Transcripts For CSPAN2 Susan Eisenhower How Ike Led 20240712

Eisenhower,president of the United States of america. [applause] this happy occasion preserves unbroken, a tradition which began with president theodore roosevelt. The great and the near great have addressed this audience. And tonight we welcome the man whom history will record as preeminent among World Leaders in our of greatest need. [applause] i have in mind the rapid ascension of communist aggression as millions of people were enveloped the hide of farreaching iron curtain. I have in mind the stalemate of futility in korea, the rampaging inflation in our homeland which was eating up the savings of the many and troubling thevoters of our Free Enterprise economy. Here then is the man trained in war who will be acclaimed by future generations as the man who laid the foundation of peace. [applause] and more, he is our president whom we love with adeep and abiding affection. [applause] [music] welcome to the Commonwealth Club, im George Hammond chair of the Humanities Forum that put together todays program along with the staff at the Commonwealth Club, the staff had something to put together all these online programs. Weve done dozens of them since the crisis began and its my great pleasure to introduce Susan Eisenhower who is here with us today. She is the granddaughterof president eisenhower and shes written a great book, how i lead. Its like a spy plane view of the principles that led his presidency but with a young girls point of view on the man himself and its really quite accommodation and its a nice combination because its also the combination that you live your life because youre a political analyst etc. , youve lived your life this way but in addition to the to that you know him personally for many years. He didnt pass away until you were already in college or around the age, right . So welcome everybody and were going to get started to talk about president eisenhower. For those of you who are familiar with the dates he was president from 1953 until 1961. Jfk was the president afterwards and he was the supreme allied commander during world war ii so susan, first of all thank you very much for joining us from afar in our online world that we all recognize can happen much more easily than we thought. But tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book. Youve been working in this field for a long time as a political consultant etc. And advisor and you decided to write about your own grandfathers work. It must have been interesting to try to be objective and subjective at the same time. You did its successfully but it couldnt have been easy. First of all let me thank you so much for the opportunity to be back at the Commonwealth Club. I had the wonderful opportunity of preventing resenting two of my other books at the club in years past so its great to be back and to talk about this and yes, i think the question is an interesting one. Maybe as part of the disclaimer for our discussion this evening i should say that as a kid i was really worried to compartmentalize what i knew about his politics. About that periods in which he governed, about the. He dealt with and on the other side our relationship with him as a grandparent so this book is really a marriage of those two things as you said and it was quite an experience for me to put it together in one place because i was continually struck by how we were doing certain things as a family and he was dealing with some of these crisis so that was interesting. The impetus for y to do it now revolved around three events i guess. One isthe 75th anniversary of the end of world war ii , certainly vj day is about to occur but we had of course the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in europe. Back in may of this year. Secondly, the eisenhower memorial in washington dc will be dedicated on september 17th in a much more scaledback version of its original self but it will nevertheless be open to the public after thatdate and finally , were going into an Election Year and theres always a lot of thinking about the presidency as the most important for your election occurs. And so i thought that i had, ike had something to say tous today and i guess thats the reason i put it together. I found that i, obviously you took it from that angle but there were so many different elements that were so interesting today. One of them that i thought, this is a small side tangent but there were people who said in 1956 that were against him being reelected saying youre going to actually be electing Richard Nixon, youre not going to be electing eisenhower because eisenhower is sick, hes had a heart attacks and so on and pretty soon Richard Nixon will be president. Same thing is going on in the democratic party. People say biden will never be president for more than a month or two so youre really electing Kamala Harris and im interested that keeps being thrown out at people im not speculating whether theres a difference in approach but eisenhower was conscious of what it would be to be adiminished president. We have to remember president wilson was really almost a scandal but people in the country didnt know how ill that president was so ike was determined not to find himself in that situation for the good of the country and after he had three illnesses during his presidency and after each one of them, he would give himself a very arduous test, like around the world trip or a trip to europe that required lots of meetings and lots of stress and he always would tell his advisors if i dont perform at the top level, you have to tell me becausethen ill resign. In any case, that never happened. He became actually rather adroit at managing his time, managing his stress and generally positioning himself to get through his second term. It was interesting, also a small tangent but that the doctors lied to him about the ilium thing so he didnt think it was as serious andhe kind of thought he made have made a different decision if they had warned him about it. I thought that was interesting. One of the biggest decisions about running for second term as you point out is he had a heart attack in 1955 and he had had a doctor named general Howard Snyder and although they were devoted friends and they been together in one form or another since the war, Howard Schneider actually drove granddad up the wall. He does first of all, he hovered. He came up with all certain things eisenhower wasnt allowed to do including watching the armynavy Football Game because Howard Snyder decided it was going to raise thepresident blood pressure. Ike really did care about the outcome of that game. And so it was, i think Howard Snyder was part of the team that kind of wasnt actually very direct with the president about his iliitis situation and ike was not going to be adiminished president so he might well have decided differently. But i think he really at the end of the day, my grandmother intervened for the first time i think since the early part of their marriage encouraged him to run again because they thought he would die of another heart attack watching everything from the sidelines. You got to watch out for the high blood pressure. I find it interesting the way your grandmothers decision was more easy to understand. The doctors decision, this was the guy was making all thosedecisions about the war in korea. All these Big Decisions and youre worried about him watching a Football Game. Even if he takes it too seriously it seemed a little bit ludicrous. I told that story in the book in the context of how an extraordinary amount of power, how that often warps the relationship you have with other people. It does not mean that it makes them terrible but it does change things and the doctors for some reason, i love this expression actually tried to handle this man which would only make him more wound up im sure because he was a guy who was used to making Big Decisions and was perfectly capable of facing any difficult news. As a matter fact in his last years of life , i saw this so often how brave he was and how ready he was to take whatever was coming. As a matter of fact even volunteered for some rather exotic treatments for his condition because he thought it might help people after he was gone. But this wasnt anybody he was straightforward with, i want to say that for the record. Its a good transition because before we get to the big issues that he faced, i think it would be good to talk about these personal relationships that he had. The friendships that he had, the people that kept him grounded, his family and your own relationship with him and you have pictures to show which include pictures of yourself with him when you were younger so will have to get these up on the screen. Theres a picture weve been showing. This is him right around the end of world war ii, right . This picture was taken 1945 but by that time he had had his fifth star and i think its, i think he looks tiredthough. I dont know if you agree but he looks content. If the picture were fulllength, you would see that hes wearing only a single bar of ribbons and five stars on his shoulder. He was not one to walk around like a soviet general with metals all the way down to their waist. And i like this picture because i think he looks approachable. So i would say tired and thats got to be a fairly accurate assessment since its impossible to know how he could be working 100 hours a week or 130 hours a week sometimes, up all night, up in the middle of the night and not come out of a threeyear stint like that really deeply tired. And at 45, how old was he . He was born in 1890. He was 55 years old. If you look at pictures when he was president of Columbia University he looks younger than he does in that picture even though it was another five years later. He gave a lot of energy so the next picture is a picture of you. Yes. This is as a teenagerwith him and a horse. Is there a horse in that picture, i cant see it from here. Perfect. Well, ike became an amateur photographer and we have in our family collection all sort of these homemade things. What i like about that picture is somebody else took a picture of ike taking a picture of me and i dont know, every time i see this picture it makes me smile because of this bald head of his as my grandmother always said she loved to roll over at night in bed and pat his little bald head. But yes, theres a horse in the picture from this standpoint i cant quite see it but i was a family horseback rider and so this is a bond we had because he loved horses. They were the only animals on his farm that he indulged in in any way shape or form. He was for cattle and he certainly didnt like barnyard cats and he loved his horses. So i think its a very sweet picture. You have a short story in your book about when you were 11 and the horses got away and he had put in a putting green. His special putting green, you might tell that story because it shows your relationship nicely. I think the story says a lot about ikes compassion and my lifetime guilt because he just put in aputting green and he put the putting green in because he wanted to have some privacy while he practices putting. Other worse, hed have had to go to thegettysburg country club which he enjoyed doing and seeing people but there wasnt actually any privacy in those events. People came out to watch him golf. So one evening i was padlocking a gate and five of the horses on the farm pushed against the gate, sort of almost knocked me over and went running all around the lawn in front of my parents, grandparents sitting area where they always sat in the evening. And all five of thesehorses are running around like crazy and circling here and going there. And then made a huge sweep across his golf green. And i was more than in a state of panic. Everybody came out of the field. The old hands, secretservice, everybody and we were trying to wrap up these animals. We finally did and i had to go in and face the music. Not only had they ruined my grandfathers golf green but i was late for dinner. This was one of those moments in childhood you dont forget. I walked in, he always sat in a swivel chair and he swiveled around and looked at me and said you know what i said your grandmother western mark i havent seen horses run like that since i was a kid in abilene kansas and of course i apologized after that but i never heard of it again and it was a very smart move on his part to cause the guilt would be lingering. I thought never to make a mistake like that again but he was very nice not to bring it up or to hold it against me or hold it over my head because i think he knew i was devastated and wouldnt do it again. Its one of those plastic experiences that is in a disney cartoon for children that the child makes that mistake of irresponsibility and in the ones where the parents are good, they do what ike did and when their bad look like a witch. I had one more thing, i had the great sense to apologize profusely and take full responsibility and i think that went down very well. I would have had a significant ongoing lecture about personal accountability had i not done so. But youd already learned that lesson. I learned that one already. Is, hes painting a picture. I assume youre inthat picture. You can see from the postcard hes standing in front of. Its my mother and three of my four siblings. My youngest sister was born in 1955 after that portrait was painted but it was taken at camp david and i guess one of the helpers in camp david came in and took a picture of him doing that but he took up painting actually after the war, he sort of went to churchills example. He was intrigued by how much painting the Prime Minister did while he was trying to get his head together and then also, his own portrait painter gave him some oil paints as a present and i took it up then and then became really very attached this past time because he found it centered him. And while he was concentrating on the painting, he was rallying his mind to workthrough difficult problems. You have a short story in the book about how he had and it exhibited an art museum and he told somebody theres only one reason theyre being shown here andthats because i was president. They never give a guy like me and exhibit or paintings that look like this. Exactly, he was verymodest. Not like churchill really took his painting so seriously that he wanted to be regarded as a professional. I did it to give away his gifts and he gave his cabinet members paintings of them. He painted all those wartime colleagues. He actually even painted Prince Charles and princess and for the queen of england. And always was full of apologies about their execution but he had some talent i think. We have a picture here of one of churchill, the picture of churchill. Thats the next picture. Its quite talented, is not amateur. Not bad and the other charming thing about this painting is that he actually was able to present it to Prime Minister churchill when churchill, he had just stepped down that he was visiting in the United States and there was a wonderful picture of churchill sort of looking it over life churchill the painter would. Actually, ike also painted field Marshal Bernard montgomery who was one of his , one of the big personalities he worked with during world war ii and its a lovely, lovely painting that had today in the British Embassy in washington dc. You said is one of his interesting personalities, hes sort of a friendly. They got along but they were enemies do so in the next picture is when he gave to you, the next thinking. Theres a little story with this one. Theres a story about this one area i often stood behind him when he was at the easel. He had in addition to his entire years, he always insisted on having a studio where nearby so in the white house it was on the second floor overlooking lafayette park. And it was around that time that i was standing behind him admiring his work. This is a landscape, i dont know what the scene is but as i said before, he painted usually from postcards. And they were these landscapes you were always serene. And its been noted that theres something ironic about it because probably every brushstroke is full of some kind of turbulence hes trying to make sense of. This painting at the bottom is dated 1957. And in the 1957, many things happened but i was intrigued when i looked at the back of it that it says to susan, 1958 so that means its likely a painting was done first of all during the little rock crisis when eisenhower sent 101st Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock High School and escort nonafricanamericans to start school in september. And then right after that of course was sputnik, the soviet union launched its first artificial satellite or i should say the worlds first artificial satellite into space so i look at this painting and i think wow, those brushstrokes must have provided some relief during those times of great controversy and crisis. Going to go back to people talk about october surprises and i mean, in 1956, your grandfather certainly got to really huge ones but lets finish the pictures and then we will go ahead and by the way, for the audience if you have any questions just send them in through the chat room area and we will ask them and we got yours gary and we will get to the korean conflict a little bit later so next picture is, yes. And thats you. I look like im terribly thoughtful and he looks very kind and i like that picture because i want, ive always wanted people to know that he had some very very tough decisions and some very dark times during our history. When you think about what he saw and what he had ordered during the war, but you know he never became hard or cynical. And i think as both a Family Member and as an analyst, i think its remarkable, it says a lot about hischaracter. It seems to be one of the hardest things to do is to make those decisions and we will get the dday later to know that the best romany people will die and at the worst, you dont even succeed at what youre trying to accomplish and even more people die. The people whove made those decisions for us i think is why they get admired for decades and even centuries to come because its so crucial. That your grandfather is certainly one of those area and the next picture we have a couple pictures of him now. Theres a picture of him as a young man on the Baseball Team. Just so you can see him before his ball. Thats right. Itsalways fun to see ike with a full head of hair. George, maybe you could describe which one is. I think this is him. Thats exactly right. This is the Abilene High School and he was on the Baseball Team really was a very good baseball player but i think his real passion was football. And he lost his weight for a little while when he broke his knee and was unable to continue playing football at west point because he had played against jim for as a matter of fact in the army versus carlisle game and he was regarded as a very fast, effective Football Player and that was very discouraging for him. And he had to learn how to snap out of that downer. After taking up cigarettes, of course. One tangent, i was planning on going there but i thought it was interesting that you mention all leaders are just people who have obeyed the whole time but he was not a bad boy but he got himself when he in trouble when he was at west point and he didnt even go there to become a soldier, he just went there for the Free Education , another interesting tangent. Heshared that with ulysses s fred. A lot of great leaders turned out to be civilians who had never imagined themselves as soldiers. I think towards, one thing thats worth mentioning especially in the context of west point is that he grew up in a very religious household. And eisenhower were pacifists. They were godfearing pacifists. There wasnt an eisenhower who fought in the civil war so they made ice uncle, Abraham Lincoln eisenhower because they wanted to express their views but they were Conscientious Objectors so you can imagine the family feelings when ike goes off west point because he cant wait any longer for his youngerbrothers to put them through college. Fascinating and theres a lot more detail in the book. Next picture is a meeting with christianwhich was a very , very interesting idea. You mentioned we were talking about earlier. And i dont think very many people know about this but he was when he was talking about a distinction between what was going on during the cold war, it wasnt a matter of capitalism versus socialismor even communism , he says actually in that speech at the Commonwealth Club , that is really about, its about openness, democracy versus authoritarianism. And then he goes on to say its about a free and open society as opposed to a close and secretive society. And i just bought that was rather intriguing. A lot of times in order to fight the enemy thats perceived you become like the enemy enclosing off and becomingsecretive yourself sometimes. If i could add two things, something here about this picture. This is in 1959 and even though their smiling, the United States at this point has been grown into what is called the berlin ultimatum. So the nikitaproject is currently threatening the United States. With punitive action. Over berlin and if it had turned into war there would be no way to defend berlin with conventional weapons though it might have turned nuclear. Today we have those kinds of standoffs but eisenhower actually invited tristan to come to the United States and christian was here for 10 days. 10 days. During that time, the soviet premier was subjected eisenhowers grandchildren as a way to solve the economy. And all i can say is that the future of the world in the balance as to whetheror not we were going to be well behaved that afternoon. He apparently managed to save the world for thefirst and last time. But no, i shouldnt make jokes about this, it was a very serious time. So after the trip, the soviets did lift ultimatum area with some agreement to continue to talk about it at a summit in paris. Will talk about the you to write as long as we got through jeff on the scene to. We were going to do it later but let me do it right now theres this u2 incident that famous was also very fascinating is how much information president eisenhower had about what the russians actually had done and what they had and that he knew that everybody was lying about the missile gap and this other stuff that was driving the cold war. It was perfectly clear that they did not have a force that we need to worry about at that time that was going on because they had information so maybe say a little bit about what happened. Its all intriguing and sputnik is tied up in this because we just had the dawn of the space age during his administration there were no rules for outer space at all. Was undecided legally whether or not sovereign airspace would extend all the way out intoouter space. So through an agreement with the soviet union, the United States and soviet union agreed to launch artificial satellites in 1957. Eisenhower administration, there was no surprise about. The point of free access to space which is what eisenhower strongly endorsed and had to make it possible for the use of the free use of satellites and orbit and the reason the satellites were so important eisenhower is because it would help avert a surprise attack. And before the satellites could get, could be launched , into free access of space, he wanted, he proposed overflight. The United States and soviet union to fly the aircraft over each country territory to ensure there would not be a Surprise Nuclear attack. I just have to say about the sputnik thing, the ministration knew they were going to launch their satellites and didnt even feel very badly as a matter of fact, sort of encouraged the soviets to go first behindthescenes without telling them anything they were sort of hoping that the soviet union would go first so that the soviet union would accidentally establish the precedent for free use of outer space. So not long after that, the satellites we have been working on, the corona project launched and we could tell from space and from the u2 exactly what, not i should say quite precisely what the soviet military buildup look like. Including the number of rockets they had nevertheless, sputnik opened the way for opposition to the Eisenhower Administration and preparation for the 1960 president ial campaign. Turned into a scandal which is known as the missile gap and the democrats were accusing the Eisenhower Administration of failing to keep up with the huge lead the soviet union allegedly had in rockets and Nuclear Weapons and that kindof thing. It turned out to be a fiction. We were way ahead of the soviet union. And the only way we could eventually tell that work work on the two programs that eisenhower initiated was the u2 and also the satellite programs. Or reconnaissance purposes. Your version of the story made me think they must have had some pretty good lawyers on the scene advising if you do it this way, then let the soviets go first, this is going to set the precedent that allow us to get what we want which is free and open spacing and if we go first trying to dominate it and it will work. We had to because we had proposed the open skies treaty and as the Geneva Summit in 55 and the soviet union absolutely rejected it. They would have had overflights over the United States they didnt want this mutualoverflight business because they thought we were going to use it for targeting purposes. So you can imagine this if we had gone into space first , they would well have accused us of going into space or doing what the u2 was meant to do. Sort of a complicated story, but its what i call playing the long game. He took a big political hit but when it went up before any of our successful satellites which were im sorry, our successful artificial satellites, but in the end, it was what began to establish a framework for space which allows all of the tremendous amount of development to take place without conflict. He was the right man in the right place because he had a long day in his mind a lot and he had plenty of experience with it. The other thing that was interesting also tangential about your book was because he had so much dealing with the russians during world war ii, he was in a good position to have a realistic idea about what they were up to and what they would do and what they would do and he did not consider them open and they would destroy themselves , they were somewhat rational players. My father had a tremendous sense of humor i must say. I asked him what he thought was one of the biggest intelligence conclusions of the 1950s and my late father said that the soviets were not really christian martyrs. In other words, the assessment was that the soviet leadership was to stay in power. So thats a very big difference between wanting to launch a preemptive strike, thats a big analytical difference. You mentioned your father, greg story about the conversation he had with president eisenhowers father. About correia, he wanted to go to korea, wanted to go back with his trips to korea and this is pretty serious, you didnt find out about that when you wereyoung. If you find out whenyour father was still alive . Yeah, georges story to summarize is when general eisenhower becomes president eisenhower, now hes not just a fivestar general. As a matter of fact, the game up his Army Commission to run for president becausewe dont have generals as president of the United States. So he suddenly is the commanderinchief and he is my father who is a graduate of west point two. An army officer who was stationed in korea, comes back for his fathers inauguration and then had a serious talk and i said you have to decide whether youre going to go back to your unit or ill command you to stay in the United States but heres the deal. If you go back to korea you need to carry a handgun with you at all times and you have to promise me this is an order. Promise me you will never be taken as a hostage or be in a situation where you could put the president of the United States in any jeopardy. So what that really adds up to is that my father agreed to commit suicide if he were in a situation where he was going to betaken hostage. And it sounds like a really by that time my father and mother already had three kids. I was a third of that group. As i say my sister mary came along in 1955 and this is several years before and its kind of stunning today area we think actually leaders ought to be ending their kids overseas but the potential for blackmail and to put the president of the United States in a position that would undermine the security of the United States was not acceptable for those two Army Officers and my father agreed thankfully area he lived to the age of 91 so he came home from korea without having to take such a drastic and tragic step. Its such a telling detail about the difference i think in time and place and what they had already gone through with the president that this father and son could make this deal and both understood thats the only thing you could do. And also, they were both military men. Its called doing your duty because the Mission Always supersedes any individual desires or however you like to put it and i think it is moving. I sort of think that story is important because to understand Dwight Eisenhower is to understand that he was trained as a military mind. It was a strategic leader. It was somebody who was highly self disciplined. He didnt like histrionics. He didnt like over emotionalism. He believed in selfdiscipline and process and process for him was extremely important because he didnt want to subordinate freelancing and he certainly didnt want to make any impetuous, uninformed decisions and that is all training that comes out of a lifelong experience in the military, especially at the highest levels. Great stories about how he dealt with the whole atomic weaponry issue andeverything , making three different commissions. He did it in this very elaborate way but lets move on to the next fixture. Here he is talking to the soldiers. Several great stories, not only at the time during world war ii but afterwards, 10 years afterwards i think the 82nd airborne he met with them and he had met with them, i think this is the group that hes meeting with now on their way off to fly and i think its interesting because i dont think people realize how personal he made this and how difficult that mustve been to do that, to look in the face. This picture is taken on june 5 just as these paratroopers are about to take off to the normandy coast to unknown fates. And part of the reason i think this particular picture is so wonderful is look at his face and how he smiling at those boys. I think its particularly noteworthy because the airborne drop, his decision about the airborne drop was probably one of those, the toughest of the whole normandy enterprise and the reason for it is rather simple. His technical experts, air Marshal Trevor lee mallory, a british air marshal who was responsible for the 24,000 paratroopers who dropped, warned ike about general eisenhower, about a week before the dday assault was to take place, he thought that the paratroopers should be canceled because the germans had reinforced a position and he thought it was dangerous and that between 50 and 70 percent of paratroopers and gliders troops would be lost in this exercise. So ike went into a room for two hours and decided against that recommendation because the paratroopers were central for opening a number of pathways off omaha beach. And i think whats moving about this picture is that having made that decision a week earlier and having written a note for his pockets that says if the landings fail, the responsibility is mine and mine alone. He goes out and he looks at these paratroopers in theeyes. I think in his mind that his technical experts says between 50 and 70 percent of these boys are not coming home. There was another thing i think you detail is the fact that the original dday plan when he got his hands on it and he changed them and he increased , doubled the size of the invasion and added this plan about the paratroopers landing. And fortunately the advisor wasnt right, it was four percent that died and 10 percent were wounded and Something Like that, still a high amount butthey succeeded and everyone assumed that without that , the overall, it could have been an overall disaster. The paratroopers were the linchpin of the operation. I can tell you pretty much what eisenhower was saying at that point just because we know it, that is the hundred first airborne. We know it because a number of them came back and told us what was being talked about. And he was asking him about home. He wasnt giving them a pep talk about getting on a plane and dropping behind the lines in normandy, hes talking to them about home and i once asked my fatherwhy would he do that . And my father, a military officer said they knew what they were about to go do and they were probably scared half to death imagine that smile and a man who came out andhad the courage to look them in the eye before they took off. And said dont worry general, were going to whip them and a Great Exchange really. Very moving. A lot of moving tales in your story of your grandfather. So i think the next picture is, thats him at a dday remembrance years later. You know about how old . Ill tell you, he would have been about 75. It was dday 20 years. That picture was taken. He gave an interview to Walter Cronkite and they drove off throughthe normandy coast line. And of course this is the American Cemetery before it had been completely finished. It was along process to put that cemetery together but this was the first time ike had come back. During the presidency the 10th anniversary of dday occurred in 1955 when he was president and he did not want to politicize the, whats really hollowed ground so he sent a gift to the people of normandy and then spent the day inseclusion but here he comes back and hes talking to Walter Cronkite. But look at the pain in his face. All of those kids who didnt make it. And he was responsible for the decisions that may have caused some of those people their lives. So then Walter Cronkite says what do you think when you sit here and im very moved to this, he said they gave us another chance and he says the question iswhat are we going to do with that chance . And i think the way think we are at a crossroads today where we have to ask ourselves what are we going to do with the chance we have by the time we moved beyond this crisis . Are we going to be a more United Country or are we going to allow our divisions to separate us as a people . Thats really a great segue. We have actually audio of president eisenhower. He spoke at the Commonwealth Club here 60 years ago and as you know, i have a little clip, maybe about three minutes long where everybody can hear his voice. I know that a lot of people are not aware, its not as commonly heard as president kennedys voice but the way he says what he says is almost as important as what he says and i think its very relevant for today just as you were saying so assoon as that clip gets started, we will listen to it. But i find it fascinating as we were saying a little bit earlier, this generation of men. My father was in the war. He went up through italy and sicily. Go ahead and run it. Im glad to be here this evening to sustain your perfect score of having as a speaker every president of the United States since this club was foundedat the beginning of the century. [applause] sorry we dont have live audiences right now. We give you no reason to abandon the process. Moved by a wisdom developed out of experience, the organizer of this club devised for their new creation a noble and necessary purpose. Better government in their state. Its energizing spark was the belief that, and i say these words from the documents of the time, california suffers greatly because the best elements of the population fail to cooperate for the common good as effectively as the bad elements cooperate for evil purposes. The dedication of that group and the unlimited efforts of its membership to pursue the course of sound government remain undimmed for the almost 6 decades of the clubs existence. The word commonwealth signifies a group united by common interests. But equally significant is the fact that in the political realm, a commonwealth as Mister Webster defines it has come to mean generally if not always an association based upon free choice. Tonight, i shall try to apply to some aspects of the world of International Affairs the founding principles of this organization, that each state suffered because of some failure of one element to cooperate as effectively for good as others did for evil. No group no matter how well intentioned can cooperate successfully unless there is first established a firm basis of commonunderstanding. This the founders of your club recognized by noting that one of the great difficulties was that different groups incalifornia did not know each other. They were separated at that time but wide areas and they also distrusted each other. Just as the california of 1903, the year your club was founded was a far cry fromthe commonwealth of california today , so the world as we turned into the 20th century is scarcely recognizable as the one we know in 1960. And the same issues are here and as you said , can people cooperate . One of the big issues that you talked about in the book in several places is that your grandfather was really not either a democrator republican. So he was a moderate. And he worked together quite often, in his cabinet he had democrats as used tobe done. And it seems to me he was worried about the extremists at both ends. And those extremists at the time on the right there was thejohn birch society. There was the mccarthy anticommunist. On the left there were the communists and people were trying to help the soviet union to succeed and other groups that were extreme. And he tried to run through the middle. He was of course criticized for not moving fast enough by one group and criticize for going too fast by the other group but he definitely went right up the middle and ive often thought today, its interesting because its almost like the democrats themselves without knowing it shot themselves in their own feet by gerrymandering all of the congressional districts. They did it not because of what happened in the 80s but they did in order to ensure they all got reelected. But what did was it made the primary elections, the actual election because their group was always going to win as a result of which, it pushed towards the extremebecause the primaries were four extremists. We could undo that process and both parties it seems to me to be interested in that but if they dont get interested in it, we could use another president eisenhower that said what about getting the democrats that are moderate and the republicans that are moderate to Work Together and do that instead . Because people, and i think about 60 percent of the voters it seems from the polling are right in that situation. So its very interesting and i think thats the nice framework for all the different issues he covered. We have a couple of questions here so theres plenty of things are going to cover that mean so many issues that he did lets ask the questions that were asked like Gary Landsman asked what was ike strategy to prevent a flareup of the koreanconflict. There was a ailment going on in korea. And he came in as a general and a lot of people but he will win thewar for us thats not how he went about doing. Because he was very realistic about that, about the iron curtain, and maybe you could talk a little bit about how he dealt with. Of course, its a long story. They always are i think if you were to look at his, well, let me start by saying after he was electedpresident , he went to coria as he promised during the campaign. And he actually took a helicopter ride over the terrain. He got pretty close to the present as a matter of fact if he wasnt on the front which i would have thought was dangerous for a newly elected president but he wanted to see the terrain. He wanted to see the lay of the land firsthand. I think the terrain already worried him a lot. Especially given the positions of the both sides. And he thought that this was just not a winnable war. Unless you know, it becomes a big war and big weapons are used. He just didnt think it was going to succeed and he was very much against worse without an end that would bleed not just human lives but it would bleed the economy and it would bleed energy and attention and he said about working out negotiations that led to the armistice , but this later became a great point of contention as you know between those who were in favor of making the world safe for america to engage in small wars versus eisenhowers view that small wars start small butcan get a. They can get big fast if your adversary is losing. And in this particular case of course, later the big adversary was the soviet union and had weapons to match our ownincluding a Hydrogen Bomb that had been developed just before i came to thepresidency. So yes, they managed. It turned out there was, it wasnt just the United States was more weary. There was some possibility that seemed to be president among our enemies in that fight and so are armistice was achieved its still in place and i guess thats the last chapter of the korean situation. What are we going to do and are we going to stay in corey up or are we going to ever, ever be able to go negotiate some kind of popper proper into that war. There was one of the things he, another big issue that he dealt with after the war was how to deal with germany. And we wont go into a lot of detail about that because theres so many things to cover what he did Say Something interesting you say in your book, ill consider our policy towards germany successful if 50 years later. If its a thriving democracy. And in 1995 was 50 years after he said that, at the end of the war with only a couple of years after germany had reunited as all one country certainly as a thriving democracy. So whatever is longrange energy, that one worked. That one was right on point and itsamazing , be chinese were told the chinese look ahead 100 years, the russians look ahead with these things but we have had president s that have done. And they cant keep the policies in place if somebody take them away but they can set the policies in a way that they make enough sense that people continuethem. And i think a lot of those were done. I just want to say that i think of course, he was a strategic leader during the war and as president and i think he was always looking forsustainable strategies. And i like the idea of a strategy because its a good strategy. If it stays in place and meets the needof a longer tranny time. Some of the things we call strategies today like a one term halflife. And then we have to or it can go on for longer than that of course but then the course corrections haveto be made. And i think actually transects ikes accomplishments hold up pretty well over the decades and he was playing the long game anyway. His first reaction of what people would say in 50 years and they would say the holocaust never happened unless we chronicle it now. He sent everybody, including my father into those camps to photograph it, congressman came from the United States and that was all on his orders. Yeah, the other element we were talking about about trust, it seems to me you have a problem in our trying to come to an agreement with each other today. Everybody has their own point of view which is always been true and we are getting use to democracy and that is everyone gets to have their point of view. Some people are very mad at the educated elite for trying to run things based on principles and so on and so forth. Its against the weight they would want to do it. You need to have a persuasive argument about it and in addition to that you take these groups and say what is it we have to have in common . Things we learned over the years is right and educate women. It will not be the end of society. In fact, our society is now better. Its more productive. Not bad if we educate all kinds of people, everyone should be educated although anyone who doesnt want to be educated thats another argument. They dont need to be educated and if you want to thats fine but you have a certain element of what it is that we can have in common and say if that is our goal and we all agree, all but 70 agree on those goals then we can trust each other if we just stick to those goals. This is what we will work on together and the rest of it but people in politics want to promise what they will accomplish and nobody can promise what they will accomplish in politics because theres a whole bunch of people you have to get to agree with you. Thats absolutely true. You know, eisenhower one side and i think it was at the beginning of his administration when he was describing a problem he said he describes it as the fear in the hearts of men. I think he understood that what underlies a lot of this lack of trust is fear to your point and so its the role of a responsible to put into perspective the fears we may have versus how dire things really are. Weve gotten to the point in this country now where everything is a threat. Im sorry but not all threats are equal. Some are more important than others and i think this is one thing a reader might get from this book the way a true strategist things about these things to understand what is fundamental questions are because nobody can take on every issue but what are the ones that will keep, what poem that will come poll that will keep the tent from collapsing. And people who is that dont realize that the main tentpole is coming down. The idea about the fear is absolutely right. One of the reasons we were successful after world war ii was the level of confidence in america and look at what we had just accomplished . Yes there were big scary things going on with the Nuclear Weapon were a bit scary thing from our childhood as you certainly remember and several other things but there was still the confidence that we can meet our problems and over because we overcame bigger problems already in world war ii. Why cant we do these . I think the amount of fear that has been generated since 911 about this and the next thing even though, you know, there were plenty of terrorism in the 70s and 80s in europe and in america but wasnt but it didnt scare people as much so a certain amount of political explication around fear. Some people in washington say that if you want to get anything done on capitol hill for the white house have to say its a national secured a threat and i have one very cynical friend who calls the threat marketing and whatever the case is you see the early beginnings of that with the missile and the story ever written and it certainly we should be vigilant and alert at all times but we have to also understand that the state of our economy and the moral authority we have is a country, both domestically and internationally and all these things are critical to our own National Security and military capabilities sure but that was not the only thing that was part of our National Security. Right. Because i dont think human nature will change too much i accept the politicians will use at the Start Marketing in order to get ahead but what i would hope for is they would at least do like john kennedy did with once he won he said its not as bad as we said and to bring it back down again and i understand its just like a game and like trash talking in a basketball game or trying to but so that the other person is not the top of the game so you win the game. In a way it shows a lack of confidence that you can win the game without doing this but we wont talk about that because thats the way all games are mostly played. It would be nice of the politicians would then say i was just kidding or i was just kidding but now that im here and i found out all the information its not as bad as i said. So we can all go back to feeling more comfortable because that level of fear is really the thing that dissolves society. There is another fear they are, which is probably contributed in part of the results of social media and just a whole bunch of cultural factors. People are very afraid of being seen as weak or as a winner or a loser and these are i dont think my grandfather would understand that at all. He really believed in Second Chances and if you believe in Second Chances then you dont believe in the whole win or lose but those accusations that are hurled at people but these are attacks on peoples motives and their personalities and i dont think it helps at all. It doesnt help because then people might make ill informed decisions so they seem to be doing something when in fact spending more time studying at the issue and looking at the background and thinking about the longterm consequences would be more productive. Your grandfather certainly embody that in one of my maxims in my writing is everyone is a loser and winners are just losers with more faces. [laughter] i like that. We have one less question here in time for it from kevin p how did he find a different to be a leader in the military versus leading the world of politics and government and sort of which one was more difficult for him . You address that in your book and i thought it was interesti interesting. Im so happy for that question because there is no question that Dwight Eisenhower had a learning curve when he got into, you know, fullblown retail politics in one of the big differences is when you are a fivestar general everybody and you outrank everybody. So in the military was organized in a way to follow orders and i would say that its pretty evident in the book so as a fivestar general it he was remarkably flexible and not like his former boss with general Douglas Macarthur who was tough on truths and addicted to the attention he received and i wanted to be the non macarthur but in any case i think he described it during his chief of staff years where he said that the biggest job in the military as commander or Supreme Commander is to think through how he really views things and what his strategies were going to be and to bring others along and believe people. Then he says but ive noticed from being in washington and making up your own mind of something is only just the beginning of the problem and then he would outline all the various problems there are. You dont know who is connected to who and who has a grudge against two and its a very, very funny passage. I think its probably funny in his diary which he never thought would get published for all of us to read and enjoy but he saw some early hiccups in the campaign and later well mostly in the campaign but he picked up the algorithm of it pretty quickly and i can just say if we dont understand some of those hiccups like his staff releasing his speech during the mccarthy encounter in minnesota then we are missing the adjustment he happened to make and i think probably anytime any leaks and staff did not do as they were told to do this was a big problem with him because it is not what you do in the military and so he ran a tight ship in the white house and believe it or not his associates were tremendously respectful of it. I knew many of his associates and they like the fact that they were given a lot of leeway and he was a very good person to delegate and but they understood that they had to be personally responsible for the decisions they were making too. I should add to that, of course, eisenhower had a pretty good sense of who needed the short range and who he could give more latitude to but its a fascinating question and thank you for asking because we tend to study eisenhower is a president or we study eisenhower as a general but we dont really put the two of them together as much as we should because this adjustment was a real one starting with his role as chief of staff of the army and going on from there. People skills of dealing with so many different kinds of generals including the really that he had to deal with in patton and Douglas Macarthur who used to be his boss. Thats one thing but the politicians, you know, he had to learn a whole new set of buttons to push or whatever to understand these people and what drives them certainly not truth or trying to win a war or when an election but anyway, i thought you did a wonderful job of showing both sides of that and its a great book for those much more detail and get it and enjoy it and im sorry you are all at home and have time to read it but there it is. Its a great idea for anybody that wants to go back to that period of time. In q, susan, for explaining your book and the pictures of your grandfather and yourself from your childhood and its 100 18th year of enlightened discussion here at the Commonwealth Club. Thank you, george. My pleasure. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tuesday night the topic of science, First Research seismologist susan provides a dual biography of geologist Bailey Willis scientist robert hill in the early studies of earthquake activity in southern california. In the Space Shuttle endeavor pilot gives an inside look at space travel and exploration. Later, author and producer provides a followup to her late husband carl sagans study of the space. It all begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and enjoy booktv and every weekend on cspan2. Election day is here, november 3. State was cspan2 learn who the voters elect to lead the country as president in which parties will control congress. Our live coverage starts tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and continues through washington journal at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Join the conversation, share your experiences and results as they come in and hear from the candidates watch live on cspan and cspan. Org or listen live on the cspan radio app. Election night on cspan, your place for unfiltered view of politics. Use your laptop or phone to follow the results of the historic 2020 election go to cspan. Org election for interactive tools giving you realtime Voting Results or a national map to track the president ial race, see the popular vote tally and Electoral College count map as well as the balance of power for the u. S. House and senate. Stream live or ondemand any time on Election Night at cspan. Org election. Good morning and welcome to this book launch webinar featuring doctor lynne cheney and Vice President cheney in a conversation about doctor cheneys new book the virginia dynasty. Im robert president of aei. I would like to start this morning by reading from doctor cheneys opening paragraphs and put the spike of a drawn compass into the lap of virginia and George Washingtons boy home and extend the other leg of the compass so it reaches 50 miles and draw a circle. With and it not only washington