I continue to read biographies without a real direction, stumbling across an interesting event in one and following that to another book. When I was reading a biography of President Truman I was surprised by the fairly negative feelings present between Truman and Eisenhower at the time Truman left office. My take on Truman is that I think I would have liked him as a man, and in truth I expected to like Ike given what I knew about his efforts during WWII and just his military background in general.

Of course, as the author notes all biographies carry the bias of the author, and I hate to make a decision based on one biography, but it really did surprise me that as I read I was less impressed than I expected to be. He got some things right, some wrong, I can understand that. Easy to second guess decision making and in general I’m tolerant, expecting that people do the best they can based on experience and all the rest. Maybe not so tolerant this time? One area that bothered me was not taking a stronger stand on the runaway building of atomic weapons. I’m a strong defense advocate, but the numbers – in both megatons and dollars – was just staggering, and he perhaps better than anyone had the credentials to slow it down. Seems like he wanted to, but wouldn’t take a firm stand. Worse than that, he never took at stand against McCarthy. I know things were different then, but it still makes my blood boil to read about a modern witch hunt used to kick people out of office. He knew it was wrong, new McCarthy was wrong, and just didn’t do much. Last, and perhaps yet worse, he just didn’t take much of a stand on the end of segregation. I don’t take him for a racist, but I think he was reluctant to push for change – where as I think it was one of the places where I expect a President to speak…calmly and thoughtfully.

In a year or two I’d like to give a different biography of Eisenhower a try, see if I was overly swayed by this portrayal. As always though I’m struck by how hard it is to understand at the time or 50 years later the real reasons behind decisions, if they were valid, and whether they were right.

$3 in paperback at Amazon, and worth reading.