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<text>
<title>
Man of the Year 1959: Dwight D. Eisenhower
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Man of the Year
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
January 4, 1960
Man of the Year
Dwight D. Eisenhower
</hdr>
<body>
<p>"I saw close at hand the faces of millions..." Dwight Eisenhower
in his homecoming speech.
</p>
<p> The faces of people reflected the biggest news about the
world in 1959.
</p>
<p> The faces belonged to the thousands of thousands who massed
along the streets of Ankara, Karachi, Kabul and New Delhi, of
Athens, Madrid and Casablanca. The faces were of all shapes and
shades. But as they turned toward the smiling, pink-cheeked man
who had come among them, they held in common a look--a look
of thirsting for the good things that the modern world seemed
to promise.
</p>
<p> That thirsting, as many of their slogans and leaders made
clear, was less for the things themselves than for the kind of
life where the good things could be attained. In 1959, after
years of hostile Communist propaganda, spectacular Russian
successes in space, threats of missiles and atomic war, the
throngs of Europe, Asia and Africa cast a durable vote for
freedom and liberty. The faces were turned to the U.S. and to
the man who had become the nation's image in one of the grand
plebiscites of history--Dwight David Eisenhower, President of
the U.S. and Man of the Year.
</p>
<p> Names Making News. Behind Eisenhower's in 1959 came other
names familiar to the cold war, and the news they made was
dramatic evidence of freedom's vital toughness on many fronts.
Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, challenger for Man
of the Year, led his Conservative Party to a crushing third
straight election victory, an unprecedented feat; in booming
Britain his triumph buried the socialist dogma of the 59-year-
old Labor Party as an effective political force. Under Konrad
Adenauer, Man of the Year in 1953, the resurgent economic
strength of free Germany posed such intolerable comparisons that
Communism tripped from threat to entreaty in its attempt to
reduce German influence. France's Charles de Gaulle, Man of the
Year in 1958, set himself to the task of restoring French pride,
tried to bind up the debilitating wounds of Algeria, chipped
away at NATO's supranational foundations; but the problems
raised by De Gaulle's France were at least and at last those of
national purpose, not political paralysis. Just a hot breath
away from the Red Chinese dragon, Japan's premier Nobusuke
Kishi, Man of the Year in the Far East, opted for conservatism,
free enterprise and closer ties with the U.S., won a thumping
victory in elections for the upper house of the Diet, routed
Socialists who campaigned for an alliance with Peking and
Moscow.
</p>
<p> Of all foreign leaders the one who did most to prove
freedom strong--by confronting it with its sternest tests--was
the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev. In 1957 Khrushchev's
Sputniks made him Man of the Year. In 1959 he scored even
greater successes in space; on Jan. 2 the U.S.S.R. sent a 3,245-
lb. package into sun orbit as the first man-made planet; eight
months later, a Soviet rocket smacked the face of the moon and
on Oct. 4, two years to the day after Sputnik I, the Russians
launched a rocket that passed around and photographed the moon's
hidden far side.
</p>
<p> Khrushchev's space challenge was underrated from the
beginning by the U.S.--and it still is. But the very show of
technical prowess helped prove how the West's pundits had
underrated the appeal of independence and liberty in the so-
called battle for men's minds. To millions of the world's
uncommitted peoples, Communism's ability to master space was
less impressive than its inability to master its own nature--and
the symbol of Communism in 1959 was not that of Red rockets
reaching for stars, but of Red China reaching brutally into
Tibet and India.
</p>
<p> Against that abhorrent spectacle, and the memories of
Hungary and other Communist conquests, the U.S. example of
liberty under law, of self-restraint imposed by what Jefferson
called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," of
willingness to use strength to protect independence stood out
as powerful assets. Dwight Eisenhower has been shaped by those
principles--and in 1959, carrying a message of peace with
freedom to three far continents, he represented them to the
world as could no one else.
</p>
<p> "We Can Trust Him." Last week, returned from his journey
to Europe, Asia and Africa, Eisenhower towered as the world's
best-known, best-liked citizen. His trip had been one of
breathtaking excitement, high point of a bold venture into
personal diplomacy. How that venture came about and developed
was one of the year's most fascinating behind-the-scenes
stories. But its real meaning lay in an understanding of Ike the
Man and Eisenhower the President.
</p>
<p> At 60, closing out the seventh year of a presidency marked
by three major illnesses, Dwight Eisenhower had never looked
better. His color was high, his face firm (a slight puffiness
around the eyes was the most visible sign of his age), and there
was spring to his step (he sometimes startled visitors by
bounding up stairs two at a time). On his trip he stood
bareheaded in the Italian rain (it was just after greeting the
King of Morocco in foul Washington weather that he suffered a
stroke in 1957), stood for more than 100 miles while riding
through the streets of eleven countries, came out of it all with
less apparent fatigue than most of those who accompanied him.
</p>
<p> His popularity, as marked last week by his Gallup rating,
is a U.S. phenomenon. Anyone seeking specific reasons why the
people like Ike will get answers no more complicated than "he's
a good (or decent, or honest) man," or "we can trust him," or
"he does his best." But Dwight Eisenhower is not that simply
explained, and there are contradictions in his public image and
private personality. Although he can tie words into knots ("I
do say this: I may have, but I am not saying I didn't, but I
don't believe I have. I do say this...") he has been vastly
successful in making himself understood. His warm grin is known
around the earth, but in private his temper can flare with
crackling, barracks-room fluency. He seems boundlessly friendly
and outgiving, but White House insiders have long since grown
used to having him pass in the halls without a nod or a word.
He has seen and been seen by more crowds than any other man of
his time, but in fact he dislikes crowds and is uncomfortable
with them.
</p>
<p> "The Glory of America." Ike's faults are those that his
countrymen can share and understand, and in his virtues he is
more than anything else a repository of traditional U.S. values
derived from his boyhood in Abilene, Kans., instilled in him by
his fundamentalist parents, drilled into him at West Point,
tempered by wartime command, applied to the awesome job of the
presidency and expanded to meet the challenges of the cold war.
</p>
<p> Returning to Abilene in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower spoke of
his mother and father. "They were frugal," he said, "possibly
of necessity, because I have found out in later years that we
were very poor. But the glory of America is that we didn't know
it then." In a 1959 speech, he again drew on his memories, going
back to his days as an Army subaltern, newly married to Mamie
Geneva Doud, when he scrimped to buy a tiny insurance policy.
"Well," he said, "I gave up smoking readymade cigarettes and
went to Bull Durham and the papers. (Back on three packs a day
of readymades when he was Army Chief of Staff, Ike abruptly gave
up smoking in 1947, told a friend his method was simple: "Just
don't feel sorry for yourself.") I had to make a great many
sacrifices...Yet I still think of the fun we had in working
for our own future."
</p>
<p> Fiscal responsibility was more than a nostalgic, negative
notion with Ike. He saw it as the basis of a positive
philosophy of government. Against the background of the New and
Fair Deals, with the momentum toward more Government spending
and control, Ike's philosophy was as radical as it was
conservative. He explained it best in a little-noticed 1959
speech to representatives of the National Rural Electric
Cooperative Association, gathered in Washington to holler it up
for continued Government subsidy of rural electrification.
</p>
<p> "Government, at all levels, has certain clear obligations
to you and me," said he to a hostile audience. "It owes us
security from external attack, protection of our person and
property, protection in the exercise of all the individual
rights guaranteed by our Constitution." Government may also help
out "particular groups" with special aid or subsidy. But the
reason for help or subsidy "is not to give one group of citizens
special privilege or undeserved advantage. Rather it is to see
that equality of opportunity is not withheld from the citizen
through no fault of his own." The groups for which the
Government has made special provision must "use that help
responsibly and constructively." The aim should be to rise as
swiftly as possible above public aid and "re-establish speedily
our own equality of opportunity, and so share proportionally in
the productivity of our economy."
</p>
<p> The Essential Cut. Taking his oath of office in 1953,
Eisenhower moved swiftly to liberate the U.S. economy from the
obsolete wartime controls that still hobbled it. Fair Deal
economists issued dark warnings, but the economy whooshed off
toward new highs. The doom criers were again out full force in
the worrisome days of Recession Year 1958 when Eisenhower
refused to use Government's heavy thumb for pushing the panacea
buttons of subsidy and deficit spending.
</p>
<p> Also to Eisenhower, a sound U.S. economy (I know what I am
for. I am for a sound dollar") was the bedrock for construction
of a free-world economic system. "Dollars and security," said
Ike, "are not separable." Again: "I say that a balanced budget
in the long run is a vital part of national security." And
again: "We not only have to be strong today but for 50 years,
and if we become reckless in the economic field, we will no
longer find ourselves with the means to protect ourselves."
</p>
<p> In that cause, Dwight Eisenhower fought one of his hardest
and most successful battles in 1959. In January, when he
formally announced his determination to balance the budget at
$77 billion, the lopsided Democratic congressional majority
hooted and howled. Indeed, it seemed all but impossible at a
time when the recession and the challenge of the U.S.S.R.'s
Sputniks had ballooned the deficit to some $12 billion.
</p>
<p> But Ike rammed across his point. He scolded his Cabinet
members (Defense Secretary Neil McElroy had airily announced
that military spending would have to go up by about $2 billion;
he soon got the word from his boss), wrote personal letters to
political, business and civic leaders around the nation, urged
his cause in press conferences and on radio and television,
worked closely with Republican congressional leaders, and used
his veto and the threat of his veto against lollygagging money
bills. At year's end a balanced budget was in jeopardy only
because of the steel strike. Eisenhower had performed the
political miracle of making economy popular. Grinned a White
House staffer: "When those Congressmen come back in January,
they're going to be so anxious to find something to cut that
they'll cut their own wrists if necessary."
</p>
<p> Above and Beyond. The victory for a sound U.S. economy
meant not only a U.S. that could continue to meet its
obligations of free-world leadership; it served as a spring
board for vast creative forces. With postwar U.S. help the
industrial nations of the West had built their economies to the
point where they could begin to tear down the trade barriers
that are always a sign of weakness. They could start to share
with the U.S. in the immense and compelling job of aiding the
world's underdeveloped lands. Those lands, with examples of
successful free enterprise ranging from West Germany to Japan,
were beginning to shuck off their socialist notions of economic
order by government decree. Thus the tooling of U.S. fiscal
responsibility to the facts of economic life set off by 1959 a
revolution in dynamic ideas and plans that held out to the
humblest of peoples the promise of a better life.
</p>
<p> In recognition of that promise--vague, unstated but
everywhere in the air--came the tumults that met the President
of the U.S. as he traveled among the masses in 1959's last
month. Into that promise the U.S., as represented by Eisenhower,
breathed the hope that economic gain could be achieved in people--and
enjoyed outside political bondage.
</p>
<p> One Last Chance. Dwight Eisenhower first ran for President
with the idea that he might help bring the world closer to
peace. In his first term he demonstrated in the Strait of
Formosa that the U.S. would stand staunchly against aggression;
he demonstrated in the Suez crisis that the U.S. would resist
aggression by its friends as well as its enemies, that peace
was meaningless without justice. In 1956, he decided to run for
re-election despite two major illnesses and the possibility that
a constitutional ban against a third term might dilute his
effectiveness (in the event, the 22nd Amendment strengthened
Eisenhower's hand; with no political future he could plainly
prove that he acted in the national interest, not out of
personal ambition). He gave his reason for seeking re-election
to a small group of friends: "I want to advance our chances for
world people, if only by a little, maybe only a few feet."
</p>
<p> At first his second term seemed only to bring more cold war
crises. The President sent U.S. troops to Lebanon, again
deployed U.S. warships in Formosa Strait. Then, on Nov. 27,
1958, Russia's Khrushchev handed the Western allies an ultimatum
to get our of Berlin.
</p>
<p> Increasingly, as he saw the calendar running out on him,
President Eisenhower spoke to friends of wanting "one last
chance" to move toward peace. But he was determined not to be
forced to a summit conference by the club Khrushchev held over
Berlin. "We are not going to give one single inch in the
preservation of our rights," he said. "There can be no
negotiation on this particular point."
</p>
<p> Yet might not the creative energy of freedom be used to
seize the initiative? Eisenhower and Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles sought the answer in long, intensely personal
talks (often a sleepless President picked up his bedside phone
in the middle of the night to call a sleepless Dulles)--and
the idea of Ike's exchanging visits with Khrushchev came up.
"We began to work on this thing," Eisenhower recalled months
later," and I gave the subject to two or three of my trusted
associates in the State Department and said `Now let's try to
tote up the balance.'"
</p>
<p> Explosive events. Dulles saw merit in the proposal for an
Eisenhower-Khrushchev exchange, but first he wanted to find out
if some sort of progress could be made at a U.S. sponsored
meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers at Geneva. The U.S.
was represented at that conference by a new Secretary of State,
Christian Herter, for in February Foster Dulles, gallant
warrior, entered Walter Reed Army Hospital with a recurrence of
cancer. And on May 24, 1959, the colleague Ike had trusted
beyond any other died in his sleep.
</p>
<p> Predictably, inevitably, the foreign ministers' conference
ended in failure. Recalls a top State Department official: "The
President was very firmly committed not to go to a summit meeting
as long as he was forced to go under threat, or as long as there
was no prospect that a summit meeting would show some results.
He thought it over--and he decided to take the initiative."
</p>
<p> From that decision stemmed the explosive series of events
by which 1959 would be long remembered--and which made
Eisenhower the Man of the Year. On the morning of July 11,
President Eisenhower drafted a formal proposal that Khrushchev
visit the U.S. and suggested that the President travel to the
Soviet Union. The letter was flown to New York by U.S. Deputy
Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Foy Kohler, placed in the hands of the Soviet
Union's First Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov, about to return to
Russia after a U.S. tour. It was kept tightly secret for almost
a month; Vice President Nixon was informed of the plan only the
day before his July departure for the Soviet Union; Milton
Eisenhower, accompanying Nixon, was not told at all. Ike's
invitation and Khrushchev's acceptance crashed into world
headlines on Aug. 3.
</p>
<p> More Than Personal. To prepare for the confrontation with
his tough clever cold-war adversary, Eisenhower flew to Europe
in late August, there to consult and coordinate plans with U.S.
allies, In Germany, the land overrun by his Allied armies, in
England, and in Paris, the city he had liberated, the swell of
popular emotion brought a mist to the old soldier's eyes.
</p>
<p> The tribute was more than personal. When Ike left Europe,
he knew that it was in his capacity as the President of the
U.S., in his symbolizing of U.S. prestige and principles, that
he bore with him the free world's faith. Supported by that
knowledge, Eisenhower was ready for Khrushchev.
</p>
<p> Khrushchev came in September, and his visit is recalled in
kaleidoscopic flash back--of Khrushchev baronially breathing
the morning air in front of Blair House; of Khrushchev bulling
his way across the U.S., now boasting of Russian military might
and space achievement, now uttering dulcet promises of peace and
friendship; of Khrushchev threatening to pick up his marbles and
go home when denied a chance to go to Southern California's
Disneyland; of Khrushchev falling in love with San Francisco;
and of Khrushchev roaring in merriment while an Iowa farmer
shied ensilage at the newsmen who had crowded too close.
</p>
<p> Closeup View. But it was at Camp David, the presidential
retreat on a Maryland mountaintop, that Khrushchev's visit came
into focus with its greatest meaning to 1959. At Camp David,
under a canopy of oak leaves, the President of the U.S. and the
Premier of the U.S.S.R. walked and talked along winding gravel
paths, lived together for three days in Ike's grey, batten-
board Aspen Lodge.
</p>
<p> From their conversations came only one tangible result:
Khrushchev agreed to lift his Berlin ultimatum. But more
important was the personal, closeup view that Ike got of
Khrushchev.
</p>
<p> President Eisenhower had already heard from such travelers
to the Soviet Union as Nixon, his brother Milton and democrats
Adlai Stevenson and Huburt Humphrey that the Russian people
seemed desirous of peace. He was told that they stubbornly held
to a fund of friendship for the U.S. that had not been washed
out by 14 years of hostile propaganda, that they were pushing
their own government for more consumer goods and even for a
measure of freedom.
</p>
<p> Now, at Camp David, Khrushchev seemed to reflect those
drives. He impressed Eisenhower as a leader extremely anxious
to win the respect and approval of his own people, as one who
might wish to divert armament spending to consumer production
for internal political reasons, as one almost pathetically eager
to be accepted into the society of legitimate statesmen. When
showing off before Soviet underlings as Foreign Minister Andre
Gromyko and Ambassador to the U.S. "Smiling Mike" Menshikov.
Khrushchev was full of bluster; in his private meetings with
Ike he spoke quietly and seemed ready to do business.
</p>
<p> At Camp David then, Eisenhower came to believe that formal
negotiations with Khrushchev could be more than an exercise in
thumb-sucking, tongue-twisting futility. After Camp David, Ike
was willing as never before to go to the summit.
</p>
<p> In fact he was eager. Plans were made for an October summit
conference, but France's De Gaulle scuttled the schedule. The
Western allies agreed to a December meeting of the Western
leaders in Paris--and in that, Ike saw and seized upon a
historic opportunity to display the dynamics of freedom before
the world.
</p>
<p> "A Great Awakening." He had long wanted to visit India.
Now he decided that on the way to Paris he would go not only to
India but would also sweep the southern tiers of Asia and
Europe, where ancient civilizations stood alike with infant
nations in constant, poverty-torn struggle to improve their lot.
</p>
<p> From Rome to Ankara to Karachi to Kabul journeyed the
President of the U.S., and to Tehran, Athens, Tunis and
Casablanca. And everywhere, he carried his message,
understandable to all and backed by unbroken U.S. performance:
"We want to live in peace and friendship--in freedom." More
than that: "We want to help other peoples to raise their
standards, to be as content with their lot as humans can be."
To India's Parliament, he spoke of "a great awakening" in which
the world's peoples have come to recognize "that only under a
rule of moral law can all of us realize our deepest and noblest
aspirations." Without mentioning Communism by name, he defined
it as the dead hand of tyranny, pointed to a free-world future
based on economic order and law. At Delhi University, he said:
"A reliable framework of law, grounded in the general principles
recognized by civilized nations, is of crucial importance in all
plans for rapid economic development...Law is not a concrete
pillbox in which the status quo is armed and entrenched. On the
contrary, a single role of law, the sanctity of contract, has
been the vehicle of more explosive and extensive economic change
in the world than any other factor."
</p>
<p> A High Presence. On foot, by car and by camel-back, on
bicycles and in bullock carts, millions crowded into the cities
along his route to see Eisenhower, and their reply to his
message came in a torrential outpour. "We love you, Ike," cried
the Turks, tough fighters on the cold-war frontier. "Take back
our love, Ike," cried Pakistani throngs. In India, the reception
burst the chains of imagination, crowds surged and seethed
around Ike, and in front of village huts appeared brass vessels,
festooned with mango leaves in recognition of a high presence.
</p>
<p> The moment of profoundest meaning came at an outdoor
"civic reception" in New Delhi. When Ike, with Nehru, stepped
up to the speaker's stand, he blinked and shook his head in
astonishment; the crowd reached farther than eye could see. In
neutralist India, Eisenhower invoked the memory of India's
saint, impled that Gandhi himself would today favor the dynamics
of strength: "America's right, our obligations, for that matter,
to maintain a respectable establishment for defense--our duty
to join in company with like-thinking peoples for mutual self-
defence--would, I am sure, be recognized and upheld by the
most saintly men...In a democracy, people should not act
like sheep but jealously guard liberty of action." At his words,
countless thousands of Gandhi's disciples broke into cheers.
</p>
<p> In his talks with the leaders of the nations he visited,
the President aimed at no t-crossing, i-dotting agreements. None
were needed. Reported New York Times-man Paul Grimes from New
Delhi after Ike's departure: "It did not seem to matter much
whether Mr. Nehru had actually requested or been given a
guarantee that the U.S. would help India to meet further Chinese
Communist aggression. What mattered was the obvious
strengthening of Indian-American friendship to a point where no
such guarantee was necessary."
</p>
<p> In 1960, Dwight Eisenhower's last year in office, he may
in a sense be the victim of his own success in 1959. Ahead lie
his trip to the Soviet Union and a series of summit conferences--all
carrying a special challenge, since the U.S. has become
the home of so many hopes. For the same reason the U.S. will
have less privacy and more urgency in facing 1960's other
problems, old and new: the dangerous lag in space achievement;
the delicate, perilous balance between fiscal responsibility and
military strength; the integrity of NATO as a free-world shield;
the unrest in the U.S.'s backyard as shown in 1959 by anti-
American riots in Bolivia and Panama and by the bearded
demagoguery of Cuba's Fidel Castro.
</p>
<p> But the look on the faces turned toward Eisenhower in 1959
was the future's best portent. In Paris, during his trip, Ike
rejected the view of a "dark and dreary future," classified
himself as a "born optimist, and I suppose most soldiers are,
because no soldier ever won a battle if he went into it
pessimistically." He thinks of the future, said Ike, in terms
of his grandchildren, and hopefully, someday, great-
grandchildren, "and I am very concerned that they get a chance
to have a better life than I had." The forces for freedom fired
by 1959's Man of the Year would inevitably change the lives of
millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in an epochal
historic way. And men of hope might have new reason to believe
that tomorrow's world had a better than even chance.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>