Domestic Policy

DDE 1953-1961

• "Modern Republicanism"
• Continue Fair Deal, while maintaining a balanced budget.
• "happy days"
• Creds: Supreme Allied Commander!

1952 ELECTION

• "I like Ike".
• Defeated Republican Robert Taft (Taft-Hartley Act) for the nomination.
• Defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson, DDE won with 55% of the popular vote.
• A Republican Congress also won.

1956 Election

• Health concerns, 1955 heart attack.
• Defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson, again.
• Richard Nixon stayed on as his Vice President, despite an effort to remove him by the party.

Moderate republican

• Continued and expanded some social programs: social security extended to 10 million more people.
• Increased minimum wage.

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more policies:

• Continued Truman's low income housing programs.
• Appointed the "Big 6": CAB (becomes FAA and NTSB), FCC, FPC, FTC, ICC, amd SEC.

Decreased federal spending as %of GDP

• Created Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW, now HHS)
• 3/8 managed a budget surplus
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

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Why happy days?

• Economic growth of the 1950s, reconversion completed.
• Republican Congress cooperation in early sessions.
• DDE use of veto power with later Congress' to cut spending bills.
• Domestic spending rose from 31% to 49% of the federal budget 1953-1961.

I Like Ike

McCarthyism

• Senator Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, served in Senate from 1947-1957.
• He embodies fear of communists. Red Scare 2.
• Truman tried to ignore, Eisenhower initially mostly ignores. Supported - no clemency for the Rosenbergs, did not support his former mentor George Marshall (plan).

Infrastructure

• Interstate Highway Act built 41,000 of roads, increased urbanization.
• Federal Aviation Administration , for the jet set.
• Opened the St Lawrence Seaway
• Created ARPA, ARAPNET, and NASA (mostly civilian agencies).

It's the Economy

• 30% population growth, baby boom.
• increased private and public spending
• increased agriculture capacity and both light and heavy industry
• 6% of the world's population produced & consumed 33% of world's goods.

American society

• first credit cards
• TV - first live broadcast nationwide - September 4, 1951 (Truman speech at Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco).
• Affluent society - 40 million invisible poor (mostly African Americans).

Eisenhower and civil rights

• Executive order to desegregate all public facilities in Washington DC.
• Enforced desegregation of the Armed Services.
• Appointed Earl Warren as Supreme Court Chief Justice on October 1, 1953.
• Eisenhower advocated slow desegregation. Signed Civil Rights Act of 1957 & 1960.

DDE Foreign policy

• "New Look" Secretary of State Dulles.
• Ended Korean War in 1953.
• Both created and warned Americans of the military-industrial complex.
• Believed the USA could win a nuclear war.

assessment

• 8 years of peace, prosperity and a balanced budget.
• Farewell address: "...avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow..."