American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 34.2 Dwight Eisenhower

Episode Date: August 28, 2021

So he has won the largest war in history, now what? Settle down in London with his true love? Go home to his wife and become the president? Who knows? (We obviously all know).

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, Dwight Eisenhower. Part 2. Hello and welcome to American Presidents. So tell us, rankium, I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Biden. And this is episode 34.2. It is the second part of Dwight Eisenhower. The man himself, the Supreme Allied Commander and Operation Overlord. Yeah, yes. Him. That's him, Operation Overlord. Yeah, yes. Him.

That's him, that's him. Yeah. Yeah. Impressed with him so far? Yeah, he seems to know what he's doing. Yeah, yeah. He won a war. So, I mean, yeah, that helps.

That's good. That's good. Right, OK, well, let's not waffle. Let's just dive straight in, shall we? Yeah, sure. Let's have an introduction. Let's have something we've never had before. Because I always go for, like, modern things that are impossible.

Let's go for a space shuttle. A space shuttle. Yes. Okay. The very first one is called Enterprise. Is that just Star Trek? No, it's generally called Enterprise. It's like a...

Jamie, Jamie, you can't fool me. That's just Star Trek. I'm not fooling you for it. So, no. Yeah, it's a captain by, I think his name was Kirk. Okay, no, no. We're... I'm going to take what you're saying.

I'm going to twist it slightly. Start on a starry sky. And the space should at least go past. Yeah, the Star Trek ship goes past. It's being chased by a blue whale for some reason. But yeah, that's just in the distance. One of the stars seems to be flashing, however. Just flashing away.

That's odd. Stars don't usually flash. No. No, you think. And so do several other people at the same time. And then this flashing light gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you see hurtling towards you at a same time. And then this flashing light gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you see hurtling towards you at a shocking speed.

It's none other than what looks like a very early satellite. Oh! And it goes flying by at tremendous speed. The camera's all shaky and there's some good sound effects going on. It's good foley work.

And as it just shoots by you at tremendous speed, you see that on the side of it's just like a little disposable camera, like gaffer tape to the side of it pointing downwards. And it's rapidly taking photos. And then as it shoots past you, the wind that it just blows the camera, which obviously wouldn't happen in space. No, of course not.

People didn't know better in the 50s. You could get away with stuff like that. Explosions sounded like they were loud in space back in those days. So anyway, the satellite pushes past you and the wind catches the... We call it solar wind. That sounds science-y.

It catches the camera and it flings around and it points downwards and you realise that you are directly over the country known as France. Bonjour. Yeah. That's what they say. It means hello. And then just start plummeting towards the ground really, really quickly. Like you're zooming towards the ground from space. You're getting closer.

I don't like heights. I don't like this. You're zooming into Google Maps. That's like you're zooming towards the ground from space you're getting closer i don't like heights i don't like this zooming into google maps that's what you're doing yeah that scares me finally you go into a city and then into a street and into a building and then into a room because this is one of these open ceilinged uh buildings that they've got in france yeah we all know of them very continental, very continental. Or maybe it's got a skylight. That perhaps is better. And then you realise that there is a piece of paper on a desk and it's zoomed right into it and it is just typed on this piece of

paper. Lots of French words because you're in France. But it also has the word Eisenhower Part 2 typed on it. Ooh. Nice. Ooh, nice. There we go. That was quite cinematic. It's very cinematic, isn't it?

What's going on? Why is there a Russian satellite taking Kodak images of France? Of your research notes from your holiday in France, yes. Yeah, exactly. So there we go. That's how we're opening this episode. Because we're entering the space age, Jamie. How exciting.

Star Trek age. How exciting. I mean, we've done this podcast for a very long time now. As in we've covered a long period of history. Yeah. We're now in space. Yeah, that's quite cool. Because I think our very first episode, didn't you,

went back millions of years? Yeah, it's true. It's quite the spread. Yeah, that's quite cool. So I think our very first episode, didn't you, got about millions of years, so. Yeah, that's true. It's quite the spread. Yeah, it is. Okay, right. Let's get into Eisenhower, shall we? Because the war's won.

Hooray, sort of. I mean, not the whole war, but the European victory has been achieved. He is the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, so he has reason to celebrate. And he's also, remember, got Kay by his side. Ah, Kay. Yeah, so the world's good. Everything's good.

Yeah, looking positive. Everything's looking up, you could say. Yes, but obviously things are about to change for Ike Eisenhower. Because with the war in Europe over, he needs to decide what his life is going to look like. What's he going to do? I would love to be president, he thought to himself. No, he did not. No, okay.

Well, definitely not. No. He figured he'd got two choices. He either goes home to Mamie, and remember, he'd not long ago visited Mamie, and wow, that was awkward. Yeah, yeah, it was. That was when he kept calling her Kay. In bed.

Yeah. Or, here's an idea that was being floated around by several people, some of his friends. Why don't you move to London and live with Kay? Ooh, I like that idea, he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the decision was playing on Eisenhower's mind as he and Kay went to London to celebrate VE Day, which must have been fun. Yeah, that'd been pretty awesome.

All the rationed food for the parties. Yeah. Here's your water biscuits, sir. Have to sort of push past all the rubble. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Move Granny's corpse out of the way. Yeah, exactly.

Good time had by all. Yeah, like I say, quite a few of his friends around this time were suggesting to him that he move to London. In fact, some of them had even selected a residence for him to live in. This was a serious consideration. Wow. In fact, in the end, he made up his mind. This was what he was going to do. His future was in the end, he made up his mind. This was what he was going to

do. His future was in Britain. So he wrote to Marshall. Remember, Marshall is the... The plan guy. Yes, but in the future, Marshall at this point is the chief of staff of the army. So he's head honcho in the army. So he writes to Marshall and says, can I please be relieved of duty now that the war's over, over here? Yeah, I'm going to stay in Europe. I'm going to divorce Mamie and marry Kay. Yeah. So he waits and eventually he receives a letter from Marshall and I'm paraphrasing here, to be fair,

said something like, don't be bloody stupid, you idiot. If you do that, I will kick you out of the army and I will make your life utterly miserable. Okay. Yes, this seemed to snap Ike back to reality. Yes, he was very much in love with Kay, but he did have a life back at home. And it was time to face up to that. So he spent a while celebrating in Europe, staying in Germany mostly, and then getting involved in the discussions with the Russians

over who exactly was where now the war was over. A lot of soldiers in places where they agreed there wouldn't be, and lots of manoeuvring had to be done. Yeah. All the while, Kay was by his side throughout all of this, but their days were numbered. They both knew it.

Did she get shot? Did she step on a mine? No, no, nothing that drastic. Thinking Eisenhower arranged for her to have a little accident. Well, maybe not Eisenhower, maybe Marshall. I don't know. Oh, maybe. No, nothing that dramatic. They just knew that it was going to be over at some point.

But there's still things going on. For example, the Potsdam conference with the Big Four took place. Yeah. Ike, during this conference, learned that some of the clever boffins in the lab back at home had come up with a rather large bomb.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they were going to use it rather large bomb. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they were going to use it on the Japanese. Splendid. Well, Ike apparently was appalled by this. Good. I will quote here. I voiced my misgivings.

First, on the basis that my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. And secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion. I disliked seeing the United States take the lead into introducing into war something as horrible and destructive. It's interesting because, I mean, war is often a place for very fast technological growth.

But yeah, this is the first time where people are kind of going, ooh, maybe it's a bit too much. Like with tanks, armoured horses, that was fine. Oh, I mean, Eisenhower, as we saw last episode, loved the idea of tanks, loved the idea of modernising. Yeah, definitely. But like you say, this was a step too far for him. But as we've also seen, pretty much everyone else

was very happy to use the bomb and gave very little thought to it. It would appear Eisenhower was one of the few at this time going, hang on, do we need to do this? Could we just demonstrate it in the open ocean just to show what we could do? Yeah. So, yeah, he was ignored. Yeah. Shut up, Eisenhower. You're ruining the war. As covered in Truman's episode episode the bomb was indeed used twice eisenhower was not impressed fearing that this would lead to much much worse things he stated that he thought that with britain's navy the u.s's air force and russia's land army

those three nations could theoretically maintain a world peace for a very long time because you've got three powerful nations in different ways they can keep an eye on each other but no i think everything's going to be fine but now the bombs being introduced i'll quote here i don't know people are frightened and disturbed all over. Everyone feels insecure again. It's this idea that maybe that wasn't a good idea. Maybe this is setting a precedent that we shouldn't be setting. Still, Eisenhower gets on with his job. Obviously, there's still lots to do just because the war's over in Europe

doesn't mean he can sit with his feet up. So he gets on with it. He visits Russia. He made several close contacts with those high up in Russia, understandably, because he was working with the Russians during the war. And he was treated like a returning hero

in Russia. He was the only foreign person to stand atop Lenin's tomb. Literally? Yeah, yeah. On the big glass tank? Yeah, yeah. American flag in hand. Yeah, that's what I'd like to think. No, no, he was like up on the big glass tank yeah yeah yeah american flag in hand yeah that's what i'd like to think no no he was like up up on the the standing area that you can stand they thank goodness stood there for five hours apparently watching a huge display of uh gymnastics and

various other things to celebrate victory uh probably not from lenin uh but uh he he was stood next to st Stalin for five hours. You'd get bored, wouldn't you? You'd run out of things to say. Yeah, you would. He then saw many parades afterwards. He watched a football game. He generally had a good time.

He came away from Russia feeling cautiously optimistic. I mean, he was certainly no fool. He knew that most likely there were going to be tensions between the countries from now on. It was obvious that was the way things were going, but it wasn't too late, he thought. It's like, these people, you can talk to them.

We're not necessarily on the path for war here. The next day he told a reporter, I see nothing in the future that would prevent Russia and the United States from being the closest possible friends. Oh.'s nice isn't it yeah around this time he got a he got a phone call it's time to come back to washington eisenhower uh you have been named as marshall's replacement as chief of staff oh yeah how nice so get all your people together and come on home and uh eisenhower did he got everyone who worked under him together and uh everyone got on a plane apart from one person

oh k yes yeah k stays behind ike wrote a very formal letter to k on war department stationary which is always it's the personal touch that just makes sense. It is, yeah. I am sure you understand that I am personally much distressed that an association that has been so valuable to me has been terminated in this particular fashion, but it is by reasons over which I have no control. Association? You call it a bloody association? Yeah, I mean, that's only part of the letter. It goes on like that for a little bit and then just stops. It is a cold goodbye. There is a handwritten postscript, apparently, that says, take care of yourself and retain your optimism.

Oh, words to the heart. Yes. And that's it. Just like that. Kay's gone. Fair enough. I'm probably very annoyed she's been left behind well i mean left behind in the country she lives in it's oh that's a fair point yeah yeah she's a taxi driver wasn't she yeah but yeah she was a driver yeah anyway back in the united states almost immediately people started asking the pressing question. Is Eisenhower a Democrat or a Republican? Because he is going to be able to win elections,

and it would be great to have him on our side, said pretty much everyone in Washington. However, Ike just refused to be drawn in. I'm positive that no one thinks of me as a politician, he said. Now, as we saw in Truman's episode, Truman was very keen for Ike to be seen as a politician, he said. Now, as we saw in Truman's episode, Truman was very keen for Ike to be seen as a Democrat, obviously. So he made it very clear

to Ike that if he needed anything, anything at all, Truman would help. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Want a house? I can help. And then, apparently, there was a bit of a pause, and then Truman said, for good measure, that definitely and specifically includes

the presidency in 1948 just in just in case he'd been a bit too subtle just eyes now is confused expression of what what i don't understand oh but like i say uh ike's refusing to be drawn in he worked as a chief of staff for a while, he did a good enough job. He annoyed the Conservative faction of the Republican Party for not being anti-Russia enough at this time. As you can imagine, the anti-communist feeling was really starting to heat up. But apart from annoying the old guard of the Republicans, he just got on with the job smoothly. But the term was soon coming to an end, and he started to think what he was going to do next. And it was around this time that a friend approached him. How about being the president of the University of Columbia?

What? I'm Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied... Fine. Why not? How hard can it be essentially was the uh the response i mean he did he replied that he had no idea how to run a university i mean what no this just isn't my thing but he was told oh don't don't worry about running the university we've got people for that yeah the university just wants a big name in the top slot to look impressive there are people who will run the university. Don't worry.

So after talking it through with Mamie, he decides to go for it. After all, if he could win the largest war in human history, how hard could it be to run a university? Well, yeah, piece of cake. Yeah, he almost immediately regretted his decision. Yes, as we covered in Wilson's episode, if you remember, the cutthroat world of university politics is not a fun place.

It really isn't. I mean, Ike was used to issuing orders and those orders were followed. He was not used to this hot mess of competing interests and factions. So yeah, it was just a bit messy. I mean, he did enjoy the history department though. That was nice.

Well, he's part of it now. He was writing his own biography at this point and he knew his history well. He'd read up on military history. So yeah, he got on with people there but something wasn't quite right with the job.

He wasn't enjoying it um the election came and went the 1948 one this is where truman got in on his own right if you remember and then once that election finished almost immediately people started asking about ike again in 1952 is he a republican or a democrat because people are going to want to vote for this man. Still, he refused to be drawn. No, not interested. Where are you going? Come back. Keep asking me whether I'm interested.

And then Truman contacted him and asked for help with a spat between the Navy and the Air Force. They'd fallen out of various issues. Eisenhower, can you please come to washington and just talk to the navy and the air force they're stealing our plane designs for their boats yeah things like that boats shouldn't have wings well ike was very eager to go to washington to help this was more his wheelhouse it got him out of the university so he went off to washington for a bit, worked there.

He started spending more and more time away from Columbia to the point that the university started to get a little bit fed up. We're paying all this hard-earned money and you're not doing anything. Which, to be fair, was kind of his job. His job was to be the prestigious name. But, I don't know, there were some people on the faculty just thinking he wasn't doing enough. So when Eisenhower was asked by the president to be the supreme commander of the NATO forces in Europe.

NATO? Yeah, yeah. The university didn't offer too much protest. Fine, yeah, take an extended leave of absence. Go and do that if you want, whatever. So Eisenhower sets off to Europe in January of 1951 to go and have a look at what this NATO thing was about. It's got a military wing, you say, and that's what I'm running. Right, okay. So where is it?

Oh, right, I am it, am I? Right, okay. Right, I'm going to pop back to America and see if we can get any funds for this then. So, after about a month of seeing what was going on in Europe, he came back to America and see if we can get any funds for this then. So after about a month of seeing what was going on in Europe, he came back to America to try and just get a bit more support and funding. Unfortunately, Congress at this time were not particularly supportive of the idea of NATO and it using United States troops, especially the old guard of the Republicans. especially the old guard of the Republicans. This faction was the faction leading the Red Scare.

This faction wanted America to go back to isolationism. They did not want America to be dealing with wars in other countries. They wanted America to... Yeah, they wanted communism to go away, and they wanted America to just look inward. So they really were not happy with the idea of NATO. Their leader at this time was Taft. Robert Taft, this is the son of President Taft.

Yeah. Yeah. The water buffalo riding president. Yes. Taft desperately wanted to be president at some point. He'd already attempted it three times before and obviously it failed each time. But his popularity was arguably stronger than ever and at this point he was leading the fight to get the United

States to pull out of the NATO's military. So Eisenhower decides to meet with Taft. If you stop all of the crap you're pulling and come out and support NATO, says Eisenhower, I will publicly announce that I won't run for president next election. Oh, that's some confidence, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, after all, Taft at this time is the forerunner in the next convention to be nominated. I mean, he's already tried it three times. If he doesn't get it next time, he's got to give up. Yeah. And Taft also knew that there was only one person who could beat him, and that was Eisenhower. Unfortunately, though,

Taft did not take this well at all. He hated the idea of NATO. He wanted the United States to retreat back to its isolationist ways of the previous century. So he just refused and left, stuck to his guns, to be fair to him. This annoyed Ike quite a lot, and he was left thinking just about how maybe, just maybe he would have to run for president then. Still, he had a job to do. So back to Europe he goes.

Right, so have you got anywhere while I've been away he asked to an empty room in fact not even an empty room it was just a field somewhere with half a sheep in it half? yeah there was no headquarters there were no troops there was no staff

Europe was still a mess understandably we're not far off the end of the war here. So he's like, OK, right, I've got to get this up and running. Thanks, Eisenhower. So he spends a year touring the continent, securing support for NATO. It was at this time that President Truman announced that the United States would support any country against communism.

Ike winced at this. Quote here, We should promise support to any country prepared to defend itself. We should not embark on a straight anti-communist campaign around the world. I mean, it's going to put Russia's back up a little bit. It is. And I could foresee this leading to the United States being dragged into various conflicts over the next half century that arguably they could have stayed

out of. Yeah. Yeah. Something like Asia. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah he wasn't best pleased with Truman's foreign policy but still he carries on with his job. There's not much he can do about that. He stayed in France but on an American base it wasn't like being

in France. He was he could have been in America on a military base it was close enough to Paris that he got to visit the capital when he wanted to though and when he wasn't building up the NATO forces from the ground up he was watching the Republicans closely from afar one thing that was really disturbing him at this time was the fact that there were rumours

that his old boss, MacArthur, was a possible Republican candidate. Now, just to quickly recap it, remember MacArthur was the general who he worked under in the Philippines and he hated. Yeah. MacArthur also, as we covered in Truman's episode,

went off the rails a bit in Korea. Yeah. Yeah. Invaded a place you shouldn't have done. And Truman had to fire him. So we're at this stage now. MacArthur's been fired, he's back in America, and the old guard Republicans are using him as a trophy. So, yeah.

And if there's one thing Eisenhower does not want, it's to have to work under MacArthur again. But if MacArthur became president, he would have to. So maybe, maybe I really need to think about becoming president, if nothing else, just to stop MacArthur. Still, he's playing everything close to his chest. Truman approached him yet again, saying he'd throw his weight behind him if he ran as a Democrat.

But eventually, Ike makes up his mind. After over a year of people speculating, he finally announced that if the Republicans asked him to run, then he would. So there you go, he's a Republican. The convention arrives. The Old Guard were determined for Taft, obviously, to win the nomination. That's who they were going for. And Taft was going to lead a very conservative republican party the liberal faction of the republicans because they had one back then were all swinging behind ike so the first ballot ike gets 595 votes to taft's 500 this is only nine votes from winning with how the rules worked at this point. Yeah, it's like insanely close.

The third place man, a man named Governor Warren, had 80 votes. But he refused to butch. I mean, all the people who voted for Warren were always going to vote for Warren, no matter what. Because Warren's plan was to be the dark horse, the compromise. His plan was to watch Ike and Taft battle it out and then step in at the end. However, because Ike was so close to winning with only nine votes left, the fourth and fifth place people had 30 votes between them. At this point, once everyone realised how close it was,

but the roll call hadn't actually been announced, Minnesota waved for attention and the presiding officer allowed them to speak before announcing the results minnesota said hang on a sec we've changed our mind um you can have our 19 votes for um eisenhower yeah there you go eisenhower can have them. So, just like that, technically in the first ballot, although only just, Eisenhower wins the nomination. Hooray. That's fast. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

like I say, he was a favourite and had been for quite some time. The people liked the war hero. Right, yeah. That evening, Ike was asked by his staff who he wanted as his running mate. Ike responded and I quote, well, I

thought that was up to the convention. I'm guessing at this point there was a surprise silence and lots of meaningful glances. Mutters of, oh, of course, of course, and democracy and yes, yes, definitely. And then someone said, but seriously, who do you want?

Eisenhower mentioned a couple of people, now he thought about it, who would make very good vice presidents. Again, there was an awkward pause. Everyone looked at each other a bit. No, no, we're not asking for someone who would make a good vice president. We're asking for you to choose someone from the old guard, someone young, preferably, someone from the West, someone who is the opposite of you to make everyone happy.

Someone like Senator Nixon, for example. Nixon? Nixon, yeah. Young Senator. Yeah, here do. He's young. He's old guard. He's from the West.

Yeah, fine, fine, whatever, came the reply from Eisenhower. So there you go, you have an Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. And the campaign starts. The Democrats had nominated a man named Stevenson, an eloquent speaker, a Democrat from the Liberal faction, because the Democrats had a very conservative faction as well, as a uh faction at this time and the campaign started off smoothly enough but with the age of mccarthyism hotting up the election as you can imagine soon started to turn nasty as in particular the old guard of the gop started throwing accusations of people being damn commies uh yeah it's an easy thing to throw around there isn't it oh yes as we will get into in a bit yes yes, yes, it was insanely easy.

Well, we see it now, don't we? Insanely easy to do so. Eisenhower personally spent his time crisscrossing the country campaigning, using his popularity to even target the South, with the goal of getting the South to actually vote Republican for the first time. Everything seemed to be going well, and then the fact that Nixon had a secret fund from an anonymous source leaked to the press.

Oh, OK. Yeah, what's this secret fund all about? Where are you getting this money from, Nixon? This seems a little bit dodgy, Nixon. You're not a crook, are you, Nixon? The papers jumped on it, or at least the Democratic-leaning papers did. It just didn't look good that someone was bankrolling the vice president's nominee,

and no one really knew who it was. Technically nothing illegal was going on, but it wasn't a good look. Yeah. Nixon had a very good argument. In typical Old Guard style for the time, he said, it's the commies, they're trying to smear me. Yeah. Get our clause, isn't it now?

Yeah, this just elevated the story. It stopped being a, oh, had you heard Nixon's got a bit of extra cash to Nixon's accusing communist insurgents in the government of smearing him? Well, there's a story, isn't it? So, yeah, the story erupts. Eisenhower, hugely unhappy. This is not the campaign he wanted to run. He did not want the campaign to be the old guard Red Scare faction versus the moderate Democrats,

because he wasn't convinced that that was a winning tactic. He wanted the campaign to be the moderate Republicans versus the moderate Democrats. There was actually very little between them at the time, but one of them had a war hero. So, I mean, that's a campaign you can win. Things get so bad that he made it very clear that he wanted Nixon to step down. Not publicly, obviously, because that would look bad, but he let it be known through back channels.

Let Nixon know he needs to go. Nixon refused. I mean, he put it more diplomatically than I refuse, but he essentially told Eisenhower that if you want to fire me, then fire me. Otherwise, I'm going nowhere. That's quite ballsy. Yeah, Eisenhower was not impressed by this. You can't fire your running mate. It doesn't look good. So Nixon stayed on. Yeah yeah things get quite nasty between them for a while eisenhower suggested that maybe nixon should release uh his finances so everyone could see everything's above above board did he nixon then came out and said oh of course of course but i'll only do that if the

democratic uh candidates do so as well not only saying that the Democratic candidates should, but obviously also implying that Eisenhower should. Yeah, so it's like yeah, things went south. Kind of worms. Yeah, things went south between Eisenhower and Nixon very quickly. The two never really get on. But he's there still.

He's going nowhere. With Nixon feeling a little bit more secure, him and McCarthy in particular, because obviously we're in the age of McCarthy here, so McCarthy's going to show up, isn't he? Here he is. The two of them go into overdrive with a very nasty campaign. To put it bluntly, they just started making up stories of communists in the Truman administration. They also targeted the fact that Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, might be gay and that he had a file in the FBI as a sexual deviant.

Oh, OK. Yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah, it gets very nasty. McCarthy announced that the Democratic campaign was full of, and unfortunately I quote, pinks, punks and pansies. Oh.

So that's nice, isn't it yeah yeah by the way we have we've covered many villains shall we say in uh american history i mean yeah we've covered the likes of calhoun and uh jp morgan and yeah i think mccarthy might be the least likable of all the people we've come across so far. And Calhoun owned slaves. I mean, that's how bad he was. That's a very good point. Anyway, despite this, Eisenhower appeared to stay above the fray. I mean, we'll never know for certain how much he was allowing the nastiness to go on,

but he certainly seemed above it. The nastiness seemed to be coming from the old guard. Yeah. Yeah. So the public were happy to give him the benefit of the doubt. And he was the overwhelming favourite to win, especially when he announced that if he won the election before becoming a president, he'd fly to Korea to see how to end the war.

Yeah, that's good. Which really annoyed Truman, who said, if you know how to end this war, then tell that's good. Which really annoyed Truman, who said, if you know how to end this war, then tell me and I'll do it. Nope. Nope, I'll do it once I've won. And yes, of course he did win. 442 electoral college votes to 89.

Oh, that's an annihilation. Oh yes, very much so. The Republicans also got the House and the Senate. It was a clean sweep. The Democrats only held the very deep South. That's interesting. But if you look into the data, there are actually signs of cracks there. We're about to see the flip.

Anyway, after the victory, true to his word, Ike gets on a plane, flies to Korea, goes and visits his son, who's a major over there, because of nepotism, I assume. Yeah, Ike was back in his element at this point. He knew everyone over there. He was at ease. He sized up the situation

very quickly. A full frontal attack this time would be a very bad idea, he realised very quickly. The North Koreans and the Chinese were embedded. We're not going to win this if we attack. The time would be a very bad idea, he realised very quickly. The North Koreans and the Chinese were embedded. We're not going to win this if we attack. The commander over there, who had replaced MacArthur, spent until 2am one night trying to persuade Ike that they could win the war. I mean, if you just use a nuke or two, we can definitely win this. No, we're not using a nuke. Yeah, was pretty much

Eisenhower's response. He told him to forget it. He's not going to set precedence, or rather continue the precedence by using a nuke just because the war's tough. So, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing a full frontal conventional attack either.

By the time he's home, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to get out of the next four years. Number one was get out of Korea. Need to figure out a way to do it. He wasn't certain how yet, but that's number one on the list. Number two, we're going to focus on Europe

in foreign policy, because Europe needs to stand. If Europe falls and Russia takes over, Europe will be in trouble. So we focus on Europe, we don't get distracted by Asia. We're not going to get drawn into lots of wars in Asia. That would be a waste of time. We are going to try and contain the spread of communism, because

we don't want Russia to get more powerful than us. And we are going to provide foreign aid to keep profitable trading partners of ours afloat. If they go under, we lose money. So that makes sense. At home home we're going to keep the taxes because we're still in quite a bit of debt uh after the war uh and uh we'll keep most of the new deal uh eisenhower wasn't a huge fan of the new deal but he wasn't opposed to it

like the old guard were and he realized that ripping out the new deal would actually do more harm than good. So keep most of it in place. We'll scale it back slowly. That's his plan. There were many in the GOP who, when finding this out, were appalled. This sounded almost like a democratic platform. The old guard in particular wanted outright victory in Korea, not running away from it.

They wanted a reduction in all foreign aid. They wanted a shift to Asia in foreign policy. They wanted immediate and massive tax cuts. And they wanted the New Deal gone, stripped out, burnt to the ground. He's, I mean, really, the only reason he's a Republican is because he just didn't really get on with Truman, right? Partly, yeah. I mean, he described himself as a liberal conservative he he was very much a centralist though that that's what he was he he could have gone into the the democratic party and probably fit in quite well there you've got to wonder whether he just realized well the democrats

are on the way out the republicans are on the way up. So whose horse should I hitch myself to? Do you hitch yourself to a horse? No, you hitch a horse to something, don't you? Either way. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe it's that. The fact is that the people who were opposing him the most at this point was not the opposition,

but the extreme faction in his own party, definitely. Anyway, Inauguration Day comes along. Eisenhower showed a petty side at this point. Like you say, he didn't particularly get on with Truman. And instead of him going into the White House before the inauguration, as was per tradition, once the limousine

pulled up outside the White House, Eisenhower just stayed in it and waited for Truman to come to him. Which was an obvious and public snob. Yeah. Completely ignoring the tea that had been set out for the Eisenhowers as well. I mean, they prepared stuff

and everything. Aww. Poor chef. Like, lovely sandwiches. Going to waste. You know when you cut a carrot in a certain way and make little bows and ribs and stuff. That'd all been done. Cheese and pineapple on sticks. Yeah. In a hedgehog. Yeah. Not a real way, basically little bows and ribs and stuff. That'd all been done. Cheese and pineapple on sticks. Yeah. In a hedgehog.

Yeah. Yeah. Not a real one, I hasten to add. But that jelly rabbit you do, and you put a little mushed up green jelly around the outside to make it look like it's in the grass. Yeah. And then you do mushed up blue jelly and put a boat on it.

Yes. Yeah, all of that had been done. Party rings. It's all melting. Even the things that don't usually melt, it's just rings it's just it's all all melting even the things that don't usually mount it's just all mounting yeah biscuits yeah it's all getting very dali-esque in there it's very strange but anyway they go to the inauguration uh things are frosty now quite why eisenhower snub truman quite this badly inauguration isn't known 100 percent uh historians have speculated uh some say he was just very annoyed with the campaign

and how the campaign had turned nasty. There is one suggestion that Eisenhower knew that Truman had a copy of the letter that Eisenhower had sent to Marshall, the one saying, I'm going to divorce Mamie and get married to Kay and live in London. Now, as you can imagine, a letter like that's going to do Eisenhower some damage.

Now he's president. And there is an idea that maybe Eisenhower didn't like the fact that Truman was holding this over him. So that's why there was the snobbing. It's a shame because Truman had actually secretly arranged for Eisenhower's son to come back to the country. Remember I said he was in Korea? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he secretly arranged for his son to come back to the country. Remember, I said he was in Korea. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he secretly arranged for his son to come back for the inauguration and hadn't told anyone. Yeah. Yeah. So Truman did this really nice thing for Eisenhower, and Eisenhower didn't know and just snubbed him. Yeah. Eventually, they do make up after Kennedy's death.

They do kind of make up. And also, Truman destroys the letter, because he of make up. And also Truman destroys the letter because he did have the letter, but he destroys the letter apparently. So it all works out. But yeah, a bit of a petty side here in the inauguration. But after the inauguration, Eisenhower settles into his job. He ran the White House like he ran the war room. He doesn't need to know details. Don't come to me with every little detail. Just get stuff done. If it's in your brief, you deal with it. Unless it reaches a certain level of importance, in which case, come to me.

Delegation. Good. Yeah. No, I won't tell you what that certain level of importance is. That's your job to figure that out. He would refuse to receive any envelopes that hadn't already been opened and read because it's not his job to read things. It's his job to respond to things that have already been read. So efficiency, that was the idea. Unsurprisingly, as a military man,

he saw the National Security Council as the best way to govern. So from now on, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defence, the Vice President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the head of the CIA would meet weekly, with others being invited in as and when needed. The first major thing to cross the head of the CIA would meet weekly, with others being invited in as and when needed. The first major thing to cross the desk of Eisenhower is the death of Stalin. Brilliant, he said.

Yeah, which is a very good film. It's a very good film. They all sat down. They watched it. Yeah. It's a very good, funny film. Someone mentioned that it wasn't historically accurate, and everyone went, of course it's not historically accurate.

Look at it. It's a comedy. Yeah, it's a very good film anyway eisenhower was very surprised that in a world that was now chasing communist shadows in every single corner apparently no one had thought to put a plan together for when stalin died there was no like stalin death document that they could go to with an action plan or anything. Nope. So Eisenhower just had to wing it. But he saw an opportunity here. Send flowers, send flowers. And a bouquet. He asked those close to him at the time, what could the United States actually do to ensure peace? Not talk about, actually do. What action can we make as a country that will help peace? Because so far, we've been trading words with Russia, and tensions have just been ratcheted up and up and up. So what are we going

to do? So he starts putting together a speech with a speechwriter. A lot of it was based around the idea that the jet planes that were roaring over everyone's heads, costs three quarters of a million dollars each. And as Eisenhower pointed out, that is more money than a man making $10,000 a year makes in his lifetime. Yeah. We are wasting money here. We could be spending that money on, like,

hospitals, schools, infrastructure. We could be spending it on things that makes all our lives better. Instead, we are pouring it into these planes because we're in this arms race. And where's it going to lead us? Well, at worst, atomic warfare,

he pointed out. At best, we are going to be robbing every person and nation on Earth the fruits of their own toil. The speech is based around this idea. Eisenhower found his sentiments at odds with a lot of his own cabinet. His Secretary of State told a friend at this time that peace was all very well and good,

but it would be a shame to leave Korea without giving the Chinese, and I quote, one hell of a licking. This got back to Eisenhower, who was furious. All right, if him and all his sophisticated advisors really mean that then they cannot talk peace seriously in that case i'm in the wrong pew for if it is war that we are talking about i know people who can give me advice on that and it is not the state department either we cut out all this rolling around and make a serious bid for peace or we forget the whole thing eisenhower was very annoyed that people were just clamouring for a fight.

Yeah. Anyway, Eisenhower delivers his speech entitled Chance for Peace, widely recognised as one of his most important speeches. In it, he asks for the new leader of Russia to work with him to peace, that world peace must start with an armistice in Korea. That's where we're going to begin. Let's stop fighting in Korea, and then we'll work from there. Now, with Russia facing internal problems, after all, Stalin's dead, and the United States

looking for a way out of Korea anyway, well, it was only a matter of time, in fact, weeks before an armistice was signed. So there you go. Brilliant. Goes to show, if both sides want to have a war, it's not too tricky. There were some very unhappy people in North and South Korea, but, yeah, thought the big powers. Now, as you can imagine, all of this angered the main opposition

to Eisenhower's presidency, which, as I've mentioned before, is not the Democrats, it's the old guard of the Republicans. Taft happened to die suddenly at this time, at the age of 53. And he never became president. He never became president. The man taking over the old guard was a man named Norland. Now Taft had managed to keep

in check the more extreme factions of the old guard, but with him gone, McCarthy and his followers started to feel freer to just go for it. As they just make stuff up and... Well, as we will see. I'm going to try not to get

dragged too far down a McCarthy rabbit hole, because he is a fascinating person, and I'm sure at some point we will end up doing an episode on McCarthy, because he is an important figure. Senate episode, that would be. Yeah, he is an important figure in American history. So, yeah, we will go in more detail another time,

but obviously we need to know a bit about him here. He was a grandstanding politician who knew how to get headlines. He didn't really care about pesky little things like the truth, as long as it got him a win. And in the Red Scare, he had found the perfect way to gain headlines. What you did is you stood up and you loudly said things like, I can prove that there are over 100 communists working in the State Department. I mean, you don't actually offer that proof, you understand.

You just say you could prove it if you needed to. You say things like that. You say things like, I know that this person has communist sympathies and yeah you don't need to you don't need to prove it you just need to say it very quickly most in washington became scared of him because if he labeled you a commie well that was it your political career could be over unless you had some powerful backers yeah yeah if you if you'd only just started off your political career, you did not want to get on the wrong side of McCarthy.

No. So you would bow down to his pressure. He was gaining power quickly. He's the worst kind of person, the worst kind of politician. Yeah, very much so. Now, at this time, he was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. That meant that he would approve eisenhower's appointments or more to point he wouldn't because mcafee used this position to

accuse whoever he liked of being a commie several battles took place which eisenhower usually won but a strong dislike grew between them eisenhower knew he had to stay above the fray i'll quote here, I won't get into a p***y contest with that skunk. I really believe that nothing will be so effective in combating this particular kind of troublemaking as to ignore him.

Because that he cannot stand. Nice. Yeah. Now, Eisenhower was criticised for not fighting against McCarthy quite a bit over the next few years, but I think it's got a point here. Yeah, yeah. If he'd gone toe-to-toe with McCarthy,

you can imagine that would have just found flames. Yeah. However, saying this, McCarthy's very hard to ignore at this time. I mean, this is called the McCarthy era for a reason. He was becoming more and more influential. He sent a couple of men to Europe one time to inspect the libraries there, looking for any suspicious texts written by suspicious authors. Now, these were libraries on American basis. So these weren't like foreign libraries. Yeah, but these were American libraries in Europe europe so go over there and just see

if you can find any suspicious texts by any authors that are on oh i don't know this list that we've drawn up over 30 000 books were discovered written by over 400 authors they were rounded up if you can round up a book, and burned. Yeah. Yeah. Literal book burning going on. Now, one night soon after this, at an address at Dartmouth College, someone was talking about this, and Eisenhower happened to overhear it. What's this? Eisenhower said. Oh, I was just talking about the burning of State Department books abroad, said the person. Oh, they're not burning books, said Eisenhower, just refusing to believe that that would the person. Oh, they're not burning books, said Eisenhower, just refusing to believe that that would be happening. Oh, I'm afraid they are, Mr President. I have evidence.

Eisenhower went through the roof. He could not quite believe this was going on. And he added a line to his speech that he delivered that evening that just said, don't join the book burners. He later said, don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book. How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is? That's a good point. But apart from this, he maintained his distance, really, from the growing craziness that was McCarthy, because he knew that he did not want to be dragged into that fight. McCarthyism ramped up even more.

Anti-American hearings took place, because they sound good, don't they? Yeah Yeah This sounds a bit like the treason trials Yeah, it's not good It is a bad period Hundreds were imprisoned Thousands lost their jobs

Based on little more than hearsay A growing wave of homophobia Started to sweep the nation uh homophobia was linked to subversive actions and therefore linked to communist ideals right i mean this was just an excuse to go oh we don't like communists at the moment so let's yeah let's target gay people as well so that that's nice mccarthy himself perhaps bit off a little more than he could chew however when he started accusing people in the central intelligence agency of being vets now i'll go into it a little bit more later but the cia is now a thing by the way

yeah it's still very new it's still in its infancy but they got up and running quick did the cia and they weren't messing about, as we will see. They broke into McCarthy's office and planted misinformation that would help discredit him. Nice. Something that only came out in 2004. Wow, really? Yeah.

So no one's coming out of this looking good. No. It's all intrigue and plotting. It's a big mess, all of it. Yeah, none of it's reading like a healthy government at all. Anyway, it was at the height of all this that some senators and members of the press finally start to fight back, realising McCarthy's got to be stopped. He's bringing the government to its knees. And for what?

So they start denouncing McCarthy's actions as ravel-rising. Now, this was coming from Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as several journalists, the most prominent being Edward R. Murrow, who released a 30-minute TV special going over all of McCarthy's doings, saying in one of his speeches, the actions of a junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that?

Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Which just very nicely sums up what was going on. If you've not come across Edward R. Morerow before, by the way, look into him. Fascinating guy. The film Good Night and Good Luck is all about him, which I watched whilst doing my research. It's a very, very good film.

Anyway, Eisenhower also was a fan because he invited Murrow to the White House the day after seeing that. I like it. Yes. I'll it. Yes. I quote, this guy McCarthy wants to be president. He is the last guy in the world who will ever get there if I have anything to say about it.

Nice. So Eisenhower decides to finally start fighting back with action. Now, he'd been trying to pull strings in the background up until this point because he didn't want to be seen as publicly attacking McCarthy. But at this point, point the gloves are off he banned all employees of the executive branch from testifying in mcafee's committee now this was unprecedented this was

extending executive privilege to all of those who work with the president not just the president himself many were uncomfortable with this like does this not set a bad precedent yeah like what if we have a i don't know a crazy president in the future who just says no you're not allowed to look into me and i'm banning anyone who knows me from talking because of executive privilege but despite this people rationalized that mcafee had to be stopped somehow so okay let's let's do this uh the tide against mcafee was turning at this point with many powerful men working against him in washington and with him unable to run his committees because eisenhower essentially put the plug on it his popularity was fading he was no

longer as amusing to watch he wasn't interesting he wasn't getting the headlines anymore and then in a case far too complex to get into but it it involves the guys who went to Europe to do the book burning, and one of them being drafted into the army. According to McCarthy, he was drafted in the army to pretty much kidnap him. So he couldn't carry on working for McCarthy. As I say, no one's coming out of this well. It's all horrible. So there's a big committee going on all about this.

And eventually the Senate to vote to condemn McCarthy 67 to 22 for conduct unbecoming a senator. McCarthy essentially is destroyed by this. He starts drinking heavily and he dies a few years later. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah. So there you go. That was the McCarthy era summed up very briefly. All this is going on in the background during Eisenhower's presidency.

Wonderful. Yeah. But just because McCarthy's defeated did not mean that the old guard were, and it did not mean that the Red Scare had stopped. It's just the most flamboyant and loud speaker was gone. Most of the old guard were far better at politics. They were less histrionic, Most of the old guard were far better at politics. They were less histrionic, they were quieter, but they got things done. They continued to work to undermine the president and restrict his powers when dealing with other countries. Again, hoping to force the country back to a more isolationist outlook. I'm so sick of this I could scream, Eisenhower said one day,

over the constant battle with his own party. In fact, he soon found himself far closer with the liberal wings of both parties than the conservative end of the GOP. He was getting on with a certain Johnson from the Republican Party relatively well. Might want to keep an eye on Johnson because we'll be doing an episode on him soon. Oh, is he JFK's deputy vice? Yes. Now, one area that had come up at this time

that Eisenhower was having to use as much of his foreign policy power as possible was Vietnam. Ah, now. And so it begins. I'm not going to get too drawn into it here, but we do need to know a bit of background before we get into the next episode

where it really kicks off. So, just so you know, after the war, the French had acquired Indochina, which is modern Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. However, oddly, there were some in Indochina who thought that they'd be better served without the French ruling over them. Yeah. Yeah. So independent things like that. Crazy, crazy things. Yeah. So a revolt happened, led by Ho Chi minh now they claimed independence in 1945 but no one really listened so they tried again in 1950 why not people listened

a bit more this time as in russia and china listened and they recognized vietnam as its own communist country the french fought hard and managed to keep the cities but not the countryside. Fighting was painful, tough. It led nowhere but the slow erosion of the French strength. Until eventually they were very close to being completely wiped out. It was therefore of great interest in the United States, as you can imagine, where the policy of curbing the spread of communism meant that many were saying they need to get involved because this is the spread of communism. Eisenhower had given the French some planes and some engineers,

but he was very wary of doing anything more. Many were unhappy in the country of sending more troops to the far east to die in jungles. They'd had enough of that in Korea. Do we really need to be doing this? The Joint Chief of Staffs approached Eisenhower and suggested the best way to help out the French without harming any American soldiers

is simple. All we need to do is drop three nukes. We're going to call them tactical nukes, because that sounds good, doesn't it? Tactical nuke? Yeah? Yeah? We. Yeah? We've added the word tactical.

It's fine. Yeah. But what's the point in having these massive super bombs if we're not going to use them? Yeah. I'll quote Eisenhower, you boys must be crazy. We can't use those awful things

against the Asians for a second time in less than 10 years. I like that. You guys are crazy. That's a good answer. Yeah. Again, Eisenhower's like, no, every time we get into a war, we can't set the precedent second time in less than 10 years. I like that. You guys are crazy. That's a good answer. Yeah.

Again, Eisenhower's like, no, every time we get into a war, we can't set the precedent that we just throw in a nuke because it's going to be tough. No, we're not doing it. Nukes don't solve all the problems. Yeah. It's like, where does this end? Where exactly do you think is dropping nukes on everyone? Where's the logical conclusion, guys?

Come on here. Yeah. So when pushed for more general warfare, fine, if you don't want to use the nukes, we'll have to go in with troops then. Eisenhower still wasn't happy with that. If we attempted such a course of action, using our armed forces and going into areas, whether we will want it or not,

we would lose all our significant support in the free world. Yeah. Yeah, he claimed it amounted to an attempt to police the entire world and what gave them the moral right to police the world yeah yeah many around him didn't see it that way no but a lot did yeah you can you can kind of see why they would think that's like we're the strongest, we can protect people better, we can, you know, oil. We're getting to that. Yeah, anyway, Eisenhower's decided, nope, there's going to be no help for the French.

At least no more than we've already given. Getting involved in Vietnam would be a mistake, said Eisenhower. Ominous gong. Yeah. Ike's main concern was the lives of people soldiers civilians he'd been in war for too long and he had seen what war did up close and personal he wanted to avoid that as much as possible and besides there is a newer and far better way of influencing world affairs than going in with the troops. Politics. Oh, better than politics. Music.

Live aid. No. Because as I mentioned, the CIA is now a thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Which we've not really talked about them yet. So let's give you a little bit of a very brief background. The CIA wasn't called the CIA when it was first put together,

but it had grown out of the need to have an mi6 style intelligence service during the war we really need an organization to actually sift through all this intelligence so let's put an intelligence agency together thought fdr which uh it's put together that's fine then after the war it was uh reformed into the cia and uh it starts to really hit its stride at this point. Yes, it was an intelligence service, but it also had a second brief, and that was covert action. This is planting information, causing problems, that kind of thing. The CIA was very quickly able to show that they could achieve things that would have a huge effect on the world stage. Now, I certainly do not have time to go into all the, quite frankly, awful,

awful things that the CIA get up to during the Cold War, but let's have a look at one that links strongly to Eisenhower, shall we? So, it's 1951. The Prime Minister of Iran, Mossadegh, was fed up with British-controlled companies stripping the wealth out of the country. Iran only got 16% of the profits from the oil from Iran, which isn't much. No. No. The workers worked in conditions that you can probably imagine. And the royal family got a huge payoff from Britain just to keep things smooth.

Just keep it ticking over. Now, obviously, I'm simplifying this somewhat to make it easier to understand in the time we've got to describe it because you could do a whole series on this story. But Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is the early name for BP. Oh. Yes. Oh. Yes.

Yes. So, essentially, BP were thrown out of Iran, the oil was nationalised. Now, to begin with, things don't hit the fan quite as much as you'd think, because in Britain, who's the Prime Minister? Oh, it's Clement Attlee. And Attlee pointed out, well, I can hardly complain, oh, it's Clement Attlee. And Attlee pointed out, well, I can hardly complain.

I'm nationalising the coal and the health and the electricity and the railways over here. So I can't complain that the Prime Minister of Iran is doing the same with his resources. I mean, no, I'm not happy, but there's not much I can do. A bit too faced, if you... Yeah, I mean, I'll make inquiries. Let's see what we can do. But I don't know.

But then Attlee was defeated. And oh, look who's back. Churchill! Yay, Churchill is back again. I can't keep him down. And the Tories were in no mood to try and work anything out with the Middle East. They needed to know their place, damn it. So they placed an economic embargo on Iran.

This is when the midden hits the windmill. Because not only did they place a naval embargo, bringing the country's economy to its knees, they also used back channels to stage a coup against the democratically elected prime minister oh yeah i mean it falls apart it doesn't work but naughty britain yeah yeah now all this achieves is to make the middle east furious with britain but not just iran like lots of countries very unhappy with britain i mean they were unhappy with with Britain before because Empire. But they're still unhappy

with Britain. It's like you've just gone through a world war. You were beaten to a pulp during that war. Yeah, you eventually won, but surely you've learnt something from it, Britain. Have you? No? No, apparently not. Anyway, meanwhile, back in Britain,

their plans failed so far, but we do have a really powerful ally at the moment Hi America, says Britain Yeah, Britain sends a top man from MI6 To go and talk with his counterpart in the CIA So obviously this was a meeting in a park with holes cut in newspapers Because there's no way that it's not that. Yeah.

Yeah. One man in tweed. Oh, yeah. Or pinstripes. Pinstripes and a bald hat. Over one trench coat. Yeah. For daughters.

Yeah. That's what's going on. Iran, by the way, says MI6, has this huge border with the Soviets. I don't know if you've noticed, America, but what a border with the Soviets. And it's probably only a matter of time before, you know, the Reds get into Iran and take all the oil. Don't you think you should do something about that, America? Communists.

Yeah, maybe put your own man in charge over there. Now, the CIA, in the height of the Red Scare, yeah, actually, you're making a very good point, Britain. And we really want to show what we can do as the CIA. So let's... Let's flex our missiles somewhat. Let's see what we can do, shall we? Now, Eisenhower was informed around this point.

He was sceptical. Should we be doing this? Is this a good idea? But actually, you have put some statistics on my desk, and it's very hard to deny the West losing the oil that Iran was producing would be a disaster, because Iran was supplying 90% of Europe's oil at this time. That's a lot. Yeah, if the Soviets get that, Europe would fall. Russia moves into Europe, Yeah, if the Soviets get that, Europe would fall. Russia moves into Europe.

They're stronger. We're weaker. Yeah, okay, fair enough. Maybe we need to do something. In fact, I'll quote here. We cannot ignore the importance of 657,000 barrels a day. So fair enough, says Eisenhower to the CIA. See what you can do. Kermit, Kermit Roosevelt was in charge of the Middle East and the CIA at this time

this is the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt Kermit Roosevelt Kermit the Roosevelt yeah definitely imagine him that way definitely I know what you're picturing Green Frog yeah definitely

so Green Frog with a monocle though and a big moustache. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And a big stick. Yes. Yeah, yes, definitely. So, Roosevelt, go and sort it out, will you? Money was thrown at the problem,

and before long, paid-for mobs were in the streets of Tehran. You will be shocked to learn that this almost immediately backfires. The country became so unstable that many started to fear that a coup would rapidly lead to guess what? A communist takeover. Yeah. Now, Britain was still very keen to go ahead because Britain didn't actually care about the

communism. They just wanted BP to keep the oil. The CIA were still convinced that they could achieve what they wanted, which is get their own man in charge over there. So they still wanted to go ahead. Eisenhower really starts to have doubts at this point. Mossadegh was pro-West.

He was educated in Europe. He's not a bad ally. Do we really want to get rid of him and roll the dice on what follows just so we can make more profit on the oil. Because, I mean, we still get the oil, we just have to pay more for it. This seems a bit dicey. A British foreign secretary, a man named Anthony Eden, yes, it's Eden before being Prime Minister,

he came over to Washington and spoke at length about how this needed to carry on. Churchill also got involved, talking to Eisenhower several times. Eisenhower gets very frustrated with Churchill, claiming that he's still living in the war and maybe he just needs to let some younger men take over. Yeah. But Eisenhower eventually was ground down. Everyone around him was saying, no, we need to do this.

And his mind was changed. So the CIA set the coup off and the secretary of state publicly denounced the iranian government for not doing enough to stop the violence which is nice yeah a little test of the knife in there long story short masada fell the oil company was not nationalized the profits ended up going mostly to britain and the united states so success does actually pay off uh that is exactly what they wanted to happen apart from the fact that the coup was not hugely subtle to say the least and an entire generation of people in iran now know exactly who would overthrow their government just to make some money over some oil.

So let's hope that doesn't fester. No. Yeah. A little blow over in the morning. Yeah. Now, this is just one of many, many coups that the CIA does during the Cold War. In Eisenhower's term in 1954, they overthrow the Guatemalan government just so America can maintain control of the fruit industry over there.

There's another one in Indonesia as well. Yeah. Communism was being prevented. People, yes, people were getting rich. But I mean, that's incidental. That's just capitalism. Yeah, exactly. And that's the way of life we're supporting.

And these countries look like communism might happen. So we've got to overthrow governments, even if they are democratically elected. And in many areas around the world that had recently learnt the very hard truth that the United States were now the global superpower, also started to learn that you cannot trust the United States. Because they will be saying one thing on the news, but they will be funding the revolts happening on your streets. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's fun, isn't it? Yeah. Let's hope that doesn't have a lasting impact on anything. Absolutely not. Anyway, in other world events, 1955, the four big countries agreed to pull out of Austria. Germany was formally split into East and West.

With all this going on, it was decided through diplomatic channels that the United States, Russia, France and Britain should meet to discuss how to de-escalate tensions. Maybe this Cold War's gone on long enough. Yeah. The old guard were not happy, because this is talking to the communists and giving concessions. But Eisenhower went anyway, obviously.

Little concrete was gained over the summit that lasted five days, but the countries were talking, and that was good. It calmed tensions. Generally, it was good press. We're not quite as on the brink of war as maybe we thought. So yeah, this is fine. In fact, Eisenhower stole the show, catching the Russians completely off guard, when he suggested that the two countries open their airspaces to each other and allow each other to fly over taking pictures. Ooh.

Yeah. I'd not come across this before I read that. I went, oh, wow, did he? That's, yeah, that's, you'll allow us. Yeah. That means you can see what we're doing. Oh. Well, it was a dark and stormy day, apparently,

that this speech took place, and just as Eisenhower said, a sound piece can be achieved, but only by patiently and thoroughly following a hard and sure and tested road. At that point, there was a huge clap of thunder and all the lights went out. Yes, perhaps the Russians saw this as a sign because they declined the offer. But Eisenhower's prestige went up around the world. Here is a president actively trying to

do something to de-escalate the Cold War. Hell yeah. So, yeah, that's good. In fact, at home, his approval rating was 79%. I can't imagine. That is insane. That is ridiculous. That is insane. That is pretty much the whole country talking with one voice there. Yeah.

He is a very popular president at this point, which is good news because the next election is coming up. And as much as Eisenhower was light, the GOP was not. In fact, I'll quote Eisenhower here. The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organisation or it will be sunk. Eisenhower really did not like the fact

that the Republicans seemed to be being pulled to a conservative right. He thought the Republicans needed to maintain the centre ground. Anyway, things were just hotting up for Eisenhower when he had a heart attack. It was described as a moderate attack in the press. Not mild, but not severe, apparently, was how it was described. I mean, he's ill.

Yeah, he's seriously ill. It's not a cakewalk. But he's not on death's door. So he's going to have to take some time off. But he'll be fine. He's not dead. He's not dead. That's what I heard, anyway. It's but he'll be fine. He's not dead. He's not dead. That's what I heard anyway. It's fine. It's fine.

It's probably fine. It's probably plain squash, aren't they? Why are you asking me? Yes, I am the press secretary. Go away. Anyway, Ike wondered whether to withdraw from the presidency, obviously, as I've just had a heart attack. Should I really be running for president? But as many do when they are president

he just couldn't imagine anyone else doing the job as well as him. He certainly didn't want anyone from the old guard getting in. Yes, he's trying to defend the position, I guess. Yeah, and he didn't particularly want the Democrats to get in. So, tell you what, if the doctors give me a clean bill of health, I'll go for it, he says. And the doctors do, so he was back in the race. And then the sez Crisis arrived.

Yes, again, this crisis stemmed from European powers simply not accepting that the colonial age was coming to an end. This crisis mirrors the one in Iran. I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on the Suez Crisis, although interestingly, if you look it up to find details on Wikipedia, for example, it now says at the top not to be confused with the Suez Crisis. Although, interestingly, if you look it up to find details on Wikipedia, for example, it now says at the top not to be confused with the Suez Canal being blocked in 2021, which amuses me that the canal being blocked

for a few days is apparently as big as this crisis. But there you go. That's time for you, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway, so what's going on over here? Well, a former colony, who were tired of seeing their country's resources go to Europe, attempted to wrestle the control of those resources from Europe, just like in Iran. In this case, instead of oil, it was the Suez Canal that links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

President Nasser nationalised the canals. Again, hugely simplifying this, there's a lot more going on, but that's the crux of the situation. Britain, France and Israel then hatched a plot to take it back. Here's the cunning, cunning plan here. Israel's going to invade, and then Britain and France would go in as a peacekeeping force. Honest.

Yeah, that way we're not invading. We're not invading. Israel's invading. Yeah. Not us. Definitely not us. Yeah. Now, just before this kicked off, there had actually been a political struggle with the United States and Russia over Egypt, because obviously there had been. Both superpowers wanted to have as much influence in the Middle East as possible, and this meant talking to Egypt. There had been talk of the United States funding and building the proposed Nile Dam that they were going to build, but these talks fell apart, and it was one of the reasons why Nasser nationalised the canal. So, a bit of a crisis in the Middle East. Eisenhower obviously still wanted egypt on the west side so he called up prime minister eden because churchill's gone by this point to stress that

to go into egypt would be unwise just so you know britain don't don't do this don't push your luck i'm telling you now do not do this the the canal i don't know if you've seen, I don't know if you looked at a map recently, the canal starts in Egypt, and guess where it ends? In Egypt. It is, it's all in Egypt. You have no justification for this. We do not have the model high ground here. They can nationalise it if they want.

Britain and France refuse to listen. But sorry, your telegram got lost. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Bad line, bad line. Sorry. Carny, you. Meanwhile, in Washington, just about everyone, from his cabinet to Congress to the Joint Chief of Staffs,

argued with Eisenhower that you're doing the wrong thing. Britain and France are our closest allies. We need to support them. No, it doesn't matter if they have them all high ground. We need to support our allies. Eisenhower was not impressed with this argument. The fact was that Britain and France were in the wrong. You can't just go swanning into another country

just because you feel like it, he said, very loudly over the irony gong being clattered in the background. Can't go in with troops. It's fine to pay off like revolutionaries, but it just... Yeah, that's just revolution. That's not us. Yeah, yeah. Burn the papers.

Anyway, the United States refused to back its allies. Britain and France were forced into a humiliating climb down. And if anyone was still unsure about whether the age of European supremacy was at an end or not, well, it was now clear to all. Britain no longer had any teeth. America said, you are not allowed

to invade a country, and Britain were forced to do it. It's at this point the Revolutionary War was really won. You get the feeling. Throw that last barrel of tea over into the harbour. Anyway, Eisenhower's popularity made the election that's still going on in the background a foregone conclusion.

Even better than last time, 457 votes to 73. Oh my goodness. Eisenhower's second term was dominated to begin with by internal problems. And as with everything at this time, obviously the link is communism. Can't move for communism. Step outside your door. Oh, what have you stepped in? Oh, it's communism. It's all red.

Sort of a shoe. Yeah, yeah. You never guess what those commies are saying about us. They're saying that we live in a racist country. i absolutely not i know shocking slaves utterly shocking we're gonna have to do something about that was the general talk in washington at this time they did do something about it racial discrimination was declared a national security issue as in wait this isn't gonna be positive is it issue. As in, wait, this isn't gonna be positive, is it? Well, it's interesting. I mean, the fact is that the communists were using the fact that America were quite racist as propaganda against

a capitalist society. So many in America thought, right, maybe we really do need to get on top of these race issues then, because it's making us look bad. Should we end the older segregation thing then? Yeah, I mean, it's slightly depressing that it wasn't the fact that people thought that it is just abhorrent, all the racism going on. It just took for the fact that Russians were using it as a stick to beat them with that some people started going, no, we do need to sort this out then. But, well, there you go. Some people started going, no, we do need to sort this out then.

But, well, there you go. Yeah, in 1954, there was a landmark case, Brown v. The Board of Education, and it was ruled by the Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional to have segregated schools. Hmm. Yeah, so there we go. That's good, isn't it? Is that, there's a famous picture of a little girl being walked into a school? Yeah, we're not quite there yet, but you're on the right track here. This is definitely all linked to that. Now, in order to be a role model for the rest of the country,

Eisenhower ordered that all the schools in the District of Columbia be integrated immediately. Yeah. The hope was that the rest of the country would follow. No. The rest of the country did not follow. No, no. As you can imagine. I mean, to be fair, lots of it did. A huge majority of the country, in fact. But there were certainly pockets where they did not.

White citizen councils sprang up all over the South, described as the Ku Klux Klan in suits. up all over the South, described as the Ku Klux Klan in suits. In Congress, 101 members pledged to bring an end to the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education because it was unconstitutional. What? States' rights. Oh. Yeah. The bubbling tensions came to a head in 1957 in Little Rock in Arkansas. The school board there had very reluctantly admitted black children onto the roll of the school. Guess how many?

One? Nine. Oh, nine. Okay. Nine. Nine children that were heavily, heavily vetted. If we're going to have some black children, we're going to have to make sure they are the least black that we can find, whatever that might mean, essentially was the attitude. So all very depressing. Anyway, the governor at this time was a man named Faubus. Faubus was an

interesting character. He claimed that the gun sales in the state recently had gone through the roof. Well, that clearly indicated that there's going to be a problem. So I'm going to deploy the National Guard. Okay, says everyone. The governor's deployed the National Guard. They're now standing outside the school that the children are about to turn up to. When the nine children turn up to school for their first day of school, with their lunchboxes,

they were faced with a baying mob shouting abuse at them and the National Guard, who were blocking their way. The National Guard were not there to help get them into school. They were there to stop the children. You cannot go in. It would cause a riot. Go home. You're not welcome here, essentially was the message. Oh my God.

Yeah. Now, by this time, the FBI had been sent down to go and find out what the hell was going on. Faubus sent an angry telegram to Eisenhower saying that federal interference would lead to violence in his state. Eisenhower wrote back, When I became president, I took an oath to support the constitution. The only assurance that I can give you is that the federal constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command. So no sympathy. Good. The FBI did a quick investigation. It turned out that the gun sales had not increased at all. Faubus had just made that opt so

he could deploy the guard. So Eisenhower met with Faubus and gave him a way out. Okay, this has gone on far enough. Here's a way that you can back down, but you can say, face, we'll keep the whole thing quiet. You can keep the guard out there. That's fine.

Just change their orders. Have them protect the black students as they go into school. Just get them to turn around. That's all you need to do. Come to face the other way. After all, as Eisenhower said, there can only be one outcome here. The state will lose. Don't pick a fight with me here. So Fabus reluctantly agreed and headed back to Little Rock and did nothing. The next day, the black children turned up to go to school once more. I mean, this is dragging out over weeks, by the way. This isn't quick. So the children turn up to go to school.

Finally, at last, it's all sorted out. The National Guard are there and refuse to let the children in. So it then goes to the courts. The courts order the National Guard to step down. At this point, Faubus eventually gives in. I mean, he's got no legal leg to stand on. If he pushes it any further, he will be arrested. So, fine.

The National Guard go home. The next Monday rolls around and the children attempt to go to school again. And? Well, this time, a mob of thousands blocked their path. Now, the children were smuggled into the school, but they were not there for long before they had to be smuggled back out again

because the mob had stormed the school. I mean, at this point, you've got to... What exactly were they hoping to achieve? What is wrong with people? I don't know what is wrong with people. Anyway, Eisenhower was informed that it was probably Faubus who had organised this mob, and the rioting was continuing, and it was only getting worse. Eisenhower, probably sighing at this point, decided it was time to break out the big guns.

He ordered the mobilisation... Tactical nuclear warhead. At last he's going to use one. Almost can imagine the Joint Chief of Staff sat at the side. Is it time, sir? I've got the button right here, sir sir all you have to do is press it no he he ordered the mobilization of the 101st airborne oh yeah he really did he sent in the power troopers to be fair i think they drove but in my head this is uh this is all the characters from band of Brothers 10 years on. This is what's going on here.

Yeah, the Henry I turn up in Arkansas. The National Guard was placed directly under Eisenhower's command, which he was able to use an executive order to do. So the National Guard no longer answered to the governor. They answered to him. And 1,000 troops were sent in, and the town was locked down tight. Eisenhower went on to address the nation to assure everyone that this is me using military force to uphold the law. This is not me going in with the troops. This is not big government oppressing its people.

The law is clear here and it needs to be upheld. And 70% of the population roughly agreed with him. So it was a popular decision. Good. Even in the South, a huge majority of people agreed with this. It was seen as going too far by almost everyone. What was happening in Little Rock.

Anyway, the troops stay there for the whole academic year and the nine children get to go to school. How nice. I'm sure they had a lovely time. I'm sure they did. Yes. So, that happened.

And then we move on to the last major incident of Eisenhower's presidency, and we're back to international problems. Yeah. Or rather, the thawing of those problems. Because good news, Jamie, the Cold War is coming to a close. Yay? Yeah, yeah. Diplomatic channels between the United States and Russia

have been steadily improving. It's got to the point where Nixon was sent off to the USSR to go and have a tour. He met with the leader, the new leader, Khrushchev, and Nixon invited Khrushchev to go to the United States. Yeah, why don't you come over? Have a tour. Go and see Hollywood, Niagara Falls, that kind of thing. Khrushchev arrived in the United States in September of 1959 and spent two weeks just bombing around

the United States. Loving how amazing capitalism is. Oh, he had a great time, apparently. It was all very nice, all very successful. He went to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington. He met with Eisenhower personally at Camp David, and they had quite a good chat. Eisenhower asked the Russian premier how his military got money out of him. Khrushchev answered, admitted that what happened in the White House was his advisors would come to him and say, if you don't give us this, the Russians will get ahead. And Eisenhower felt forced to hand over the money. At this point, Khrushchev admitted, yep, that's exactly the same in Russia. Eisenhower replied, that's what I thought. You know, we really should come up with some sort of agreement in order to stop this fruitless, really wasteful rivalry. So there's some conversations going on.

Yeah? Yeah. That's nice, isn't it? The trip resulted in the thawing of the debate over the state of Berlin, because that's been debated for quite some time. The Russians had delivered an ultimatum, and then that just was allowed to slide. So that's nice. and things were looking the

best they'd been for a very long time it was even mooted that in the next summit of the big four they really might actually get something done this time as opposed to just sitting around and talking uh and yeah great everything's wonderful yeah then a u2 spy plane the last ever one scheduled to be used disappeared over Russia the U-2 spy plane with Bono, the Edge I'm not sure which one was in the plane at the time

it's classified that maybe the original drummer maybe the original drummer yeah it just disappears over Russia Eisenhower was informed he had known the risks of Russia. Eisenhower was informed. He had known the risks of using a spy plane was great, but he figured, we need to know what the Russians

are up to, so that the results would justify the risk. And he was assured that, worse comes to worse, if the Russians manage to shoot one of these planes down, there's no way the pilot's surviving. Thank goodness. And the plane would be just, like like destroyed beyond recognition that you fly so fast and so high you could claim it's anything so it's the risk is fine it's fine honestly it's fine

uh then chris jeff announced to the world that they had proof that the united states were illegally spying on them Washington Duh. Duh. Washington scrambled to cover up what's going on. I mean, they're bluffing. The Russians are bluffing. There's no way they can prove anything. But let's be certain. NASA released a statement saying that a weather plane had disappeared recently.

By the way, we're just pointing it out now, by the way. Yeah. There's a weather plane. We lost it a few days ago, actually. Yeah. I hadn't thought to mention it. We were looking for it. Anyway, what, Russia? Oh, no, now you mention it.

Wasn't it Russia? It disappeared. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The State Department then released a statement announcing that there had definitely been no planes over Russia that day. Oh, have you heard about this weather plane that NASA's just announced? It must have been that. Oh, have you heard about this weather plane that NASA's just announced?

It must have been that. Oh. Yeah. The next day, Russia announced the pilot's name and the fact that he worked for the CIA. Oh, Eric. Yeah. Yeah.

No, he does work for the CIA, but part-time. Part-time. He's also a weatherman. He's a meteorologist hobbyist. Yeah. What you need to be asking is which hat was he wearing when he was over

Russia? Because I'm sure it was weather. That's what I heard. Yeah. Weather. Yeah. Washington attempted to deny this. Eisenhower was furious. Like I say, he'd been assured that if any plane went down,

the pilots were gone for certain. But no, apparently the pilots survived. And now they're in a lot of trouble. Not great. Washington's attempt at a cover-up at this point essentially amounted to them muttering and stumbling over words until eventually Eisenhower told his cabinet, I'm just going to have to admit it.

The evidence is mounting up here, and we're starting to look like fools. His brother contacted him at this time, interestingly, to say, don't admit it yourself, blame a subordinate, say someone did it without your knowledge. But Eisenhower refused. No, I'm president, book stops with me. I'm sure someone said that recently. So yeah, on May the 9th, he admitted to the world that the United States were indeed spying on the Russians illegally. Soz. Overnight, it destroyed the progress of the last few years.

The Big Four summit did go ahead, but the Russians were furious about the spy plane. Just sat there glaring for the entire day. Yeah. De Gaulle, however, because De Gaulle's back, very rightly pointed something out, though. Mid-Russian rant at how offended they were that they were being spied upon,

De Gaulle pointed out that one of Russia's newfangled space satellites had crossed French airspace that day. Are you telling me that that doesn't have a camera on it? The Russians just didn't say anything. It's like, we saw those photos you took of the moon using your satellites. Are you saying that they don't point down as well? The Russians didn't say anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At that point, Eisenhower spoke and said, yes, yes, of course, we were spying on you in the same way that you spy on us, but we were only doing it to make sure there was no surprises. You remember when I said we should open up our airspaces? It's like, that's the kind of thing that I wanted to ensure, there's no surprises.

So where are you going? Oh, they've walked off. Yeah, the Russians just storm out at that point. They are not happy at all. So, yeah, it really looked like they were getting somewhere with the Cold War, and it all just falls apart because one plane went down, which is a shame. Anyway, the upcoming election between JFK and Nixon,

Eisenhower had very little to do with. He's on his way out. He can't run again. The two term limits are now in place. So he has very little to do with that. He barely summons up the energy to support Nixon, sort of. He said a couple of things like, yeah, Nixon, I know him. And I can't say I remember any decisions Nixon made as vice president. Things that really weren't actually that helpful. I've definitely been in a room with Nixon. Yeah, stuff like that. Anyway, he left office with a warning delivered to the country via a television address.

The United States and the world faced many problems, he pointed out. But there was one in particular that was worrying him. And that was how rapidly the United States was becoming dependent on the military-industrial complex. The federal budget on defence was now astronomical. And because of that, it was too big to fail. In fact, I quote here, the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Interestingly, his last warning is not against the communists. His last warning is the rise of the power of the military within his own country. And with that, he leaves office. And that's his presidency. He died a few years later. All right, okay. Yeah. So, there you go.

See, he wasn't a... He didn't hold a political office, did he, before he became president? No, he was one of America's military presidents. So I guess, yes, he did have like a semblance of morality as well. I mean, you could argue also he absolutely did not with some of the things that happened,

but like Guatemala, but on the mean, you could argue also he absolutely did not with some of the things that happened, but, like, Guatemala, but on the whole, you know. Well, it sounds like it's starting to judge him here, so shall we go into it? Yeah, I think we should. Statement shit! Okay, I mean, this one's a debate, this one

is. In fact, I'll just go into it. Okay, good, here. He got the United States out of Korea and did it quickly. Yes, he did what he said he was going to do. Yeah, so, yeah, he did what he said he was going to do, which is a positive. Also, there was a strong

argument to be made that that was the right thing to do for the United States at the time. There were some claiming that they should stay in Korea and just keep fighting, but I think in retrospect America were better placed staying out of that. I think so. Now, after Korea, there was a looming economic crisis. I mean, World War II's ended and now Korea's ended and they're at peace.

And we know what happens to economies after wars. They tend to tank a little bit. happens to economies after wars they tend to tank a little bit but learning from the great depression and everything that happened in that time he set up the largest public works project in history which is the construction of the united states interstate highway oh like route 66 kind of thing yeah yeah let's build all the highways huge huge huge huge huge project uh which uh they were able to pour money in uh people got work out of uh and it really did help the economy tick along there was no big crash now again as i said before economics is hugely complex and there is debate how much this helped the the country but many historians say that it did. So there's that. He expanded the social security

scheme. He raised minimum wage and he funded the polio vaccine program. So for people, just normal people living in the country, there were things to point out and go, oh, this has made my life better. And what more do you want from a president? I don't have polio. Yeah, that's nice, isn't it? a president. I don't have polio. Yeah, that's nice, isn't it? Yes, I'm not starving to death, and I'm now earning more. So yeah, that's good. Then we've got some things we covered a few times. He absolutely refused to use nukes. Yes, yeah. And that set a precedent. Because if the first president after Truman had come along and done what Truman did, which was, yeah, go ahead, use it, after Truman had come along and done what Truman did, which was, yeah, go ahead, use it,

then that's it. The president afterwards would have done, and we most likely would have had a full-on nuclear war by this point. Yeah. It's a scary thought, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. The fact that we have the two times in history at the end of the war as a full stop on the World War,

yes, it's bad bad but you can kind of separate it off if nukes were then used in Korea and then in Vietnam which both were suggested and then in Little Rock it really it was a dangerous road to go down Eisenhower saw

how dangerous that road was and Point Blank refused to do it even though there were many in high up places calling for them to be used. So that's good. The Cold War escalated under him, but you can argue it would have escalated quicker if he hadn't been fighting against those in his own government. There were many who were saying,

no, we need to keep attacking and fighting harder and faster we shouldn't be de-escalating we should be growing and attacking yeah so he's um he manages to mostly keep a check it's a shame if that plane hadn't been shot down right at the end you could point at this and say yeah he managed to de-escalate things uh unfortunately right at the end it just ruins everything yeah and he does need to take uhcalate things. Unfortunately, right at the end, it just ruins everything. Yeah, it does. And he does need to take the blame for that because he was the one who ordered the spy plane to go over. Yeah, that's true.

Now, we're not quite seeing the political push for civil rights yet. We very soon will be, but we're not quite there yet. But there are foundations being put in place under Eisenhower and also, to be fair, Truman, because segregation starts to be pulled out of first the military under Truman, which Eisenhower then pushes even further, and then the schools as well. Which, OK, Supreme Court decision, but Eisenhower fully supported it and then said DC is going to be the role model. Yeah. So that's good. Although it should be mentioned, he was widely criticised for not going far enough in this area. As we will see, there will be politicians coming up quite soon who go far, far further.

Yeah. So, but, yeah, it's a start. Okay, so that's good. Yeah. Then we've got Baird. Ordering the CIA to go around the world toppling governments just because they were a danger to the wealth of the United States. I mean, that's...

Just because they want cheap fruit, yeah. Yeah, it's oil and fruit. And yes, you can make the argument that they didn't want Russia to become more powerful, but the argument doesn't hold too much water when you look into the details. In Iran, the British wanted BP to keep the oil, and they managed to get America on board.

It's just not on. Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why there is a lot of anti-American feeling in the world. It stems from this kind of interference that starts at this point. Just in the same way, there's a lot of anti-British feeling in the world and anti-French feeling in the world. It's these big, powerful empire countries that just go around doing whatever the hell they want with other countries. It causes tensions. And I don't know if you've noticed,

those tensions have only grown in recent years. Yeah. Yeah. Weird part. Yeah. So that's not good. He was also widely criticised for being inactive. As a president, he went and played a lot of golf.

He was seen as not doing much. But actually, most modern historians have uh revised this saying yeah he played he played golf but everyone needs to unwind and he was just a good delegator he made it very clear that the important things i'll deal with otherwise you deal with it yourself so he wasn't a micromanager does that mean that's he's bad leader? You don't need to micromanage to be a good leader. So there you go. A mixed bag. Yeah.

Yeah? I think the positive is definitely outweigh the negatives. I would comfortably give him an eight. You're going for eight. I'm not. I think he did some good things that would say... If you took out the bad, I'd say eight. Because I think there are some good things here.

I think the most important is him refusing to use nukes. Yeah, he is. But also, he did some good stuff for the country. He was a decent president. But the actions of the CIA at this time, I've got to take at least down to five. Really? Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

Wow, okay. Yeah, it's what I'm going to do. Wow, okay. Yeah, it's a shame. If you took that away, if you took away the meddling of the CIA into different countries, because this is exactly what the founding fathers of America were fighting against.

Yeah, well, yeah. They were a small country and they were fed up of a big, powerful country interfering with them and it's like well look what's happening now so and Eisenhower was the one who

approved it I'm going to stick with my 8 but I understand why he's in 5 he's up to 13 second president in a row where we're... Diverging quite a bit. Yeah, we are.

Interesting. Okay. No, I'm happy with it. I think that's a good overall score in this round. Okay, next. Disgrace Gates. Well. What?

What have you got? Sorry, you already said it. In a way, he toppled down governments. Ah, that's in statesmanship, though. Okay. Then it's the Kay thing is a biggie. Well, yeah, you've got the fact that he went gallivanting around Europe with another woman whilst he was married.

Apparently there was a war on at the time. Yeah. Remember, he also might have done the same thing in the Philippines as well when he went over there. But, I mean, with Kay, I'm not happy giving points with that. might have done the same thing in the philippines as well when he went over there um but i mean with k i i'm not happy giving points with that it seems to me like he went to europe and he fell in love with someone and he made a decision ultimately to go back to his wife i wouldn't want to be mamie it sounded like she had an awful time at that point yes but i don't know um it's nothing

life's messy at times i i'm not i'm not going to give him a point for that. No, I'm not. And then I went really looking into the scandal angle. Surely he's got a scandal. Everyone's got a scandal. Yeah. Apparently he doesn't have a scandal. Oh, okay.

He is linked to one scandal. But I've already told you that scandal, and it's not actually his scandal. His vice president had a secret fund when he was campaigning that i definitely think that's going to fit more in nixon's episode than eisenhower's episode especially since eisenhower wanted nixon gone for that yeah so that yeah i mean there's nothing hugely in his personal life um that you look at and go oh oh dear, that's a shame. And there's no big scandals.

I don't think we can give him a point. I don't think I can anyway. You can give him a point for the fact that Mamie must have been really upset. Nah. If you want. Nah. Nah.

Fair enough. I think only the second ever president to have zero in this round. That's good. If I remember correctly, I think Hayes got zero in this round. Of course. For being a lollipop. No. Fair enough. I think only the second ever president to have zero in this round. That's good. If I remember correctly, I think Hayes got zero in this round. Of course. For being a lollipop. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well done, Eisenhower. What's next? Silver's Green. Okay. So let's very quickly go through this.

He grew up in a very poor household, remember? He then went to West Point. There was lots of larks and pranks, as there often is. Then he went off to train the people operating the tanks, even though there were no tanks. I mean, you're going to get a good episode out of that. Oh, yeah, that'd be great. He's got a full dad's army at that point.

Yeah. Then they didn't go off to war in France, and he was very upset about that. I remember that just as his train was going away. Yes, it's just about to go under the water, wasn't it? Yeah. And then he did go to France to write a tour book of the battles of France, remember, which was nice. He then worked in Washington under MacArthur and then went to the Philippines under MacArthur and he hated MacArthur. He might have had an affair at this point and his friend died in a plane

crash. Imagine you could get some good stuff out of that. He then went to Europe and definitely had an affair with a model slash driver. I mean, you're getting good stories out of that as well, aren't you? There was some kind of war on. He led the invasion of

North Africa, Sicily, and then just the rest of the European war, including D-Day and everything that followed. Apparently, you can make good stories out of that. I've seen it done a couple of times. Then he stayed in Europe and helped settle post-war Europe, negotiating with the Russians whilst he did. Yeah. Then you've got the whole deciding to split up with Kay, leaving that letter, going home.

He works in Washington for a short while and then becomes the president of Columbia University. And that's when everyone switches off. That's episode eight that no one watches. Yeah. Everyone goes up to episode nine at that point. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's the columbia episode oh and then he becomes president and everything from this episode happens so we've got korea we've got the cold war hotting up you've got mccarthy and all of that it's a it's an

interesting life yes it's a lot going on it's got to be one of the more interesting ones. I think so. Being in charge of the war as well, that's interesting. He's sort of yearning to be that and to do that. He sort of learned how to delegate on getting through doing that as well. Yeah. So it's good training to be a president, I guess. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, it's all pretty good.

I'm impressed. I'm going to say eight. I'm going to match you. I'll match you with eight pretty good. I'm impressed. I'm going to say eight. I'm going to match you. I'll match you with eight as well. Total of 16. Conversability. He looks like an egg. He does look a bit like an egg.

So this one's a bit new. It's brighter than most of them. It's not got a black background. It's got a brown background. It's very casual. Very casual. It's not got a black background. It's got a brown background. It's very casual. Very casual. He's sat in his chair but turned sideways. The chair is facing to the right

and he's turned to face you with his glasses in his hands as if he's just taken them off because you've just said something so interesting. He's taken off his glasses and gone, oh, really? Tell me more. Do you know what I love about this? What?

Look at the chair. The chair is amazing. The studs and the lighting, it's beautiful. The chair is photorealistic. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing. You can tell it's oil paintings. It's a very good painting, but that chair looks phenomenally good.

Yeah, he's got his waistcoat on, a blue tie. We're looking very modern now. Nice cufflinks Oh yes Yeah I like it It's good I'm not sure what I like about it But it's good

It doesn't look so formal as well It looks more informal And more casual Yeah I'm happy with that Yeah I'm going to I'm going to give him an 8

I'll match that I think it's a Okay so that That is a 4 for this round then. Bonus! And so we come to bonus terms. Two. Two full terms.

No one tried to kill him. He was in fact very popular. So no for assassination. And because he was very popular, both elections utter landslide. So he gets the full two points for election. Well, we're going to have a score. Oh, yeah. I think he's going to score quite highly because he didn't get anything taken off, which is rare.

That is true. So he got 29 for something like that. Then add four, which is 33, 35, 37. 37, you say? I may have got it wrong. Hang on. Double check that because that's an important score if you got 37. Yeah, 37. Wow.

That, just so you know, puts him in joint fourth place with Washington. Ooh, interesting. Yeah, that's very interesting. Washington being knocked down to joint fourth. He has been beaten by the two Roosevelts and a Lincoln at the moment. Now, just again to remind people, this is not who was the best president. This is who is the most interesting and one that doesn't make you go, oh, I feel sad inside.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we're not saying that Eisenhower was as good a president as Washington, although, I don't know, maybe we are saying that. What was his statesmanship score? Oh, 16, 13. 16, ah.

13. 13, ah, you see Washington, like, beats that hands down. He got 17 for that. But, yeah, joint score with Washington. There's only one thing that can differentiate the two now. That's the one question we've got left to ask. American or American?

Well, obviously yes. Oh, you're saying obviously yes? Yeah, I think obviously, yeah. He did more, although to be fair some of the repercussions of some things that happened move into modern day. But we can't think about that yet, because we have no idea.

If we ranked him the day he left office, we wouldn't know. I don't know. Come on, it's Ike. Ike! I do like Ike, it must be said. That's something I had to cut for time reasons, the whole campaign, which was quite nice. I like Ike.

Yeah, that was a campaign slogan that's good uh i'm torn jamie i am torn i don't want to give an american to someone who authorized the cia to topple governments that seems wrong did he give the orders or did you know about them yeah he's president he knew about them he didn't stop it but then i do want to give american to the person in charge of the european theater of war in world war ii i do want to give american can to the u.s president who kept saying no to using nukes yeah i do want to give an american to the president who managed to weather the storms of mccarthyism see there's more of that than there is the negative there is there is and i suppose we gave americain to some

presidents early on who i had some big misgivings yes with for example jefferson's got americain and i really could not get on with him. You're saying yes, you're a definite yes, aren't you? Yeah, I'm definitely yes. Right, in which case I will bow down to your judgment. If you weren't sure either, I'd say we would have to ask Jupiter and toss the coin. But if you're saying yes... I'm just saying American coin. Well, if you're saying yes and I'm saying I'm not sure,

let's take an average and that puts him just in the yes camp, which means he is an American. Well done to Eisenhower. Well done. That is annoying. We now have a perfectly joint fourth, but I'm sure we can think of something to separate the two. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Teeth. Who had the most real teeth? Yes, we could do that. Yeah. Here's one. Who had the most slaves teeth? Yes, we could do that. Yeah. Here's one. Who had the most slaves? Yeah.

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Right, well, I'm going to stop you there before you tell me what your solution is for this particular problem. One question I'm going to ask. Is it dropping a nuke on it? It is. Right. Yes, yes, it is. I thought I had made myself clear on the whole we're not dropping nukes on things.

This time it's not like before it's a different kind of nuke oh so so this is this is different then yes this one's a tactical nuclear warhead oh well okay that does sound better yes it does sound better doesn't it sir is there any actual tangible difference between a nuke and a tactical nuke? Oh, massive difference. Massive difference. Oh, good, good. What is, in layman terms, please,

what is the difference? Well, have you ever dropped a grape into a swimming pool? No, but I can imagine. Go on. Okay, so those ripples would be the equivalent of a nuclear warhead. Right.

The tactical warhead is like dropping a bowling ball onto a teacup. Full of tea, sir. Yes, you're not winning me over with this. It must be said. What you're saying is that it is actually bigger. Oh, far bigger, sir. It's unbelievable. Right.

Okay. Well, I'm going to say no. Not because I don't value your input. I just think... I really don't think dropping a tactical nuclear warhead over your ex-wife's house is really something the government of the United States needs to focus on right now.

I really think it is, sir. Yes, sir. I really, really think it is. yes i really really think it is i know it is gerald uh simon simon simon can you take gerald away please yes take take some time off