How Eisenhower Led — A Conversation with Ike's Granddaughter
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Summary
Susan Eisenhower is a writer, consultant, and policy strategist, and one of Dwight D. Eisenhower s four grandchildren. In this episode, we talk about her grandfather's leadership principles and styles from her book, How Ike Led.
Transcript
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Hey, it's Brett. We're taking a break today, so I got a rebroadcast for you. It's episode
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number 641, How Eisenhower Led, where I talk to Susan Eisenhower. She's a writer, consultant,
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a policy strategist, and one of Dwight D. Eisenhower's four grandchildren. We talk about
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her grandfather's leadership principles and styles from her book, How Ike Led. Hope you
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enjoy it. We'll be back with a brand new episode on Wednesday. See you then.
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. From guiding the
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Allies to victory in World War II as Supreme Commander, to steering the ship of state for
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eight years as one of the country's least partisan and most popular presidents, few leaders in history
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have had to make as varied and consequential decisions as Dwight D. Eisenhower. My guest
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today possesses insights into how he made the many choices he was faced with in his military
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and political careers that are gleaned not only from studying Ike's life, but from personally
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knowing the man beneath the mantle. Her name is Susan Eisenhower. She's a writer, consultant,
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and policy strategist, one of Dwight's four grandchildren, and the author of the new book,
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How Ike Led, the principles behind Eisenhower's biggest decisions. Susan and I begin our conversation
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with her relationship with Ike as both historic leader and ordinary grandfather, and why she decided
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to write a book about his leadership style. We then delve into the principles of his leadership,
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beginning with his decision to greenlight the D-Day invasion, what it reveals about his
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ironclad commitment to taking responsibility, and how that commitment allowed him to be such
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an effective delegator. From there, Susan explains how a love of studying history born in Ike's
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boyhood allowed him to take a big picture approach to strategy, how he used a desk drawer to deal
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with his lifelong struggle with anger, and how his belief in morale as input rather than output
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inspired him to always stay optimistic for the benefit of those he led. We then turn to how
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Eisenhower dealt with the discovery of concentration camps at the end of World War II and making peace
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with Germany after it. We then talk about his non-partisan governing style as president,
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which he called the middle way, and which involved emphasizing cooperation, compromise,
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and unity, including members of both political parties in his cabinet, limiting his use of the
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bully pulpit to sway public opinion, and striving not to turn policy issues into personality
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confrontations. We then discuss how this style influenced how he dealt with Joseph McCarthy
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and enforced the Brown versus Board of Education decision. At the end of our conversation,
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Susan explains that while she doesn't expect everyone to agree with the difficult decisions her
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grandfather made, she thinks there's something to be learned from how he managed to make them,
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and to make them without becoming hard and cynical in the process. After the show's over,
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash howikeled.
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All right, Susan Eisenhower, welcome to the show.
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Well, thank you. It's just great to be with you.
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So you've got a new book out, How Ike Led, the principle behind Eisenhower's biggest decisions,
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and you also happen to be one of Dwight Eisenhower's granddaughters. I'm curious,
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let's start off with this kind of the context. What was it like being Eisenhower's granddaughter?
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Like, how old were you when he was general and then president of the United States?
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Well, he was actually inaugurated in 1953, and so I was a toddler at the time. I was born on the last day
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of 1951, so I wasn't aware of too much for a while, and my father was in the Army as well. And he,
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of course, went to every Army post he could go to probably in many of those years. But back in
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around 1957, we moved back to Washington, D.C. for some of my father's assignments, and that's when I
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really got to know my grandparents really well.
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And were there moments when you were, like, was he just grandpa for you, or did you have moments
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as even as a kid where you realized that, you know, Eisenhower was more than just grandpa?
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Well, it was a little hard to avoid the fact that he was more than grandpa because my siblings and I
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had Secret Service protection, so that didn't seem very normal. And to have big guys with big guns
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following you under the playground isn't exactly normal. But I must say, in retrospect, I look back
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and I think it was really remarkable how normal a family life we had. And I think that's because
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there are two simple reasons for it. My father made sure that we didn't, quote unquote, start wearing
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the boss's stars, end quote. In other words, we were to understand that our grandfather was different
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and that this conferred nothing on us except a responsibility to be good kids. And then I think
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the other thing was we were taught to compartmentalize. So I have very strong feelings about him as a
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grandfather, but I spent my professional career as a policy analyst, and his legacy is everywhere. So I
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had to learn to be able to think of him separately from being a grandfather. This book is the first time
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I've put it together in a way. And that was a pretty wild experience.
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Well, what did you think? Why write this book now? What was it that got you thinking,
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I need to write? Because you've written a biography of your grandmother, Eisenhower's wife.
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What made you decide to go in and write a biography of Eisenhower, particularly how he's led?
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Well, first of all, we had the anniversary of the end of World War II in this year. And then
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in September, the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. is going to be unveiled, dedicated. And then I
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also thought that, you know, we're in a very highly contentious political time. And I thought it was
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important for rising generations and for people who don't know Dwight Eisenhower very well
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to learn something about him in an easy way. But I don't think you have to know a huge amount
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about the period to be able to understand that there were indeed principles behind the way
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Eisenhower looked at different situations. And I thought that might be useful right now in this
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So the way you organize this book, it's a biography, but it's a biography of Eisenhower's leadership style
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and how he developed it and how it manifested itself in different parts of his career.
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And you start off the book with this famous note that Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander
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wrote in World War II on the eve of D-Day. And it was to only be released if his decision to green
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light the invasion failed. And it said in part, if any blame or fault attaches to the attempt,
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it is mine alone. Why did you start the book off with this note? And what do you think it tells
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Well, I think the note is an important note. First of all, it wasn't known for a very long
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time. It came out probably after Ike's death. It's not that it wasn't known. It was already
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published in Harry Butcher's book called My Three Years with Eisenhower. But somebody found it when
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reading that book probably 20 years ago and started talking about it a lot. And I think it's because
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it strikes a chord with us today. We have so many leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue
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who stand up and blame somebody else for mistakes that have occurred. But this was not Eisenhower's
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way. And I dare say that, you know, the military is well-schooled to understand that they have to take
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responsibility. There's something at West Point called the no excuses. He took responsibility even for
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the weather forecast in that it was his decision to go at that time. In any case, you see that same
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willingness to take responsibility throughout his presidency, famously after the U-2, this is an aerial
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reconnaissance airplane was shot down over the Soviet Union in May of 1960. He took full responsibility for
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the fact that he'd ordered that overflight. And many of his advisors were asking him to continue
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to say that, you know, come up with something that would be what we call today plausible deniability.
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But Eisenhower wanted to make sure the Soviet Union knew that he was in charge and that there was no
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ambiguity about who made orders there within the administration. And then finally, the Suez crisis,
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which actually was in 1956, that whole crisis emerged just as voters were going to the polling booth.
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And he said to my father that if the, you know, if the Suez crisis goes south, he guesses he'll lose
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the election. But there we are. So there was a kind of fatalism marked with a strong belief that there
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were no excuses. So let me just, Brett, let me just leave you with something that I find rather
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wonderful. He once said, leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that
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goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
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That's hard to do. A lot of, I mean, but how did he deal with like the burdens of that? Like,
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how did he, I mean, that's, people don't like doing it because it feels terrible to take responsibility
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for failure, particularly failures where like you weren't directly involved. Like, you know,
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he was a big delegator. So he only focused on high level strategy and he would delegate
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the sort of the tactical things to the people who are working with them beneath them. So how,
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I mean, how did he, how did he deal with taking responsibility for stuff that he might not have
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had any direct influence on? Well, you can't, you can't mobilize those you delegate to if they don't
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feel like the leader has their back. And that's what I think that that sentence about leadership
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is that if you don't give them the credit and take the responsibility, then, then you don't have
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a system that will accommodate delegation. Now, the reason delegation is important is somebody's got
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to be the strategic leader. And part of the reason my book is so oriented towards strategic leadership
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is we simply don't have it anymore. We're like political day traders and we can't figure out what
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we're really trying to accomplish, what our timeline is and what, and how we're going to get from where
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we are today to address those longer term goals. So I think that's just inevitable. If you're going to
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delegate is you have to, you have to give people the knowledge that they will be able to do their jobs.
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And yeah, that idea that, you know, people who, that Eisenhower led that they felt that they had,
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that he had their back. I mean, you talk about these, in these instances where soldiers would
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say basically like, I would do anything for you. Like there was a time when later in his life,
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when he was having problems with his heart, you had, there was people writing letters saying,
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I'll, I'll give you my, my still alive heart as a heart transplant so you can live.
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Isn't that amazing? I mean, I remember when it happened, I was,
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I would say I was tangentially part of that conversation. The doctor came out and said that
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they had received all these, you know, all of these offers. And, you know, I compared this
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against my brother's memory and, and yes, that is indeed absolutely correct. And, you know, it's,
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it's, it's very moving, but you know, they, the bond that I had with his soldiers was one of trust.
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And if he wasn't willing to take the responsibility, even for their failure, then how could they trust him?
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And what, you mentioned that Eisenhower, he thought strategically, he was thinking big picture.
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He was playing the, the 10,000 foot, you know, level game while everyone else was playing,
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you know, there's thinking about the next quarter, the next year. Where do you, where did he develop
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that, that mindset? Do you think? Well, it's interesting. He displayed his interest in bigger
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picture studies when he was a kid, he grew up on a farm in Abilene, Kansas. And, you know,
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his parents were surviving just financially. He always said that we were poor, but didn't know it.
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In any case, he, he would do, I wouldn't call it daydreaming, but he was obsessed about history
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and the family was very well educated. As a matter of fact, Ike's mother, my great grandmother,
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actually went to college and they could read ancient Greek and Latin, which is pretty amazing
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for those days as farm family. But Ike was always reading history books and he was fascinated by
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what these great historical figures were trying to accomplish and why did they make the decisions
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they did? And in, in making those decisions, how much information did they have when they made those
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decisions? And I, I think it's, it's fascinating that an interest in that, uh, would extend all the
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way, you know, as a lifetime, as a lifetime undertaking. Yeah. That's something people
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don't know about Eisenhower is that how educated he was and how, you know, deeply and well-read he was.
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And there was moments where you talk about where he would say, like when he was a president of
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Columbia, he just surprised people with just lectures about, you know, military history going
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all the way back to Alexander the Great. And professors were just baffled because they just thought
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of Eisenhower was just this army guy who, you know, smiled and waved and that was it.
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Well, you know, what's interesting about this, and this is the reason I felt it was pretty important
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to include the leadership traits he developed during the war and to take that into the presidency
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because the biographers tend to fall into two categories, uh, the presidential biographers of
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Eisenhower and the wartime biographers of Eisenhower. And then there are some books that try to put it
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all together. But again, if it's done chronologically, they end up being very, very big books. But I do
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think that, you know, there is a consistency about the way he thinks and about the way he approaches
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issues. So I think the Eisenhower who is general and the Eisenhower is president are one in the same
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person, which is why as a kid, I could never understand why people said he was a do nothing
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president. And he didn't know, you know, that he, you know, was not on top of things when this was
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the guy who, you know, ended Nazism for the Western Alliance. I, I just could never figure that out even
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as a kid. Right. Well, yeah, so going back to sort of the popular image we have of Eisenhower sort of
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this, you know, especially as, as president, you know, the sunny, friendly, grandfatherly character
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who played golf. And we'll, we'll, we'll talk about what he was actually doing, um, as president when
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people that that's all he was doing. But you mentioned that you talk about throughout the
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book, he, he grappled with inner struggles, particularly anger ever since he was a boy.
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What was his anger like? Was it like short, like instead of a short temper that he just, uh, just
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dwell on things, get resentful. What was that like? Well, it's interesting as a kid, he, he really did
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have a temper and he admitted that he would have occasional meltdowns and then be disciplined by his
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father and counseled by his mother. I think part of it was, if you ever read the full set of his
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diaries and also his letters to Mamie Eisenhower, you know, his wife, my grandmother, you will see
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there a very, very passionate nature. And as a kid, he felt the sense of injustice very strongly, but he
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had a very passionate nature. And so he had to learn how to control what I'd call his inner landscape,
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his inner resources. And he had, his mother really made the case after one particularly frightening
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experience where he had, as we call it a meltdown because his two older brothers were allowed to go
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out and trick or treat and he wasn't. And, and she really talked to him very quietly about what this was
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doing to him and it wasn't hurting anybody else. It was hurting him. And he always remembered that.
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And so he started developing tricks and some of the tricks were actually rather sophisticated and I
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like them. I use them myself sometimes. He would, for instance, keep a diary that now that's very
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important. He was a diarist his whole life. So he blew off steam on the written page. In addition to
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being a diarist, he would write whatever it was that was bothering him on a piece of paper. Then he'd
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crumple up the piece of paper and he'd throw it away. So this was actually a rather artful way of
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getting the anger inside out and on a piece of paper. Then it suddenly becomes depersonalized.
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And I, I think it's a very smart idea. I do have to laugh about it though, because he did this during
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the White House years and then he'd throw these crumpled up pieces of paper into a lower drawer in his
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desk. And it was a responsibility of his secretary to go in and clean out the crumpled up pieces of
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paper. I swear she had to have a security clearance in order to be able to do that because she more than
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anybody knew who he was upset with that day. And then the other idea he had is that he would put the
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problem on a chair and get up and walk around it. But as you can see, there is a theme here, which is
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getting this anger out of you, out of you inside and depersonalizing it. So I think a lot of people,
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you know, would benefit from knowing that there was a very powerful person who found these tools useful.
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Besides anger, did he ever get discouraged or get depressed? I mean, there's a lot of things during
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his career he could get discouraged or depressed about during the war and later on in his presidency.
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Well, I don't think he'd be a human being if he hadn't been depressed and concerned at times. But
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he thought that morale was an input, not an output. In other words, people have to feel good about
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things and have a sense of morale in going into any challenge and not just the result of being
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victorious. And I think this is really true. Pessimism at the top is very infectious. So who wants
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to go into battle with somebody who doesn't have confidence in the mission? So he made it, as he
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said in his diaries, a lifelong commitment to try and stay optimistic in front of everybody else all
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the time. So during this dire moment during the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, when the
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Germans have finally managed to launch what looked like it was a successful offensive, Eisenhower comes
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into the room and says to his commanders, there will be no long faces in this room. He says, do you
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realize what the Germans have just done? They've given us an opening. For the first time, they're
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showing us their faces. So let's go. You know, that sort of twist on the thing that worried everybody
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most, you know, turns out to be the thing that inspires confidence. If the commander has it.
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It took a lot of personal discipline, Brett. I really have to say that I'm full of admiration
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for that because I struggle as a professional myself all the time and try very hard to show
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this optimism, but it isn't always so easy. Yeah. And something he noted as well, besides being
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optimistic, you know, Eisenhower was very adamant about leaders. If they have personal problems,
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personal issues, they got to take care of that privately. And that's kind of counter to what
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you see today, where it's like, if you have a problem, just show it, like emote it, express it
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and, you know, see people, you kind of, you put it out there on social media. That wouldn't be what
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Eisenhower would have done. Absolutely not. It's called too much information. And I think what it's
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done is somebody's making it everybody else's problem too. And that would be counter to personal
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responsibility. You, you've got to, you've got, as I say, you've got to keep your own landscape and
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good, in good order. You did ask me a minute ago, what did his temper look like when, when it came
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across him? I always thought as a kid, it was like a thunderstorm, you know, and I didn't see it that
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much, I have to say, but it was like a thunderstorm because he would get angry. I mean, his associates told
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me this and then it would, it would pass, you know, and he didn't hold grudges. So nobody really
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worried about it. They observed it occasionally, but they didn't worry about it because if they had
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made a mistake, he, or, or if they had let him down in some way that was more personal,
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he just didn't hold grudges. And I think, you know, some of that is self-discipline too, but some
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of it is back to, you know, the state of your insides. Is it toxic in there? Are you allowing
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all this negative energy to build up or are you finding another way to deal with it so that you
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can move on? And one thing that you stress throughout the book, one of, an important part
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of Eisenhower's leadership style, yes, he was a big picture strategist and he was able to see
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and play the long game. But something else that gets overlooked about Eisenhower was that he was,
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he had, he had really good people skills. I think one of his strengths was he knew
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how to read people and how he understood what people needed. And he was very attuned to people's
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needs and wants. Well, I think that is. And I think he, he got that trait from his mother,
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who was an extremely empathetic person. I mean, she was very religious. As a matter of fact,
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few people realized that he grew up in a pacifist household. She had been born and raised just after
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the civil war in Virginia and saw the horrors of, of that war and made a determination that she was
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never going to support war of any kind. So she was, she was very empathetic. And I would say that the
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one thing, wonderful thing he had from his childhood is that he had a mother who was empathetic and
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focused on cooperation and optimism. And he had a father who took care of the discipline end of things.
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And, and, and so for many reasons, not the least of which, uh, he had this, this team of
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his parents that, that brought different sides to his personality. And, you know, he had some,
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all of his brothers were extremely successful too, but I think the, the empathy was one of
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Eisenhower's biggest traits. It's the one I admire because I think when you're making decisions at this
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level, uh, it would be so easy to become hard and cynical, but he never allowed himself that at all,
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at all. I never saw any evidence of it. Yeah. And during the war, you know, he's all often asking
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when they're making decisions, like, what would this look like to the other guy? How would the other guy
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take this? And it got him into trouble, not trouble, but it frustrated, uh, some of his American
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colleagues, cause he was trying to reach out to British allies and work with them and cooperate
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with them. And when there was people on the American side, which is like, no, we want to do our thing,
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forget about the British, but Eisenhower made it, he was very adamant that we have to, we have to work
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with these guys too, and make sure that they're getting what they need as well with any operation
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that we do. Well, he really believed in alliances and he was the first Supreme allied commander
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in, in, uh, warfare during world war two or sorry, during the first world war, everybody
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managed their own troops, but there was nobody that integrated all of the, all the forces. And so this
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was, this was a very, very new concept also to integrate the British with the Americans and to have
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French forces under his command. It just had never been done before. And he would not have been able
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to keep that alliance together if he hadn't been able to stand back and look at this joint effort
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from other people's point of view. There was a lot of national pride involved. There was a very big
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difference in how each of these nations looked at strategy, the concepts behind strategy. And he also
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had to deal with a type personalities who had very strong views about the righteousness of their own
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positions. So this, this looking at it from the other guy's point of view was a self-educating way
00:24:09.400
to say, you know what, I, it might be more productive to use this tool in my toolbox rather than another.
00:24:16.280
And what I learned from him in this is that not every fight is worth it to concentrate on the fights
00:24:22.920
that are pivotal at his level and to make sure that everybody feels like they're heard.
00:24:28.700
So another issue or big decision Eisenhower faced as Supreme Allied Commander was towards the end of
00:24:35.080
the war when they started discovering the concentration camps. What was his response? How did he decide,
00:24:41.820
how did he implement sort of his higher level strategy thinking on what to do with this issue?
00:24:46.800
Well, one of the major issues for the impending victorious Allied forces was how Germany was going
00:24:56.180
to be treated after the war. And the shocking discovery of the internment camps, the death camps really
00:25:04.740
sent a shiver throughout Allied forces. Eisenhower liberated Ordruf, which was a sub camp of Buchenwald and
00:25:12.820
was just overcome. Actually, I think he kept his counsel. It was the scene was so bad that George
00:25:20.580
Patton was unable to go through parts of the camp for fear of getting sick. And the smell apparently was
00:25:27.100
just absolutely overwhelming. So Eisenhower looked at all this. And I think this is one of the remarkable
00:25:32.840
things about this story. He, he sort of instantly understood that unless this Holocaust was chronicled,
00:25:40.440
that 50 years from now, people would say it never happened. That night, he gets back to Patton's
00:25:46.540
headquarters and he writes to Marshall immediately and says, I want you to bring all of the reporters
00:25:52.900
you can send from the United States, members of Congress. And then everybody who was close to any of
00:25:59.760
those camps was ordered to go through them and to take photographs and, and take eyewitness,
00:26:05.340
eyewitness, uh, assessments of what was going on there. My own father, as a matter of fact,
00:26:10.860
went to Buchenwald. He was an amateur photographer and, and made a whole photo album of these atrocities
00:26:18.280
for precisely the same reason. I was raised on those photographs and even my own grandchildren have seen
00:26:23.800
them a terrible, terrible time. And what was interesting too, is, is Eisenhower made sure that
00:26:29.780
the German people, like in the villages that were nearby these camps, they, he made them come and
1.00
00:26:35.660
look at it and see what was going on underneath their noses. Well, he more than had them come
00:26:40.080
look at it. He made them give the victims of the Holocaust a dignified burial. And I think it was
00:26:46.540
deeply, deeply shattering for many people who turned a blind eye to what was going on.
00:26:52.340
Ike had absolutely no patience for the military who said they didn't know this was going on because
00:26:57.300
in his view, it was willful denial. And one of the big jobs, uh, during this particular period in the,
00:27:04.500
you know, the last weeks of, of the war was to make sure that as we liberated areas that we were
00:27:09.840
never seen to be adopting anything like the same tactics that the Germans did. I, what I mean there
0.94
00:27:16.400
is that we did not look like we had come as a conqueror and we were also holding these people
00:27:22.100
in detention. So that became a very challenging thing to make sure that the victims of the
00:27:27.760
Holocaust understood that friends had arrived and that they would be treated with a dignity henceforth
00:27:33.740
and, and their needs would be met to the extent that it was humanly possible at this stage of the
00:27:39.760
proceedings. And along with this, this was a thing that he had to balance as well as the one hand he had
00:27:45.140
a, he had a, he wanted to hold accountable the German people for what happened in their country.
00:27:50.020
But at the same time, Eisenhower, this thing, he wanted to move on. He thought he was thinking he
00:27:53.820
was very future oriented. So how did he do that? How did he hold people accountable at the same time?
00:27:59.680
Like, you know, not holding this grudge on them permanently forever where they could never move
00:28:04.300
on and, and, and go on to better things. Well, there was sort of a, a multifaceted way of looking
00:28:09.900
at this war criminals had to be held accountable. Those who said that they didn't know, no, but had
00:28:16.280
every prospect of knowing given where they were located, they too were dealt with in a certain
00:28:21.140
way. The German population itself not only was forced to give a dignified burial to those who
00:28:27.900
died, but in many cases, their housing was requisitioned for victims of the Holocaust to
00:28:34.580
live there for a time. And then, and then finally, I guess the United States army put together a video of
00:28:42.420
these atrocities and made many, many Germans see this film. I mean, they had to understand
0.97
00:28:47.920
what they did or what was done in their names in order to begin that period of renewal. Then after
00:28:54.360
that, of course, it was probably higher policy as well to assure that former Nazis were not running
0.95
00:29:00.720
the new government in Germany at any level. And, and then of course, the big work of establishing
00:29:07.880
NATO and eventually bringing West Germany into NATO in 1955 is another threshold moment. I would just
0.58
00:29:15.160
say here, Brett, which is really amazing and symbolic, but on exactly the 10th anniversary of
00:29:22.580
the Germans' unconditional surrender, the Eisenhower administration, Dwight Eisenhower himself,
00:29:28.080
brought Germany, West Germany into NATO. And we, as one German described it to me, that we held them
00:29:35.120
in our iron embrace until in fact, that country became a prosperous democracy. And eventually,
00:29:42.400
of course, in 1989, 90, you could say that World War II was finally over for Germany.
00:29:49.240
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:29:53.460
And now back to the show. So after the war, Eisenhower, he was, did something, he was president
00:29:59.440
of Columbia University. And all during this time, he was, there's lots of people pushing for him to
00:30:05.000
run for president. And he kept on telling them, no, I don't, I don't want that job. Leave me alone.
00:30:09.440
Quit asking me. What finally pushed him over the edge and caused him to throw his hat into the ring
00:30:15.860
and run for president? Well, I think it's pretty clear. Eisenhower was very worried about the fact that
00:30:23.340
the country was still on war footing. By this time, we're in the middle of a war in Korea. And he did
0.76
00:30:30.100
not believe in small wars. He didn't believe that it was in our national security interest to bleed
00:30:37.900
ourselves dry in terms of human capital and also financial expense. And he went to Korea right after
00:30:46.540
he became the president elect to see what the situation was there and eventually brought about
00:30:53.500
the armistice and in, in that summer. But that Korean war played a role in his decision to run
00:31:01.180
for president, just as the deteriorating financial situation, a lot of labor unrest after the war.
00:31:07.960
But I think the, probably the most important thing was, is it looked like there was a prospect that
00:31:12.840
the Republicans might win, uh, the 1952 election in that Harry Truman's popularity ratings were very
00:31:21.380
low. And if that were to happen, the isolationist wing of the Republican party would have come to
00:31:26.680
power. I believe that we could never go back to the way it was between the first war and the second
00:31:32.500
war. And so I think if Robert Taft, who was the key Senator, Mr. quote unquote, Mr. Republican,
00:31:40.440
who was destined to get that nomination, if, if Robert Taft had agreed to support NATO and America's
00:31:48.540
internationalist role in the world, Ike probably would not have run. He certainly had other plans
00:31:54.900
for himself after the war, but Robert Taft refused to support NATO. He had no liking for the United
00:32:01.100
Nations at all. He was against a lot of foreign aid and other things that Eisenhower thought were
00:32:05.840
crucial. So in fact, Eisenhower decides that he's going to run. And it was a dramatic thing. It's
00:32:13.040
one of those turning points, certainly for the future of the Republican party. And as it turned
00:32:18.660
out for the United States of America. And that was a big decision because to run for president,
00:32:23.480
he had to give up his commission as general. Yes, he did. And he had to give up his commission for
00:32:29.280
sure. And his longtime valet from World War II, who was still with him, reacted to the general's
00:32:37.320
news that he had given up his commission. And since he might or might not win the presidency,
00:32:42.480
his valet was free to find another job. And the valet, wonderful man named John Money said to his
00:32:48.960
boss, he said, you know, we've been together for a long time. And if you don't win the election,
00:32:53.820
I think the two of us can probably find a job somewhere else. Sergeant Money, a wonderful,
00:33:00.880
wonderful man, was the only African-American or the first African-American to be a pallbearer at
00:33:06.740
a president's funeral. And he's, he and his family are, he's long gone, but his family are still close
00:33:12.700
to mine. So Eisenhower gets elected president and he ran on the Republican ticket, won on the Republican
00:33:19.800
with the Republican party. But it didn't seem like he was much of a partisan. How would you describe
00:33:25.360
his governing style as president of the United States? Well, Brad, I think it's, it's, you could
00:33:31.920
argue that Eisenhower was the most nonpartisan president since George Washington or one of the
00:33:38.200
other military leaders, perhaps. He's certainly more nonpartisan than Ulysses S. Grant. But the,
00:33:45.420
I think the, the key here is that he had his difficulties with the Republican party in the
00:33:52.100
first term. And in the second term, he had some difficulty with the Democrats. So in a way you could
00:33:57.100
argue that he crafted his middle way pretty effectively because both sides, or I should say
00:34:04.900
the extreme wings of both parties, you know, felt quite skeptical about his governance. He had an
00:34:11.880
enormous popularity rating though, during his two terms, he averaging a mid to high sixties for his
00:34:18.740
two terms in office. Part of it was, I think how he organized the white house and he organized it
00:34:24.380
in some ways, very much like he organized a war effort. He surrounded himself by diverse viewpoints
00:34:30.980
and he wanted pushback. He thought that was the way he could understand the, the complexity and the
00:34:38.720
dimensions of any particular issue he wanted. Um, he would have a cabinet meeting once a week and all
00:34:45.660
cabinet members had to come, uh, to those meetings fully briefed on whatever the topic was, even if
00:34:51.080
it was outside of their own agency. And he would referee the debates and make sure that, uh, he
00:34:58.820
understood all the viewpoints. He had not only, you know, uh, conservative Republicans in his cabinet,
00:35:04.220
but also all the way through the spectrum to Democrats, a couple of Democrats. And after he
00:35:09.500
heard this vigorous debate, then he would go into his office and make a decision. After that, uh, there
00:35:15.300
would be a special unit at the white house that was there to implement the decisions and to make sure
00:35:21.200
everybody followed, you know, the decisions that the president had made. I think he also held a press
00:35:27.060
conference once a week because he thought it was important to retain his visibility with the public
00:35:33.040
and for them to understand what was going on at the white house and why he was handling things a
00:35:37.580
certain way. I think it's just important to add here. Finally, is that you can have all the greatest
00:35:43.400
strategy in the world, but if you don't have an organization, not only to pursue rigorously the facts
00:35:49.940
wherever they might lead, but also to implement the president's decisions and to make sure that a
00:35:54.780
diverse set of viewpoints are considered. It won't, you know, you can't, you can't exercise a
00:36:02.840
strategy without that kind of infrastructure. And unfortunately that whole system was dismantled
00:36:08.400
after his administration. Yeah. I mean, this is a sort of, you've seen a continuation of his
00:36:14.000
leadership style that he developed as a general, you know, he had, uh, he was only concerning himself
00:36:19.920
with the high level strategic thinking. And then he made sure that there was an organization in
00:36:24.180
place beneath that to take care and make sure everything else that a strategy gets, gets put into
00:36:29.580
action. That's right. And of course, delegation plays a huge role in that. He, he was almost a
00:36:34.880
genius at figuring out how much leeway people could be given. In other words, which, which individuals
00:36:41.780
struggle a little bit more to, to think about how to tackle an issue and the rest of it. Uh, and those
00:36:48.520
who he knew were brilliant and could, uh, carry on with the administration's viewpoint in mind.
00:36:54.560
So, and I think another key, of course, to delegation is to, uh, protect, you know, to have
00:37:01.640
the back of the people you've delegated to. Yeah. We, we talked about that earlier. He did that in
00:37:06.580
the military. He took responsibility for the failures and he let. Exactly. Quite rightly too.
00:37:12.160
Yeah. Well, and another interesting thing about the, um, office of the president of the United States,
00:37:17.340
I don't think a lot of people understand or realize is that the president of the United States has
00:37:22.000
two roles. First, he's, he's a politician. Like he's there to, to implement policy or to execute
00:37:26.800
policy. But on the other hand, he's also a figurehead for the entire country. Like in other
00:37:31.940
countries, like say in England, like the queen is the figurehead. And then you have the prime
00:37:35.180
ministers doing the, the, the dirty politics. Right. But in the president, those, those things are
00:37:40.360
in one, and there can be, sometimes there's contradictory, they contradict each other. Eisenhower
00:37:46.240
somehow was able to resolve those conflicting roles in the presidency. How do you think he did that?
00:37:52.000
Well, first of all, actually, I would say there are probably three different roles. Uh, one would
00:37:56.960
be head of state, one would be head of the executive branch, and the other would be head of the,
00:38:01.040
your political party. And it's been very hard for some presidents to reconcile these contradictory
00:38:07.540
roles. Eisenhower believed that unity of purpose or to unite the country behind a set of policies is
00:38:15.140
what he called the middle way. And to do that, he had to, to serve as the figure that could bring
00:38:20.540
everybody together. He was not though disconnected from his role as chief executive or as head of his
00:38:28.680
party, but he didn't, he didn't display that as much as other presidents had, because he thought
00:38:34.940
that that would be at cross purposes with the larger goal of uniting the country. As today, we see
00:38:41.020
presidents who are largely parties or those that combine that with being a chief executive. But this
00:38:48.820
idea of being the uniter, at least in the public perception, uh, is not something that, uh, we've
00:38:56.320
seen too much of since his era. So he was, he's still, he was still doing politics, but he did it in the
00:39:01.540
background. Yeah, he did it where, where that it was, it was out of sight. And actually, Brad, I would say
00:39:08.080
that's probably one of the reasons why his leadership style has been misunderstood for so long
00:39:12.700
because we're so used to valuing the bully pulpit, but Eisenhower really believed that the bully pulpit
00:39:21.340
could be useful at some times, but it could be counterproductive in meeting goals if it was used
00:39:27.200
at the wrong time. So he developed an idea about, uh, not, not singling out personalities, not turning
00:39:34.820
issues into personality, uh, confrontations, uh, because this way it'd be very, very hard not only
00:39:42.320
to unite the country, but secondly, of course, to get that person ever to cooperate with you or his
00:39:48.860
allies. Today, we see that we've become so tribalized that, uh, this exchange of insults only hardens
00:39:56.780
the bases of these political parties. And that's something that I wanted to avoid. In any case,
00:40:03.620
this was his strategy. Uh, maybe I'm not going to say it was unique to him, but it certainly was out of
00:40:10.620
sight for many people. And so we still see today many people who analyze his presidency and think
00:40:17.960
that he wasn't involved in issues that he was deeply involved in just in a behind the scenes way.
00:40:24.440
Well, speaking of this idea that he had about just dealing with people and governing of this idea of
00:40:29.340
never dealing with personalities, he had to deal with this in his first term because in his own
00:40:34.140
party, there's a guy, Joseph McCarthy, who was stirring up trouble, accusing people of, of communism
00:40:40.260
and Eisenhower had to deal with it because it was causing problems within his own party and
00:40:44.120
preventing him to get stuff done. But as you said, he didn't go after McCarthy directly. He did this
00:40:50.180
sort of kind of behind the scenes thing to, to manage him. Well, there are two, two reasons for
00:40:56.340
that, uh, strategically. First of all, the president of the United States cannot censure a member of the
00:41:03.940
United States Senate or the house of representatives. We have three co-equal branches of government.
00:41:09.180
So it would not be analogous to comparisons that are made with, uh, any of our leaders today who one
00:41:15.420
side of the other thinks is, uh, you know, it's using demagogic, uh, arguments because as a co-equal
00:41:22.120
branch of government, which was the Senate, only the Senate could censure Joseph McCarthy. And actually
00:41:28.860
the Senate supported Joseph McCarthy. And this was the president's own political party. So he had to,
00:41:35.820
he had to use surgery rather than you might say, you know, bombardment of this particular problem
00:41:42.400
because his own party needed to, you know, survive, uh, this really toxic confrontation that McCarthy
00:41:51.500
had, had begun. Now, the other thing about McCarthy is that he was a junior Senator. He wasn't, uh,
00:41:57.520
in the leadership at all. And so Eisenhower decided as a, as a second way of looking at this is that he
00:42:04.740
would not give McCarthy the thing that McCarthy wanted most. Joseph McCarthy wanted to be elevated
00:42:10.880
to a level where he could be in a direct dialogue with the president of the United States because
00:42:17.980
he had presidential ambitions of his own. And Ike said, I'm going to deprive this guy of the one
00:42:23.460
thing he wants most, which is to engage the office of the presidency in an unworthy debate about, um,
00:42:32.080
you know, these, uh, many fallacious accusations that McCarthy made. Uh, and so, uh, today, you know,
00:42:38.640
there is some resonance to that, but still Eisenhower's own handling of this is still not
00:42:43.400
understood because the third pillar of his strategy was to work behind the scenes with members of the
00:42:49.640
Republican party to make them understand that this, the activities of Senator McCarthy were toxic,
00:42:58.460
unjustified, and very possibly ultimately damaging for the party itself. And, and, uh, it turned out to
00:43:06.300
be the case. The army McCarthy hearings at the end of this drama revealed McCarthy for who he was and
00:43:12.680
the Senate finally censured the Senator. But this idea that the president of the United States could
00:43:18.100
have done anything to stop McCarthy is just wrong. It was up to the Senate colleagues and he worked,
00:43:23.940
Eisenhower worked very adroitly behind the scenes to help them understand that, uh, they had to take
00:43:28.920
measures. And I imagine this, this took a lot of, I mean, all throughout his presidency, he had this,
00:43:33.560
he was very principled in this middle way and his style of governing. And I'm sure he was getting
00:43:38.520
pressured all the time, you know, saying you need to, you need to confront McCarthy directly. You need
00:43:43.080
to, you know, hit the bully pulpit and say that, you know, but he had to resist that pressure all
00:43:47.620
throughout his presidency. He was under enormous pressure. He was under pressure from people in
00:43:52.380
his administration. He was under pressure from family members. He was under pressure from everybody,
00:43:57.160
but he truly, but he understood he did not have the power or the authority to censure Senator
00:44:04.460
McCarthy. What he had to do is create the condition so that Senator McCarthy's own colleagues would do
00:44:10.200
it. And it took longer than I know he liked, but that's just the reality of our constitutional
00:44:15.520
government. In the meantime, he managed to preserve the integrity of the presidency itself by not
00:44:21.640
quote unquote, getting down into the gutter with that guy and allowing McCarthy to set the rhetorical
00:44:28.860
agenda. Ike usable, he pulpit all right. He just never mentioned Senator McCarthy. He was out giving
00:44:34.480
speeches about, he'd say, you can't fight communism by destroying America or the only, the only, only
00:44:43.380
Americans can hurt America. He really believed that we had a choice about whether or not we were going to
0.97
00:44:50.360
allow this kind of unwarranted accusations to occur. In the meantime, of course, he also had an internal
00:44:58.240
security system as Truman had to actually, you know, make proper investigations. But certainly the
00:45:06.320
McCarthy effort was over the top and out of bounds.
00:45:10.800
So another big issue he faced as president was the Brown versus Board of Education decision in the Supreme
00:45:16.240
Court. And, you know, as the head of the executive branch, his job is to enforce decisions or decisions
00:45:23.300
made by the Supreme Court. But this was an issue that was fraught with a lot of, you know, it was just a
00:45:29.380
really highly contentious issue. How did Eisenhower handle enforcing the Brown versus Board of Education
00:45:35.260
decision? I think if there's one thing about some of the scholarship, not all of it that's out there
00:45:40.120
today that distresses me, it is simply some people interpreting what Eisenhower meant by some very
00:45:47.200
forceful words. I don't know why there's any question about it, but repeatedly from the campaign
00:45:53.060
through the first State of the Union address and on and on, Eisenhower said that his strategy was to
00:46:00.700
desegregate everything that the federal government controlled, which he pretty much accomplished by the
00:46:06.560
end of his eight years. Let's remember that Brown versus Board of Education was a measure that came before
00:46:13.780
the Supreme Court that called for the desegregation of schools. But by this time, Dwight Eisenhower, because he
00:46:22.980
controlled the District of Columbia, had already desegregated Washington, D.C. schools and actually the
00:46:29.680
city, the District of Columbia itself. So this idea that he would do what he could control is what a good
00:46:36.340
strategist would say. This is what I can accomplish in eight years. A change in the hearts and minds of
00:46:42.220
the public in general is going to be a very, very tough row to hoe and it's going to take time. Now, with
1.00
00:46:48.300
respect to Brown versus Board of Education, it was his Supreme Court appointee as chairman, that would be
00:46:54.900
Earl Warren, who was the one who produced that result in the Supreme Court. And Eisenhower had absolutely no
00:47:02.440
problem enforcing a set of, enforcing a Supreme Court decision that he agreed with. I'd like to single out
00:47:10.560
David Nichols' wonderful book called A Matter of Justice, which was really a turning point in the
00:47:16.060
understanding of Eisenhower's policy on civil rights. Let's not also forget that he was the first president
00:47:23.340
since Reconstruction to achieve passing a civil rights bill in 1957.
00:47:28.760
And another thing that was really controversial that he did is he sent in the 101st Airborne. It
00:47:34.720
was in Arkansas, right, to enforce desegregation.
0.83
00:47:37.680
Yes, Eisenhower believed in the idea of the appearance of overwhelming force. That particular
00:47:43.280
decision to send the 101st Airborne came after Governor Falbus refused to enforce Brown versus
00:47:49.540
Board of Education. The president gave Falbus a chance to do the right thing after a meeting. And when
00:47:56.080
Falbus didn't do the right thing and stepped back from the assurances he made the president at that
00:48:01.920
meeting, the 101st Airborne was called into action. What they did was to help escort and protect
00:48:09.680
nine African-American students as they made their way to Central High School for the beginning of the
00:48:16.600
school year. Of course, unfortunately, and this is where the federal government could only do so much,
00:48:22.040
whether or not the schools remained public schools was really up to each state of the union.
00:48:29.440
So unfortunately, the following year, the state took it upon themselves to cancel classes. And,
00:48:37.640
you know, we're still having this struggle. As we know, we do have everything desegregated,
00:48:44.500
but we're still having this terrible struggle. But it is worth noting that Eisenhower used federal
00:48:50.160
forces to protect the African-American youngsters who were being harassed and threatened by a white mob.
00:48:57.260
And again, like, you know, he got criticized because he, people felt that was, he was just
00:49:01.080
overstepping his bounds. It was, you know, tyranny. But at the same time, he was also getting
00:49:05.340
criticized. He got criticized throughout his presidency that he didn't do enough for civil
00:49:09.260
rights as well. And as again, it's sort of like a theme that you see throughout his, you know, even as a
00:49:13.600
general, his career, like he was really committed to this, this principled middle way. And he understood that
00:49:21.640
Well, here's the thing about the middle way. In his mind, the middle way was the middle ground
00:49:26.700
where people could come together from both sides and compose their differences and find compromises
00:49:33.480
that would lead to progress. As it is now, we're in a winner and loser situation where we either get
00:49:39.580
everything we want or we don't cooperate. And of course, that's, would have been an anathema to him
00:49:44.880
that progress is key. And that middle way was the area in the middle that could bring people
00:49:51.920
into that place where a progress could be realized. And I think also that it is worth noting that the
00:50:02.260
idea behind a middle way is what I would call devising sustainable strategies. Everybody can have a
00:50:10.660
strategy, but if it isn't sustainable, because it's actually built on something that isn't universally
00:50:16.060
agreed, or at least generally agreed, then it's not sustainable. And then you get thrown back,
00:50:21.940
back on it next time around. Actually, if you look at the things that he undertook in his presidential
00:50:27.900
career, it's remarkable how many of the frameworks he put into place are still with us today.
00:50:34.120
So we talked earlier, part of his leadership strategy or his understanding of leadership
00:50:39.120
was that a leader, he has to take care of personal issues himself because the morale of the people
00:50:46.760
you're leading is often dependent upon what the leader looks like. If they're optimistic,
00:50:51.600
people are going to be optimistic. And that can be lonely because you might want to grouse,
00:50:57.260
you might have just doubts, you might get depressed. So who was Eisenhower's inner circle that he would
00:51:04.920
go to so he could get some support or sort of vent? Because if he couldn't do that with his
00:51:10.820
subordinates, because he was really adamant about keeping that sort of distance between leader and
00:51:16.200
subordinate. Well, let me take the leader and subordinate thing here first. I understand it.
00:51:22.140
He wanted to be in a position to be unencumbered in his relationship with his colleagues and
00:51:31.760
subordinates at work, be unencumbered from the social aspect because of potential for skewing your
00:51:38.940
thinking. So he wanted to come in and have a highly professionalized environment that, you know,
00:51:46.100
was not colored by a social relationship. Let's put it that way. Okay. And so he obviously depended
00:51:53.400
on having friends elsewhere. There were a number of rules in the Eisenhower orbit, and that was that
00:51:59.780
there are no favors to be asked. He told, I mean, I discovered this in the scholarship and in books
00:52:05.840
written by his colleagues, many, many comments about if anybody calls you and says that they're a friend
00:52:11.580
of mine, ignore it, give them no help because we don't do that. Right. So, you know, that of course,
00:52:19.760
you know, to some degree, you know, reflected the fact that of his friends, he wanted them to be
00:52:25.200
friends and not to make the situation more complex. But even ultimately, when somebody has that much
00:52:32.580
power, it's a very distorting thing for a lot of relationships. In the book, I had some fun thinking
00:52:39.100
of the many relationships that get distorted by this kind of power, including one's relationship
00:52:44.400
with one's doctor. And at the end of the day, I think it's just inevitable that anybody in that
00:52:52.760
position of authority is going to be relying pretty much on his family. And that is the inner circle.
00:52:58.580
I benefited from having an older brother who was extremely conservative Republican and a younger
00:53:05.320
brother who was a liberal Republican. So he got lots of pushback and lots of differing advice,
00:53:11.980
even from his own family, not to mention my father, John, who was one of his confidants.
00:53:16.900
Well, that was some of the interesting things about his relationship with his brothers and the
00:53:20.580
discussions they would have via letters. But sometimes they would like spill out into public.
00:53:24.560
You know, he'd get asked at a press conference, your brother Edgar said this and like Eisenhower to be
00:53:29.600
like, well, that's Edgar's opinion. I don't care.
00:53:31.640
Yeah. And in one case, he says, oh, yeah, that's Edgar. He's been criticizing me since I was five
00:53:36.500
years old. I don't know. I enjoyed looking into these letters. I knew Edgar Eisenhower. I mean,
00:53:44.800
he was quite a charismatic character and very sure of his opinion. And, you know, God love him. But
00:53:56.220
he certainly gave his younger brother, the president, a run for his money. And I think at the
00:54:02.940
end of the day, Ike would say that it was helpful, just as he relied on Milton Eisenhower, his younger
00:54:08.160
brother, for, you know, a view of what the liberals were saying and thinking in his party. But at the
00:54:14.360
end of the day, Brett, and I think this is the thing that stood out for me most, he really believed in
00:54:18.880
the privacy of heart and mind. He didn't like fussers and cluckers. And he wanted to go into
00:54:25.940
his quiet space to process what he'd seen, to process what he's hearing, and to make his own
00:54:32.540
decisions. And then he would stick with them and live by them. And I think there's a kind of a
00:54:41.880
Yeah, he took up painting. That was one of the things he did when he was processing information.
00:54:48.440
Well, it has been noted that his landscapes are very serene. As a matter of fact, I have a couple
00:54:54.500
here that he gave me. And they look so calm. And of course, you know that what he was dealing with
00:55:02.340
at the time wasn't calm at all. I have one painting from 1957. He was undoubtedly working on the deployment
00:55:09.380
of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. And the aftermath of the launching of the Soviet
00:55:15.820
Sputnik into space. And you would have no idea from looking at this landscape that that's what
00:55:22.380
was on his mind. But he's very absorbed by color. And like anything else, it's like people get this
00:55:28.660
from playing golf or going out and engaging in athletics or sailing or something. By the time
00:55:34.280
you get back, your brain's been somewhere else and you can think about things more clearly.
00:55:38.780
So we talked about how Eisenhower was sort of aloof from people that he led. But at the same time,
00:55:42.960
he was very interested in people. And you highlight these moments that people had with Eisenhower where
00:55:48.820
you could see he was always thinking about people and their needs and their wants. And he'd just do
00:55:53.880
little small, really thoughtful things that would just floor people because they weren't going to
00:55:59.820
expect that from the president of the United States. Were there any moments like that that really
00:56:04.180
stood out to you? Yes. I'd just like to say one thing first is that I would use a different word
00:56:10.240
than aloof, that he was not engaged socially. In other words, he didn't like to mix business and
00:56:15.980
pleasure would be another way of saying that because it interferes with the way you think about an issue,
00:56:22.760
an issue that needs clarity of thought because of the relationship. You know, there are always
00:56:27.240
complaints that people in government decide, make their decisions based on the last person they've
00:56:33.020
spoken to. Well, he wanted to avoid that kind of a trap. Now, with respect to, I think the thing,
00:56:40.400
and I had an opportunity over the years to do a fair amount in the leadership and strategic leadership
00:56:48.360
area. And character, of course, plays a huge role in any leader's capacity to build a bond of trust with
00:56:55.700
those he's leading. And a huge part of that is how you treat those people. And in this respect,
00:57:03.800
small gestures really matter. I outline in my book so many small things he did that let his men
00:57:12.500
during the war know that he was not, that this wasn't about him. It was about us. Okay. And one of the
00:57:21.080
ways he did that, rather ironically, is he never wore a helmet. I'd almost challenge anybody to find
00:57:27.160
a picture of Ike with a helmet on because he didn't want to pretend he was out there on a day-to-day
00:57:33.160
basis facing the same physical dangers they were, though sometimes he was in some physical danger.
00:57:38.960
You know, he passes up honors and awards that only go to GIs, like the Congressional Medal of Honor,
00:57:45.040
etc. But what I, the gestures I liked the most, or at least I witnessed and therefore was able to write
00:57:52.580
about, were the gestures made to people who couldn't do anything for him. They couldn't vote for him.
00:57:58.240
They couldn't, you know, they couldn't recommend them, recommend him to anybody of any importance.
00:58:05.020
The small gestures he made to kids he'd never met before or GIs who, after the war, made his acquaintance.
00:58:13.060
And it's moving to me because that's what the army calls when no one was looking, right? What are
00:58:19.600
people doing when no one is looking? And I think that, that benchmark is where you can begin to
00:58:25.960
discuss what character really looks like. As you're researching and writing this book,
00:58:31.480
was there anything new that you learned about your grandfather? Well, I'll tell you, Brett, for,
00:58:36.480
I was raised to compartmentalize my grandfather's career from what I knew of him as a grandfather. I've
00:58:42.740
already made that point on numerous occasions because I think it's important to know that I
00:58:48.380
don't expect everyone to agree with his decisions, but I do, I did want to bring something new to this
00:58:57.180
book that I had, you know, insight into, which is, you know, how he handled things and how he thought
00:59:03.360
about things. And so for the first time in my life, I really put it all together. I mean,
00:59:10.260
what I knew of him with his policies. And there were times when I would read somebody's scholarship
00:59:15.580
and they'd, they'd say, well, he did this because, and then I thought, well, no, that wasn't really it
00:59:20.540
because he used to say at the dinner table, dot, dot, dot. Right. So I think, I think I'm not going to
00:59:27.720
say I was surprised by this, but I guess I will always, for as long as I live, will always be
00:59:34.040
in awe of how he handled the burden of this power and this, and, and consequential leadership. And,
00:59:44.140
and in the face of that never became hard or cynical. I just saw no signs of it. And I, I,
00:59:51.320
not only, it's not just me. I mean, if you read the books of his associates, they were,
00:59:56.140
they were all sort of amazed that he could still be an optimistic forward-thinking person after he'd
01:00:03.420
been to some of the darkest places humankind has ever been. And, um, I think part of the way he did
01:00:10.480
that is that he believed in something bigger than himself. This wasn't about him. This is about our
01:00:16.320
country. And it was about securing the peace for a world that had seen catastrophes beyond anything
01:00:23.900
imaginable for today's generation. That is a world war two. And, um, as he once said about this
01:00:31.320
higher cause, he says, a man just has to forget his fortunes and he forgot his fortunes and was able
01:00:39.500
to serve his country. I think in a, certainly a, uh, genuine way and in a way that was, uh, full of
01:00:47.380
dedication and integrity. Well, Susan, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn
01:00:52.340
more about the book and your work? Well, I think, uh, probably my website apologies to everybody that
01:00:58.640
it isn't more fulsome than it should be, but a lot of information about the book is on there.
01:01:02.940
That's a www.SusanEisenhower.com. And, uh, I could be followed on Twitter, but I sometimes find myself
01:01:10.880
simply speechless to know what I should be saying about the current situation. I look forward to
01:01:16.720
engaging with anybody. And for those who are interested in a copy of the book, I can be reached
01:01:22.180
through my website and would be happy to get a book plate in the mail.
01:01:26.100
Fantastic. Well, Susan Eisenhower, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
01:01:28.960
Well, I just want to thank you, Brett, for this opportunity. And, uh, you've got a, you've got a,
01:01:33.660
a wonderful website there and I just wish you the best of luck.
01:01:40.180
My guest today was Susan Eisenhower. She's the author of the book,
01:01:42.520
How Ike Led. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more
01:01:46.240
information about her work at our website, SusanEisenhower.com. Also check out our show notes
01:01:49.980
at aom.is slash how Ike led, where you can find links to resources, where you delve deeper into
01:01:54.600
this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
01:02:05.700
artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles
01:02:09.000
we've written over the years, including a series about the leadership style of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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01:02:37.280
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