Television for serious readers. California, dwight d eisenhower, president of the United States of america. This location deserves unbroken a tradition which began with president theodore roosevelt, the great in the near great addressed this audience but tonight we welcome a man history will record among World Leaders in hours of greatest need. [applause] i have in mind communist aggression as millions of people behind the far reaching iron curtain. I have a mind of the utility and korea, facing inflation in our homeland, eating up the savings and traveling through our Free Enterprise economy. Here then is a man trained in war who will be acclaimed by future generations as the man who laid the foundations of peace. [applause] reporter and more, he is our president who we love with a deep and abiding affection. [applause] welcome, i am george hammond, chair of the humanities for which put together this program, along with the staff at commonwealth book club, putting together these online programs. We have done dozens of them since the covid19 crisis began. It is my pleasure to introduce susan eisenhower, the granddaughter of president eisenhower. She has written a great book, how ike led the pricniples behind eisenhowers biggest decisions. It is like a youtube spine plane of the overview of his presidency but a young girls point of view of the man himself and it is quite a combination, nice combination because it is also a combination you lived your life because you are a political analyst, you lived your life this way but in addition you knew personally for many years. He didnt pass away until you are already in college. So welcome, everybody. We are going to get started talking about president eisenhower. He was president from 1953 until 1961. Jfk was president right after words and he was the supreme allied commander during world war ii. So susan, thank you very much for joining us from afar, the online world we recognize can happen more easily than we thought, 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 and advisor and you decide to write about your own grandfathers work, must of been interesting to be objective and subjective at the same time. You did it successfully. Thank you for the opportunity back at the Commonwealth Club. A wonderful opportunity of presenting two of my other books at the club in years past so it is great to be back and talk about this and the question is a very interesting one. As part of the disclaimer for our discussion this evening i should say as a kid i was raised to compartmentalize what i knew about his politics, the period in which he governed, the issues that he dealt with, and on the other side my relationship with him as a grandparent. This is a marriage of those two things and it was quite an experience to put it together in one place because i was continually struck by how we were doing certain things as a family dealing with these crises so that was interesting was the impetus for why to do it now revolves around three events. One is the 70 fifth anniversary of the end of world war ii, certainly vj day is about to occur but we had the 70 fifth anniversary of the end of the war in europe back in may of this year the eisenhower memorial in washington dc will be dedicated on september 17th, more scaledback version of its original self but it will be open to the public after that date and finally we are going into an Election Year and theres always a lot of thinking about the presidency as the most important four year election occurs so i thought i had something to say to us today and that is the reason i put it together. Host i found that, took it from that angle but there are so many elements that were so interesting. One of them is applicable. One that i thought as a small tangent, people who said in 1956 that were against him being reelected saying you are actually going to be electing Richard Nixon, you will not be electing eisenhower because eisenhower is 60, heart attacks and so on, pretty soon Richard Nixon will be the president , same thing going on today in the democratic party, people saying biden will never be president for more than a month or two so youre really electing kamala harris. I found it interesting that is thrown out at people. Guest im not going to speculate whether there is a difference in approach but eisenhower was very conscious of what it would be to be a diminished president. President wilson was almost a scandal, that people in the country didnt know how well that president was. I was determined not to find himself in that situation and after he had three illnesses during his presidency and after each one of them he would give himself and arduous test, a trip to europe that required lots of meetings have lots of stress, tell his advisors if i dont perform at the top level you have to tell me because then i will resign. That never happened. Rather adroit at managing his time, his stress, positioning himself for his second term. Host a small tangent but doctors lied to him, would warn him about it. One of the biggest decisions about running for a second term as you point out, he had a heart attack in 1955 and general Howard Schneider, although they were devoted friends who had been together in one form or another since the war Howard Snyder drove granddad up the wall. He hovered with all sorts of things, watching the armynavy football game, Howard Schneider decided it would raise the president s blood pressure, i didnt care about the outcome and so Howard Schneider was part of the team but wasnt exactly very direct. Back to your earlier question i was not going to be a diminished president. He might well have decided differently but at the end of the day my grandmother intervened for the First Time Since the early part of the marriage is encouraged him to run again, he would probably die of another heart attack watching everything watch out for that high blood pressure. Host your grandmothers decision was more easy to understand. The doctors decision, he was making all the decisions about the war in korea and all these big decisions, takes it too seriously it seems a little bit ludicrous. Host a guest and extra ordinary amount of power, how that works, the relationships you have with other people, doesnt make them terrible but it does change things. I love this expression, actually tried to handle this man which would make him more wound up i am sure because he was a guy making big decisions, perfectly capable of facing any difficult news and in his last years of life i saw this so often how brave he was and ready to take whatever was coming and volunteered for some exotic treatments for his condition because he thought it might help people after he was gone. Host it is a good transition. Before we get to the big issues he faced, it is good to talk about personal relationships, friendships he had, people who kept him grounded, his family and your own relationship with him and you have pictures to show which include pictures of yourself so we will get those up by the screen and the picture we have been showing is him at the end of world war ii. Guest by that time he had his fifth start. I think he looks tired, content, if the picture were fooling, only wearing a single ribbon and 5 stars on his shoulder. He was not one to walk around like a soviet general with metals all the way down to their waist. I like this picture because i think he looks approachable. That is an accurate assessment. Impossible to know, working 100 hours a week or 130 hours a week sometimes up all night in the middle of the night and not come out of a 3year stint, deeply tired. Guest how old was he . Guest born in 1890. 55 years old. If you look at pictures when he was president of colombia university, he looks younger than he did in that picture even though it was another 5 years later. Host he gave a lot of energy. It was a picture of you. Here is a teenager and a horse. Guest is there a horse in that picture . I cant see it from here. Perfect, perfect. Ike became an amateur photographer. All sorts of these homemade things. Somebody else took a picture of ike taking a picture of me. Every time i see this picture it makes me smile because of that bald head of his my grandmother said she loved to roll over at night in bed and pat his little bald head. There is a horse in the picture and from the standpoint i cant quite see it, this was the bond we had, he loved horses, the only animals on his farm he indulged in any way, shape or form. Cattle were cattle and he didnt like barnyard cats but he loved his horses. It is a sweet picture. You have a short story in your book when you were 11, just put in the putting green, special putting green, shows your relationship. Guest the story says a lot about ikes compassion and a lifetime of guilt, he put in a putting green because he wanted to have privacy while he practices putting. Otherwise he would have to have gone to the Gettysburg Country club which he enjoyed doing, but there wasnt any privacy, people came out to watch him golf in respite. One evening i was padlocking a gate and pushing against the gate, knocked me over, all around the lawn in front of my parents, grandparents sitting area where they always sat in the evening. Circling here or going a beta huge sweep across his golf green. It was in a state of panic, everybody came out of the field, field hands, secret service, we were trying to wrap around these animals, face the music and not only had they ruined my grandfathers golf green but for dinner, this was one of those moments you dont forget. He said in a swivel chair, swiveled around, looked at me and said you know what i said to your grandmother . I havent seen horses run like that since i was a kid in kansas and i apologize for that but i never heard of it again and it was a smart move on his part. To make a mistake like that, he was very nice to hold it against me or hold it over my head because he knew i was devastated and wouldnt do it again. Host one of those classic experiences in the disney cartoon for children, the child make that mistake of irresponsibility and in the ones where the parents are good they do what ike did and where they are bad it looks like a rich guest one more thing, we had the great good sense to apologize and take full responsibility, that went down very well. A significant ongoing lecture of personal accountability had i not done so. Host you learned about that. Guest i learned that already. Host taking a picture, i assume youre in that picture. Guest you can see from the postcard, the photograph that it is my mother and three of my four siblings, my youngest sister was born in 1955 after the portrait was painted, taken at camp david against, a picture of that, after the war, sort of followed Winston Churchills example, was intrigued by the Prime Minister when he was trying to get it together. His own portrait painter gave him some oil paint as a present and took it up then and became very attached to the past time and found it centered him, difficult problems. Host a short story, theres only one reason they are being shown here. He was very modest. Unlike churchill which took his painting so seriously that he wanted to be regarded almost as a professional. I did it to give aways and cabinet members paintings of them, for the queen of england, always full apologies about their execution. Host we have a picture here, the picture of churchill. It is not amateur. Host the other charming thing about this painting, he actually was able to present it to Prime Minister churchill when he stepped down when he was visiting in the United States, a wonderful picture of churchill looking at over, and field Marshal Bernard law montgomery who was one of his big personalities he worked with during world war ii and it is a lovely painting that hangs today in the British Embassy in washington dc. Host one of the interesting personnel you serve in front of me. He got along, what he gave to you, theres a big story of this. Theres a story about this one. And introduction to his retirement years. And it was around that time, i know what the scene is, the way he painted with postcards. These landscapes were always serene, brushstroke is a turbulent trying to make sense of. The painting at the bottom is dated 1957 and 1957, many things happened but i was intrigued when i looked at the back of it. It says to susan 1958, likely a painting that was done during the little rock crisis when eisenhower sent the 100 first airborne position to desegregate Little Rock High School and support nonafricanamericans, in september. Right after that was sputnik, the soviet union launched its first artificial satellite, the worlds first artificial satellite into space. I look at this painting and those brushstrokes must, those times, great controversy in crisis. Host people talk about october surprises, 1956 your grandfather certainly got two really huge ones. If you have any questions send them through the chat room and we got yours and got to the korean concept a little later. Next picture . I look like i am terribly thoughtful, i like that picture because i always wanted people to know that he had some very tough decisions in very dark times, when you think about what they had to order during the war but never became hard or cynical and i think Family Member and an analyst is remarkable. Host one of the hardest things to do is make those decisions, so many people will try and at the worst you dont succeed what you are trying to accomplish, people who made those decisions for us, admired for decades and centuries to come, so crucial. The next picture, a couple pictures of him, young man you see him before he is bald. Guest it is fun to see a full head of hair. Maybe you could describe which one he is. Guest exactly right. This is the abilene high school. A good baseball player, his real passion was football. Walks his way a little while, he was unable to play football at west point, played against jim for in the army, regarded a very effective Football Player and that was very discouraging for him. He had to learn how to snap out of that downer. Host one tangent, interesting that you mention all leaders arent people, not a bad boy but got himself in trouble at west point and didnt even go there to become a soldier, just went for the Free Education and another interesting tangent. Guest he shared that with ulysses s grant, a lot of great leaders, as soldiers, george, one thing worth mentioning in the context of west point, he grew up in a very religious household. They were godfearing pacifists. They named ikes uncle Abraham Lincoln eisenhower because they wanted to express their views that they were conscientious objectors. Imagine the family feelings when ike goes to west point because he cant wait any longer to put him through college. Host more details in the book, the next picture is a meeting with khrushchev. Very interesting idea we mentioned earlier. Dont think many people know about this but when talking about what was going on during the cold war, capitalism versus socialism or communism. Guest in the speech to the Commonwealth Club it is really about openness, democracy versus authoritarianism. It is about free and open society as opposed to a closed and secretive society and i thought that was rather intriguing. Host to fight the enemy that is perceived you become like the enemy in closing often becoming secretive yourself sometimes. Guest two things, about this picture, this is in 1959. Even though they are smiling the United States at this point has been thrown into the berlin ultimatum. Khrushchev is threatening the United States with punitive action over berlin. If it turned into war there would be no way to defend berlin with conventional weapons so it might have turned nuclear. Today we have those kind of standoffs but eisenhower invited khrushchev to come to the United States. Cruise of khrushchev was there for ten days and during that time the soviet premier was subjected to eisenhowers grandchildren as a way to soften him up. All i can say is the future hung in the balance of whether we were going to be well behaved that afternoon. We apparently managed to save the world for the first and last time. I shouldnt make jokes about this. It was a serious time. After the trip the soviets did lift the ultimatum with some agreement to continue to talk about it at a summit in paris. Host as long as we have khrushchev you will do it later, i will do it now. What is very fascinating is how much information president eisenhower had about what the russians had done and he knew that everybody was lying about the missile gap and other stuff driving the cold war. It was perfectly clear they did not have a force we needed to worry about at that time. They had the information. Sale little bit about what happened. Guest it is intriguing. Sputnik is tied up in this because we just had the don of the spaceage during his administration and there were no rules throughout space at all. He was undecided legally whether or not sovereign airspace would extend into outer space and so through an agreement with the soviet union the United States and the soviet union agreed to launch artificial satellite in 1957. The Eisenhower Administration there was no surprise about that. The point of free access to space which is what eisenhower strongly endorsed and had to make possible for the use of the free use of satellites in orbit, the reason satellites were so important to eisenhower is because it would help of her a surprise attack. Before the satellites could be launched into free access to space, he proposed overflights for the United States and soviet union to fly their aircraft over each countrys territory to assure there would not be a Surprise Nuclear attack. I have to say about the sputnik thing the administration knew they would launch their satellites, didnt even feel very badly, as