National Affairs: Last Days

When an old friend, General of the Army Omar Bradley, visited him recently in the White House, President Eisenhower asked: “Omar, what’s it like to be in private life?” “It’s great,” answered Bradley with a smile. “You still have decisions to make—but you don’t have to make them yesterday.”

In the week that closed out his eight years in office, Dwight Eisenhower had a final briefing for John Kennedy, held his 193rd and last presidential press conference, greeted the last ambassador accredited to the U.S. during his stay in office (goateed Konan Bedie of the Ivory Coast, at 26 the youngest ambassador ever to serve in Washington). Ike also delivered his final televised presidential address to the nation. It was his farewell message, and he meant it to be remembered.

In the half-hour talk, he summed up his own major disappointment in office: “I wish I could say that a lasting peace is in sight.” He also issued a warning to the nation. The U.S., he said, must resist the temptation to meet each new crisis with “spectacular and costly action.” Instead, “each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs—balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped-for advantage . . . balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.”

Then Ike, a 40-year veteran of Army life, turned to what he, surprisingly to some, considered a danger of a different order: the possible domination of Government policy by “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions” and an “immense” military establishment. “In the councils of Government,” he said, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Nor, he added, should free scholarship become the handmaiden of the Federal Government. “The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a Government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money … is gravely to be regarded. We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”*

For his own future, Dwight Eisenhower had decided that he was going to write, to talk, and to work for his ideas of government. As he bade godspeed to his friends of the White House years, he also served notice that they would be seeing him in the future: “Believe me, I’m going to be heard from.”

* The message stirred New York’s irreverent Daily News to a catchy headline: BEWARE OF EGGHEADS, MUNITIONS LOBBY: IKE.