Hello there and happy holidays. I'm here with another alternative political history.

Today we're going to imagine that one thing that happened in our nation's history did

not actually happen. So for this episode I want to talk about the 1950s and the man who

guided America through most of it, Dwight Eisenhower, his term was on the heels of wars

and then moved into the cultural movements and stripe of the 60s. How much more likely

would another war had been in the 50s if there had been a different president? Could he

have ended up how close really was he becoming a Democrat? He's never Republican. With that,

what would that have been like? Did America like Ike because he was the last true moderate?

Is he really America's only second independent president since George Washington? So joining

me today is Wayne Hitchcock. He's a professor at the University of Virginia and author of

the book The Age of Eisenhower, America and the world in the 1950s. Will, welcome to the

Toddcast. Thanks very much, Chuck. Good to be with you. Thank you for humoring me on this.

A little fun fact in my own life. My dad wanted to name me Dwight David Todd, after

no way, Howard. And my mother vetoed it. So all that lasted was the David. I ended up

at Charles instead of Dwight. Dwight has kind of gone the way of the moderate Republican,

basically. She really, you know, she's, she whatever reason put herself in front of

that train. But my dad had this dream of calling me Ike and all of those things. He loved

Eisenhower and and and sort of the his he really was a Rockefeller Republican type. And

always just sort of, you know, he he searched the world for Eisenhower dollar coins instead

of those Kennedy dollar coins. Like it was like he was such a and there is something about

Eisenhower that is when you look back, he was this sort of bandaid really on America in many

ways. Good, bad or indifferent. And I've gone through my own various iterations. But,

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