Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 The National Security Discourse: Ideology, Political Culture, and State Making
- 2 Magna Charta: The National Security Act and the Specter of the Garrison State
- 3 The High Price of Peace: Guns-and-Butter Politics in the Early Cold War
- 4 The Time Tax: American Political Culture and the UMT Debate
- 5 “Chaos and Conflict and Carnage Confounded”: Budget Battles and Defense Reorganization
- 6 Preparing for Permanent War: Economy, Science, and Secrecy in the National Security State
- 7 Turning Point: NSC-68, the Korean War, and the National Security Response
- 8 Semiwar: The Korean War and Rearmament
- 9 The Iron Cross: Solvency, Security, and the Eisenhower Transition
- 10 Other Voices: The Public Sphere and the National Security Mentality
- 11 Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Iron Cross: Solvency, Security, and the Eisenhower Transition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 The National Security Discourse: Ideology, Political Culture, and State Making
- 2 Magna Charta: The National Security Act and the Specter of the Garrison State
- 3 The High Price of Peace: Guns-and-Butter Politics in the Early Cold War
- 4 The Time Tax: American Political Culture and the UMT Debate
- 5 “Chaos and Conflict and Carnage Confounded”: Budget Battles and Defense Reorganization
- 6 Preparing for Permanent War: Economy, Science, and Secrecy in the National Security State
- 7 Turning Point: NSC-68, the Korean War, and the National Security Response
- 8 Semiwar: The Korean War and Rearmament
- 9 The Iron Cross: Solvency, Security, and the Eisenhower Transition
- 10 Other Voices: The Public Sphere and the National Security Mentality
- 11 Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Neither Harry Truman nor Dwight Eisenhower had much to say when they met shortly after the election in November 1952. Truman had brought the president–elect to the White House for a briefing by top officials. The briefing had gone well, or so Truman thought, and had given his successor a good tutorial in the difficult problems that confronted the country. Eisenhower had a different recollection. Grim and uncomfortable throughout the meeting, he said little and was convinced that he had learned even less. Inauguration Day saw no improvement. Truman had declined Eisenhower's invitation to return to Missouri on board the presidential plane, and Eisenhower had refused to join Truman for refreshments before the ceremony. According to some accounts, the two men traded insults or sat in stony silence as they rode together to the Capitol. It was a hostile transition, as Stephen Ambrose has said, and a suitable capstone to one of the most vicious political campaigns in recent memory.
Conservative Republicans were unable to get Senator Taft on the ticket in 1952, but they controlled the party's convention and wrote a campaign platform that vilified the Truman administration and the Democratic party as being riddled with corruption, full of Communists, and basically un–American.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Cross of IronHarry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954, pp. 366 - 418Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998