of Eisenhower - William Hitchcock
Smithsonian Associates, Interview Series
In a 2017 survey, presidential historians ranked Dwight D. Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, behind the perennial top four: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt. Join me and our guest, historian William Hitchcock, who shows in his new book, "The Age of Eisenhower," that this high ranking is justified. Eisenhower's accomplishments were enormous, and loom ever larger from the vantage point of our own tumultuous times.
A former general, Ike kept the peace: he ended the Korean War, avoided a war in Vietnam, adroitly managed a potential confrontation with China, and soothed relations with the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. He guided the Republican Party to embrace central aspects of the New Deal like Social Security. He thwarted the demagoguery of McCarthy and he advanced the agenda of civil rights for African Americans. As part of his strategy to wage, and win, the Cold War, Eisenhower expanded American military power, built a fearsome nuclear arsenal and launched the space race. In his famous Farewell Address, he acknowledged that Americans needed such weapons in order to keep global peace—but he also admonished his citizens to remain alert to the potentially harmful influence of the "military-industrial complex."
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates series. |
| 0:03.5 | I'm your host Paul Vogelzeng, and this is episode number 204. |
| 0:08.6 | As part of our Smithsonian Associates Art of Living Interview Series, our guest today on the |
| 0:17.2 | Not Old Better Show is Professor William Hitchcock. |
| 0:20.8 | Author, historian William Hitchcock, teaches history at the University of Virginia and is the |
| 0:26.4 | Randolph P. Compton Professor at UVA's Miller Center, Professor Hitchcock's new book, The Age of Eisenhower America and the World in the 1950s is wonderful |
| 0:38.6 | and it shows Eisenhower's or Ike's accomplishments as enormous looming ever larger from the vantage point of |
| 0:46.1 | our own tumultuous times in three distinct areas. |
| 0:51.1 | Well the Age of Eisenhower is a book that tries to restore Dwight Eisenhower to the |
| 0:58.5 | centrality of American history since World War II, and it makes an argument that Dwight Eisenhower matters. |
| 1:05.4 | And he matters for three big reasons. First, Dwight Eisenhower shaped the warfare state |
| 1:11.3 | that we still live in today. |
| 1:13.0 | Second, he moderated the Republican Party and brought it into the center of American politics in the 1950s |
| 1:21.0 | and tried to make it a moderate party and then of course the Republican Party |
| 1:24.2 | changed after that and third he gave us a model for how to be a disciplined |
| 1:28.7 | president how to be a focused disciplined president who could get things done and not be too |
| 1:35.0 | partisan so in a way he's a model for our own time. That of course is our guest |
| 1:40.2 | today author historian William Hitchcock. |
| 1:43.2 | Professor William Hitchcock will be at the Smithsonian Associates Program |
| 1:46.3 | presenting Dwight D Eisenhower |
| 1:48.5 | Perspective on a presidency May 3rd 2018. Please join me in welcoming to the not old better show via Skype, |
| 1:57.0 | Professor William Hitchcock. |
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