5.5 Politics and Ideology in the 1950s
In the post–World War II years the Republican Party faced a fork in the road. Its complete lack of electoral success since the Depression led to a battle within the party about how to revive its electoral prospects. The more conservative faction, represented by Ohio senator Robert Taft (son of former president William Howard Taft) and backed by many party activists and financiers such as J. Howard Pew, sought to take the party further to the right, particularly in economic matters, by rolling back New Deal programs and policies. On the other hand, the more moderate wing of the party, led by men such as New York governor Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller, sought to embrace and reform New Deal programs and policies. There were further disagreements among party members about how involved the United States should be in the world. Issues such as foreign aid, collective security, and how best to fight communism divided the party.
Initially, the moderates, or “liberals,” won control of the party with the nomination of Thomas Dewey in 1948. Dewey’s shocking loss to Truman, however, emboldened conservatives, who rallied around Taft as the 1952 presidential primaries approached. With the conservative banner riding high in the party, General Dwight Eisenhower (“Ike”), most recently North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supreme commander, felt obliged to join the race in order to beat back the conservatives and “prevent one of our great two Parties from adopting a course which could lead to national suicide.” In addition to his fear that Taft and the conservatives would undermine collective security arrangements such as NATO, he also berated the “neanderthals” in his party for their anti–New Deal stance. Eisenhower felt that the best way to stop communism was to undercut its appeal by alleviating the conditions under which it was most attractive. That meant supporting New Deal programs. There was also a political calculus to Eisenhower’s position. He observed, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”1
The primary contest between Taft and Eisenhower was close and controversial. Taft supporters claimed that Eisenhower stole the nomination from Taft at the convention. Eisenhower, attempting to placate the conservatives in his party, picked California congressman and virulent anticommunist Richard Nixon as his running mate. With the Republican nomination sewn up, the immensely popular Eisenhower swept to victory in the 1952 general election, easily besting Truman’s hand-picked successor, Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower’s popularity boosted Republicans across the country, leading them to majorities in both houses of Congress.
The Republican sweep in the 1952 election, owing in part to Eisenhower’s popularity, translated into few tangible legislative accomplishments. Within two years of his election, the moderate Eisenhower saw his legislative proposals routinely defeated by an unlikely alliance of conservative Republicans, who thought Eisenhower was going too far, and liberal Democrats, who thought he was not going far enough. For example, in 1954 Eisenhower proposed a national healthcare plan that would have provided federal support for increasing healthcare coverage across the nation without getting the government directly involved in regulating the healthcare industry. The proposal was defeated in the house by a 238–134 vote with a swing bloc of seventy-five conservative Republicans joining liberal Democrats voting against the plan.2 Eisenhower’s proposals in education and agriculture often suffered similar defeats. By the end of his presidency, Ike’s domestic legislative achievements were largely limited to expanding social security; making Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) a cabinet position; passing the National Defense Education Act; and bolstering federal support to education, particularly in math and science.
As with any president, however, Eisenhower’s impact was bigger than just legislation. Ike’s “middle of the road” philosophy guided his foreign policy as much as his domestic agenda. He sought to keep the United States from direct interventions abroad by bolstering anticommunist and pro-capitalist allies. Ike funneled money to the French in Vietnam fighting the Ho Chi Minh–led communists, walked a tight line between helping Chiang Kai-Shek’s Taiwan without overtly provoking Mao Zedong’s China, and materially backed groups that destabilized “unfriendly” governments in Iran and Guatemala.
Using a relatively new tool at their disposal in the form of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Eisenhower administration launched Operation Ajax in Iran at the behest of the British. The 1953 operation sought to destabilize the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh under the auspices of likening his policies to socialism. In reality, his push to nationalize Iranian oil meant to reclaim a precious natural resource to help fund modernization and relief efforts within the country. This would end the British near-monopoly on Iranian oil, hence their appeal to the U.S. for help—and U.S. oil corporations (alongside British and Dutch) would find themselves rewarded with new contracts. Once the coup succeeded, a joint U.S.-U.K. effort reverted Iran back into a monarchy and away from its clear attempt at a democratic republic. European and American oil extraction alongside other economic interests spread in the region at the cost of Iranian autonomy and the CIA continued to operate there until 1979.3
If you have difficulty viewing the video above, use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceDBZeolIM.
Likewise, in Guatemala the CIA used Operation PBSuccess to depose another democratically elected leader, Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz continued the democratization policies of his predecessor, Juan Jose Arevalo, some of which included land and labor reforms. The reforms, however, cut into the bottom line of the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) which had been exploiting fruit cultivation and Guatemalan workers for decades with little oversight. At the behest of at least two members of his administration with financial stakes in the United Fruit Company (John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles), Eisenhower became convinced that the Arbenz government’s policies leaned socialist enough to justify another coup. Once Arbenz was removed, the U.S. installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo. Guatemala found itself plunged into a bloody civil war for the next forty years.4
The centerpiece of Ike’s Soviet policy, meanwhile, was the threat of “massive retaliation,” or the threat of nuclear force in the face of communist expansion, thereby checking Soviet expansion without direct American involvement. While Ike’s “mainstream” “middle way” won broad popular support, his own party was slowly moving away from his positions. By 1964 the party had moved far enough to the right to nominate Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, the most conservative candidate in a generation. The political moderation of the Affluent Society proved little more than a way station on the road to liberal reforms and a more distant conservative ascendancy.
Notes
- Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 180, 201, 185.
- Steven Wagner, Eisenhower Republicanism Pursuing the Middle Way (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 15
- “Operation Ajax”, Central Intelligence Agency, September 1st, 1953, Public Domain, Internet Archive.
- Operation PBSuccess: The United States and Guatemala 1952-1954, Nicholas Cullather, Washington D.C., Center for the Study of Intelligence (CIA), 1994.
