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"IKE: From Warrior to President"

Produced by Starbright Media Corporation

"IKE: From Warrior to President" is planned as a prime-time television documentary to be completed for broadcast in 2009. The Special will be divided into three major segments:

• “Why He Ran” will examine the reasons why Ike, America’s greatest World War II hero, left his critical Cold War post as Supreme Commander of NATO to enter the tumultuous arena of national politics.  There are those who say Ike had carefully orchestrated a secret multi-year campaign to gain the highest political office in the land.  Others claim his only reason for leaving a lifetime of military service was that “duty called.”   Through the commentary of political historians, Eisenhower confidants and journalists who covered the campaign, the segment explores his political views and strategies and his global military view of the Cold War, especially  his great fear that a President uncommitted to an international foreign policy would take over the White House and end American leadership of the "free world" and the struggle against communism.

• “How He Won” will explore Eisenhower’s substantial “grassroots” political base in a nation that feared another war in Eastern Europe or in Asia, and his extremely effective use of television and advertising in this first presidential campaign of the television era.  In this segment, we meet Eisenhower’s chief political allies such as Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, governors Tom Dewey of New York and Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, and the leaders of “Citizens for Eisenhower” who built a significant national political movement for “Ike.”

  We tell the story of how these forces wrested control of the convention from the GOP political machine and  “Mr. Republican,” U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful, Robert Taft of Ohio, and out-maneuvered would-be candidates such as Gov. Earl Warren of California and Harold Stassen, former governor of Minnesota.  We also meet the Democratic opposition, including President Truman, with whom Ike had closely collaborated in establishing an ongoing post-war American military presence in Europe, and Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, the Democratic candidate who reluctantly became the heir to 20 years of Democratic rule.

  We see, too, how Ike’s political aptitude, honed as “Supreme Commander” in Europe in World War II, worked on the campaign trail as he sought to handle the uncertainties of battle in party politics.   The road to triumph in November was a bumpy one and we document the bad stumbles of the campaign, his so-called “surrender” on key issues to Sen. Taft and right-wing Republicans, his apparent submission to the political power of Sen. Joe McCarthy on the question of Gen. George Marshall’s patriotism, and the very real possibility that he would have to dump his running mate in mid-campaign.

• “What It Meant” will look ahead to the major events of the Eisenhower years in the White House and consider what his election meant to the United States, and the world-at-large.  On the world stage, Ike established a foreign policy based on an internationalist view, thus ending “isolationism” as a viable alternative view within the GOP. He also quickly launched a new and pragmatic approach to U.S.-Soviet relations based on his belief that the arms race was "insanity."

On the home front, he balanced the budget, but he kept in-place the major changes of FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal. And he dealt pragmatically with difficult social and cultural issues while faced with a deeply divided GOP and Democratic majorities in the Congress.  For the oldest President in the history of the United States, and one without any previous involvement in party politics, it was a daunting experience – one that historians and political scientists have examined closely, especially over the past decade.  Their views will be heard in this segment along with the views of those who witnessed “close-up” the major events of Ike’s White House years.

 

What if Ike had not run? 

 

Sen. Taft most certainly would have won the GOP nomination, but who would have been his running mate?  Most historians agree the front-runner was the sabre-rattling Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was Taft’s favorite prior to the convention. But Taft needed California's delegates to go over the top in votes at the convention, and he had two possible choices in that delegation headed by Gov. Earl Warren, a favorite son candidate for President. Both were U.S. Senators and both supported Sen. Joe McCarthy's popular campaign to rid government of "Reds" and so-called "Fellow Travelers." William Knowland was the senior Senator, an ultra-conservative who carried weight with GOP members of the Senate, and the other was Richard M. Nixon, the tough, young World War II veteran who had made national headlines in chasing suspected Communists in the upper echelons of the federal government. Polls showed that most Americans believed it was “time for a change” after two decades of Democratic rule. The only question was, did Taft have the skills and charisma to mount a successful campaign?

 

If Taft had won, his choice of a running mate would be a critical historical moment for the nation.  By the summer of 1953, Taft was dead of cancer.

 

What if Stevenson had won despite all the handicaps he had inherited?  Could a Democratic President, lacking Ike’s hero status, have been able to end “McCarthyism” by the congressional elections of 1954?  And how would Stevenson, Governor of a Midwestern state and without Ike’s credentials as a great war hero who personally knew all the world’s leaders, have dealt with our major Cold War adversary?  And after two decades of new Democratic federal programs, would a Democratic President have sought to restrain federal spending, especially fast-growing military costs, in order to keep the budget in balance?

 

These questions – and many more – will be explored by writer/producer George A. Colburn in this latest program in an ongoing SMC series entitled “The Eisenhower Legacy.”  Colburn wrote and produced three prime-time Specials on Eisenhower in the early 1990s that were hosted by John Chancellor, the late NBC journalist.  In 1997, for the Disney Channel, he wrote and produced a 5-hour series on Ike’s military and political careers, 1941-1961, that was hosted by Gen. Colin Powell.

An educational version of the Special will be added to the 20-part multi-media school series produced by SMC and released by Disney Educational Productions in 1997.  This revised series will be released in a new Internet-linked and interactive DVD format as well as in the traditional VHS format. The uncut interview footage for this Special will be made available to researchers by SMC through The Eisenhower Legacy archives.  The collection already contains 140 interviews from previous programs. 

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FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Dr. George Colburn
Post Office Box 309, Walloon Lake, MI 49796
231-535-2440 or 202-258-4887
gac@starbrightmc.com

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