Fifty-three years ago today, the body of Dwight David Eisenhower arrived at Washington National Cathedral. The beloved architect of the Normandy invasion and two-term Republican president had died the day before, March 28, 1969, at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
"Ike," as he was known in the Army and by a grateful nation, had outlived many of the iconic military commanders and political leaders from World War II: George Patton, George Marshall, and Douglas MacArthur -- and, of course, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, had all gone before him.
But Eisenhower's old confidant, Omar Bradley, was there. Others included J. Lawton "Lightning Joe" Collins, who'd led the VII Corps at Normandy, and Arthur W. Radford, the Navy admiral who'd gone with President-elect Eisenhower to Korea in 1952 and was appointed by Ike as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ike's brothers, Milton and Edgar Eisenhower, were pallbearers, although Milton took ill and was replaced by Andrew J. Goodpaster, a much-decorated combat veteran who became Ike's chief of staff after the war and later served as superintendent at West Point and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
As I've written in this space previously, Richard Nixon seems an unlikely choice, even now, as a running mate for a professional soldier-turned-candidate who mistrusted career politicians. But Dwight Eisenhower hadn't lived in the United States for years, wasn't active in the GOP, and didn't know too many other Republicans very well.
According to Jeffrey Frank, author of a splendid book about the relationship between Nixon and Eisenhower, Ike didn't even initially realize that the vice presidential nomination was his choice to make. But as Eisenhower later told Scotty Reston of the New York Times, his political advisers furnished a paper with six or seven names and Nixon's "was on the list." California's conservative senator balanced out the ticket geographically and ideologically. He was also an internationalist, which in Republican Party politics of the day meant that Nixon was tough on communism while also supporting the Marshall Plan championed by Ike.
Although Eisenhower felt embarrassed by the 1952 political controversy that resulted in Nixon's famous "Checkers speech," Nixon didn't take the hints that he resign. Nor did he heed the cues four years later, despite gentle prodding from Eisenhower, who wanted to replace him on the 1956 Republican ticket.
It apparently grated on Ike's nerves when Nixon, in furtherance of his own Oval Office ambitions, began referring to the "Eisenhower-Nixon administration." This irritation seemingly became public in the summer of 1960, when Nixon was running for president and Charles Mohr of Time magazine asked the president for an example of a "major idea" of Nixon's that had been adopted by the administration.
"If you give me a week, I might think of one," Eisenhower responded. This off-the-cuff answer haunted Nixon -- the press had a field day with it, as did Jack Kennedy -- and Eisenhower himself came to regret it. In his own memoirs, Nixon quoted Ike as saying, "Dick, I could kick myself every time some jackass brings up that goddamn ‘give me a week' business." Nixon could be slippery, but there's no reason to doubt this account. Jeffrey Frank believes Eisenhower may have been answering matter-of-factly, intending no disrespect.
"At that point," Frank explained in a 2013 interview, "Eisenhower was holding press conferences every week. So he said ‘give me a week.' It literally meant that."
Frank's book opens in May of 1945, with Dick Nixon getting his first personal glimpse of Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon, a 32-year-old lieutenant commander mustering out of the Navy, was one of 4 million people lining the streets of New York City trying to catch a glimpse of the returning hero through the crowds and confetti.
Twenty-four years later, readers find Nixon sobbing upon learning of Eisenhower's death. But he was President Nixon by then, and he was the obvious person to give the eulogy. And so, on March 30, 1969, the man who'd been commander in chief for just over two months addressed his countrymen and the citizens of the world.
"When we think of his place in history, we think, inevitably, of the other giants of those days of World War II; and we think of the qualities of greatness and what his were that made his unique among all," Nixon said. "Once, perhaps without intending to do so, he, himself, put his finger on it. It was 1945, shortly after VE Day, at a ceremony in London's historic Guildhall. … In an eloquent address that day, Dwight Eisenhower said: ‘I come from the heart of America.'
"Perhaps no one sentence could better sum up what Dwight Eisenhower meant to a whole generation of Americans," Nixon continued. "He did come from the heart of America, not only from its geographical heart, but from its spiritual heart. He exemplified what millions of parents hoped that their sons would be: strong and courageous and honest and compassionate. And with his own great qualities of heart, he personified the best in America."
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.