in one. >> and he loved augusta national, did he not? >> he was 75 years old when he got that hole in one and said it was worth living his whole 75 years for. >> but i will tell you something, he almost got a sler second hole in one about a monto later. and he was heard as saying in a very loud voice, oh, please, noh no, no more holes in one. my office can't handle the mail. >> let's turn to a couple of aye final points a about your grandfather. he passed away at the age of 78 in 1969. president nixon said he was a citizen of the world. would he have considered himself that? >> i think so. that's kind of what the whole people to people thing was. yeah. >> what do you remember about his death? >> devastating. >> yeah, devastating. it truly was. >> i have to say because i, again, want to honor those of

you who served in world war ii who are with us here this evening, and i have to tell youa that i have some sense of what it was like to have a ut his relationship with your supreme o commander. after we put his body on the train that went from washington out to abilene, kansas, and mary and anne can tell -- each tell their own story on this, the thing i remember most is that we stopped in every little town along the way and at about 2:00 in the morning, because, you ju know, we couldn't sleep at all. i looked out the window and just as we were passing there was a sole, solitary figure standing next to the train as the train went past. saluting. and i never forgot that.g the >> i never forgot during the day, even in the most barren of

country sides, they were -- thee were just crowds on both sides of the tracks, and people were holding up signs saying we like ike, and i'll never forget thatl that and there was a political cartoon, too, and this one i'll take with me. but it was soldiers on the beach of normandy and the caption underneath is psst, pass the word along, it's ike. >> it was a very hard time - because not only losing him, he was so very important in our lives really, we had two sets of parents. he used to call us the kids. i always used to wonder what that made my parents. but to lose him was truly majora but ind think almost as bad was

for my grandmother to lose him and us to watch her. their relationship was so close. and the whole idea of her continuing without him was just youawful. and to see the grief in her face when you go back and look at the photographs during the funeral and everything, so many people try to be stoic, et cetera, and she tried. the grief is just so etched on her face. and we were feeling that firsthand. so it made it even more difficult. >> final question for all of you and this is rather open ended st you can add your own thoughts. what would you think of this gathering here today? what would he think about the institute and what you all have been talking about? >> why don't you go first. >> h he probably would say we talked too much. he no, i thinkwo he'd be absolutele delighted. certainly thrilled that people

who worked under him came back to the eisenhower -- gettysburgr college and intoday's events. he would be absolutely delighted with the gathering and, as i say, he probably would tell us we talked too much.be >> i think he'd be very honored that we were celebrating his 125th -- he might be a little shocked by the number -- but, yeah, i'm with anne. i think he might say that we said too much. int he would say it in a knee slapping g way. >> and he'd be proud of all of you who are here, the best of wo the best from his generation. >> absolutely. >> susan, you get the last word. [ applause ] >> i don't deserve the last word here except to say that i feel honored to be associated with

the eisenhower institute of gettysburg college and the college itself.ould b i think he'd be really thrilled. he was very interested in education, and i think he would be thrilled that so many of the students here at gettysburg college are engaged in the eisenhower institute and show, you know, enormous amount of promise. we are actually, i think, creating some excitement about public policy and political science and public policy and that's terrific. so here's the word, kids. he used to say, and, boy, did we ever hear this because he had al ow ymaxims that we heard all te time, drip-drip. w take your work seriously but never yourself. >> yeah, that's right. >> on what has been an important andek, ta historic week in wash, thank you for taking us back to another time, another era. anne eisenhower, mary jeanries eisenhower and susan eisenhower. for your insights, your stories and your good humor, thank you very much. [ applause ] to >> and our thanks to the

eisenhower institute and gett gettysburg college. thank you very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] the civil war every saturday at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern. we've covered the war extensively these past five years as many state and national historic sites and local civil war groups hosted events to mark the war's 150th anniversary. to watch any of these past programs or to find upcoming schedule information visit our website c-span.org/history. this is american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3 and in prime time on week

nights when congress is in recess. former naacp chairman julian bond died in august. on sunday, october 25, american history tv features an oral history with mr. bond where he remembers growing up in the segregated south. his involvement with the student nonviolent coordinating committee and his later political career. this is one of several oral histories with african-american leaders. they were conducted by the university of virginia's explorations in black leadership proje project. that's sunday october 25 at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span 3. each week american history tv's reel america brings you archival films that help provide context to today's public affairs issues. ♪

>> the united states army presents the big picture. an official report produced for the armed forces and the american people. now to show you part of the big picture, here is sar jent stuart queen. >> buy og rafies of our leaders whose lives have played a part in the fabric of our history. today the big picture brings you another story in which the army and the nation take particular pride. the story of eisenhower, the soldier. as narrated by raymond massey. >> the time is june, 1945.

>> the turn to his homeland. the european phase of the greatest war america ever fought is over. and part of the warmth with which the people of abilene, kansas, greet general dwight d. eisenhower reflects the deep joy of a nation approaching peace again. some of it is the kind of welcome any hometown might give a favorite son who has done a good job. but more than anything else, it is a tribute. a gratitude felt in every corner of the allied world, no less than in abilene. towards a man who stewarded the crusade to its victory. it was a crusade with many battles and many triumphs but it found its symbol in one day above all others. d-day, june 6, 1944. the invasion of for ttress euro.

the bold adventure hung the fate of war and freedom. it was because so much of man's hope had been wrapped up in the success of the adventure, found the hearts of the people open to him from europe to the town of his boyhood where the adventure of dwight d. eisenhower, the man, began. abilene, kansas, today -- a busy and proud town of almost -- wheatland is typical of the kind of town that comes to mind with the phrase grassroots america. the mark of the past is on it, but it does not live in the past. its streets and buildings bear testimony to a living and

growing america. one of its newest and proudest buildings is the eisenhower museum which carries forth the spirit and history of the eisenhower family of abilene. it is visited daily by citizens from all parts of the country ranging from dignitary to school boy. inside the museum the life of dwight eisenhower, boy and man, is depicted in a series of murals. from infancy that life had the flavor of grassroots america about it. eisenhower was born in 1890 in texas, of parents whose families migrated to pennsylvania from europe and to the american midwest. young eisenhower's parents lived in abilene before his birth and

it was abilene now a peaceful village of the plains that they returned when he was an infant. and it was here that he grou to maturity through a childhood that was active, eager and happy. an experience shared with devoted parents and spirited brothers, a childhood as rich in the important things of life as ever graced the development of any man. it was an active boyhood in which sports played an important part. he excelled at baseball, both in school and on a vacant lot next to his home. but football was his first love and his high school coach called him the most outstanding tackle in the valley. the active life was important but the greatest single staple of the eisenhower family life

was religious observance. the family home in abilene shows the influence of that serious religious conviction. the bible was the guide of family life and its chronicler as well. on the wall of the bedroom shared by dwight and his brother edgar still hangs the simple testament of faith. thy will be done. it was a home of patriotism as well as faith. and of respect for things of the mind. work, constant and hard work was also a staple of the family routine. the creamery where young eisenhower worked during his spare time while he was in school is still one of abilene's light industries. in this way and by these standards young dwight

eisenhower grew to a manhood the world would one day know well. he was 20 when he left abilene for the military academy at west point. many a great american has begun his march in history as a cadet at west point. ice ep hour was graduated from the military academy in 1915 and commissioned to second lieutenant of infantry. a new phase of life was beginning. in the summer of 1916 as a newly promoted first through tent stationed at ft. sam houston of texas he married mamie dowd of denver.

events in europe were forging a new phase of life for the entire world. world war i gave many a general his first experience with combat. young eisenhower was not among them. it brought him command of a tank in pennsylvania where he prepared troops of a new tank corps for overseas duty. his performance won the distinguished service medal. before he was able to get to europe the war ended. in the late 1920s after general staff school. major dwight d. eisenhower was assigned to france to prepare a guide book on battlefields in europe 679 it was his first direct experience with that continent.

with the '30s came other assignments. for four years he worked with mcarthur who was commander in chief of the philippine army to help work out a plan for its military of defense. ordered back to the states in december, 1939 lieutenant colonel eisenhower went to ft. louis as the 15th infantry regiment. in the dark spring of 1940 german armored divisions were crashing through holland and belgium. they were streaking destruction through europe's skies. beleaguered britain was standing alone.

the united states had passed the selective service act for what inevitably laid ahead. and the biggest challenge was to aid in that preparation. late in 1940 he was made chief of staff of the third division where his staff work brought him assignment as chief of staff of the ninth corps. in the summer of 1941 colonel eisenhower became chief of staff to walter krueger whose newly organized third army was preparing to participate in the most realistic war maneuvers by troops.

eisenhower's task was to work out a plan of defense. soon after the maneuvers was over came the bombing of pearl harbor. from almost this moment on the fate of the nation and the fate of general d. eisenhower would be inextricably bound together. called to washington in the first weeks after the war began, eisenhower went to work in the war plans office of the war department. among the plans formulated during this time was the central strategic determination to make an eventual attack, the allied effort.

covering the west wall of the eisenhower museum dramatizes the high spots of the next great sequence in the adventure involving the nation and the man whose ability to rise to grave responsibilities brought him rapid promotions. because an all-out channel invasion would be impossible before 1944 and because the need for offensive action was immediate in 1942 the allies undertook as a combined operation under the command of general dwight d. eisenhower the invasion of north africa. the minimum objective of this maneuver was to seize the main ports between casablanca and algiers. along the rim of the north african coast troops were ashore in lake november encountering resistance to surprise iingly sf

at casablanca. the commanders' hope was to push quickly east along the mediterranean and take the important posts. but a number of unfavorable circumstances including treacherous weather conditions prompted the commander to hold off on this vital assault. in the spring, however, troops of the second corps were able and tunis fell to the british first army. and with these victories came the end of the empire in after

ry ka. the allied leaders and the men who had fought under them proudly commemorated their victory. one of the greatest products of this victory in the words of the commander himself was the progress achieved in the welding of allied unity and a combat team showing the effects of growing ♪ ♪ the successful end of the campaign brought personal recognition of eisenhower throughout the world as a great leader. but the commander himself interpreted this recognition as proof that free men can find immunity the way to victory even against seemingly invincible odds.

the next big campaign, the invasion of sicily, brought further demonstration of his basic truth. allied troops took this vital rock in the summer of 1943. the effect of sicily's fall was electric. italy surrendered. the first of the axis partners to capitulate. and now the allies prepared for what was to be the most fiercely fought battle of the mediterranean war. the invasion of italy itself at salerno.

♪ ♪ through a miracle of courage and tenacity, troops of general mark clark's fifth army established a beachhead against overwhelming german odds and went on to take sallerno and the vital port of naples. with these victories although heavy fighting and important battles lay ahead, the first major objectives of the italian campaign were accomplished. allied forces were on european soil and would be able to pin down german troops far from the scene of the cross-channel invasion planned for the following year. president roosevelt visited the combat area with general eisenhower when he came over with the cairo conferences where the agreement was established that the principal allied effort would be the invasion of europe. shortly afterward, the man who

would command this awesome undertaking was named -- general dwight d. eisenhower who people throughout the free world were now calling "the man of the hour." on the opposite wall of the museum, another mural depicts the great crusade which liberated europe. the supreme commander's orders from the combined chiefs of staff were quite simple -- to land on the coast of france and thereafter to destroy the german ground forces. between the order and its execution, lay an agony of effort. across the channel, the heavy fortifications lining the coast of france bespoke the nazis' belief they could push the invading armies back in the sea.

in france alone, 58 german divisions were waiting. preparing for the invasion was a job without letup. incessant and realistic training was of paramount importance. the challenges of morale, the myriad details of coordination on every level, all of these were overwhelming. but through those tense months in the early part of 1944, the preparations continued. and finally, after being postponed one day because of weather conditions, the eve of the day of decision was at hand. the commander visited the airborne troops who would lead the invasion. i found the man in fine fettle, he wrote later. joshingly admonishing me that i had no cause for worry. d-day, with the fate of the war hanging in the balance.

♪ ♪ half a million troops backed by millions more faced outward across the stormy sea. on beaches that dotted the french coast of the channel british, canadian, and american troops touched shore.

the first, fateful moment passed and allied troops were holding on french soil. one week after the landings the commander was able to say to the vast armies under him your accomplishments in the last seven days of this campaign have exceeded my highest hopes. less than two months after they -- after the invasion, the allied force broke out in the beachhead perimeter in the hedge row country. the breakout was the next step. now there began the dramatic pursuit spearhead ed by general george s. patton's armored force across the heart of france. and then the grand triumphant

march through paris which was freed by french troops and soldiers of the u.s. fifth corps. beyond paris lay the liberation of belgium and the yard-by-yard struggle across the german border. blocking the steady pursuit of victory laid a nazi counteroffensive in the arden sector, known as the battle of the bulge. through a grim and bleak period of several weeks the enemy, supported by the most devastating of weather conditions, isolated and assaulted allied forces. general eisenhower called upon all troops to rise to new

heights of courage and effort. the brave men of the beleaguered forces held and steadily began pressing the enemy back. from that moment onward the supreme commander counted on weakened nazi resistance. the bridge across the rhine, one of the sturdiest symbols of the war, with its crossing in march, 1945, the heart of the enemy's defenses was cracked. there remained a substantial task of mopping up what was left of the enemy west of rhine. and accepting his surrender in the droves that began to appear. the great cities of the enemy's father land were rubble as allied troops moved through them in the last stages of the enemy's defeat.

both commander and g.i. were able to find the exaltation that comes when victory is close. ♪ ♪ victory came finally with a german surrender in a school house on may 7th, 1945. the return to peace was signaled by the supreme commander. >> i have the proud privilege of speaking for a victorious army of almost 5 million fighting men. they and the women who have so ably assisted them constitute the allied expeditionary forces that have liberated western europe. they have captured or destroyed enemy armies totaling more than their own strength. merely to name my principal subordinates in the canadian, french, american, and british forces, is to present a picture

of the utmost in efficiency, skill, loyalty, and devotion to duty. the united nations will gratefully remember montgomery, spots, tedder, bradley, delock, career, and many others. but all these agree with me in the selection of truly heroic figure of this war. he is g.i. joe and his counterpart in the air, the navy, and the merchant marine of every one of the united nations. he has braved the dangers of u-boat infested seas. he has surmounted charges in the desperately defended beaches. he has fought his patient way through the ultimate in fortified zones. he has endured cold, hunger, fatigue. his companion has been danger, and death has dogged his foot steps. he and his platoon commanders have given us an example of loyalty, devotion to duty, and

indomitable courage that will live in our hearts as long as we admire those qualities in men. >> and now the long and happy road home. for dwight eisenhower that road was paved with the cheers of the people of the allied countries. in his own homeland the hero's welcome awaited him. america's greeting for a favorite son. here the story of dwight d. eisenhower might well have ended on this note of triumphant acclaim for a job so splendidly done. but america had other tasks waiting for its favorite soldier. eisenhower succeeded general marshall as the army's first post war chief of staff. he expressed the belief that one

of greatest pillars of world peace is a strong, united states. he visited troops stationed in various parts of the world to show america's growing sense of global responsibility. we must remain, he said, the first champions of those who seek to lead their own lives in peace with their neighbors. finally, on february 7th, 1948, the general from abilene after 36 years of service to his country left active military assignment. but not active participation in the life of his nation. he accepted an invitation from columbia university to serve as president of that great institution, enabling him so he thought at the time to devote the remainder of his useful life to the challenges of education.

but events of the post war world dictated otherwise. the urgent necessity for unity in the free world brought into being the north atlantic treaty organization and it was evident that only one man could make that vital and complicated organization work from the outset. dwight d. eisenhower. at the end of 1950 he answered his country's call once more and once more he was on european soil to assume supreme command of the land, the sea, and the air forces of a grand, defensive alliance. against the new threat rising from the soviets who had once been his nation's ally he had to create in the war-weary european soul, the will to defend itself so that freedom so dearly bought

would not be lost. for more than a year he labored diligently at his task of coalition. when he turned over the reins of command to general matthew ridgeway the structure of military unity among free nations on which rested the hope for continued peace, was established. once again with the accomplishment of substantial victory behind him, this might well have been the end of his public career and in a sense it was. the closing chapter in the story of eisenhower the soldier. history is recording today the story of eisenhower the statesman. the stories may be separate but soldier and statesman they are the same man, dwight d. eisenhower, citizen of the united states, spokesman for and symbol of the free world. and son of abilene. as rich a study as this nation

has produced of the capacity for greatness, which lies at its grass roots. the big picture is an official report for the armed forces and the american people. produced by the army pictorial center. presented by the department of the army in cooperation with this station. >> join american history tv on saturday, november 7th, for tours and live interviews from the national world war ii museum in new orleans. we'll explore the road to berlin and the african american story, and we'll take your questions for historians joining us

throughout the day. world war ii, 70 years later live from the national world war ii museum saturday, november 7th, on c-span3. thursday night, american history tv in primetime will feature archival films featured on our program "real america." you'll see "seeds of destiny," a 1946 academy-award winning short film about the refugee crisis in europe at the end of world war ii. a 1963 film about the king and queen of afghanistan's visit to the u.s., and a 1975 film about the energy crisis looking at efficiency and alternative fuels. tune in thursday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. up next on american history tv, historian john robert green chronicles the 1952 presidential election between dwight

eisenhower and adley stevenson. he examines the myth that they ran for president against their own wishes. mr. green also talks about the introduction of political tv ads and how they changed presidential campaigns. the kansas city public library hosted this event. it's a little over an hour. [ applause ] >> so, good evening, welcome to the kansas city public library. i'm henry fortuneado, former director of public affairs. or perhaps befitting my new part-time status as a visiting fellow at the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas, maybe i should say, director of public affairs, emeritus. [ laughter ] whatever you want to call me, i'm off the payroll here, but i can't stay away from this place, i'm afraid. i'm kind of addicted to it.

as one of my former colleagues said just an hour ago, i can't go cold turkey. especially tonight when, for the fourth time in four years, we're hosting presidential historian extraordinaire, john robert greene from kas nofia college in kaz nofia, new york, where he's taught for the past 36 years. as i just suggested, since 2012, bob greene has been making annual appearances at the kansas city public library. in 2012, he spoke on president george h.w. bush. in 2013, he was back for a talk about first lady betty ford. and last year, almost to the day of the 40th anniversary of richard nixon's resignation, bob

appeared to give a presentation about the administration of gerald ford. these three programs, part of our hail to the chiefs and beyond the gown series, were held in conjunction with our good friends at the truman library institute. but of course, we have another presidential library in the neighborhood, more or less, just down i-70 in abilene, kansas. and this year, which happens to be the 125th anniversary year of eisenhower's birth, we've launched a series with the dwight eisenhower presidential library museum and boyhood home to examine the eisenhower era, thanks to the tremendous support from the w.t. kemper foundation, commerce bank trustee. tonight, which marks the mid point of that series, there's a brochure out there in the corridor if you want to see the other two. bob greene, the library's good friend and someone who's become my good friend over the last

four years, is back. he's back to give us a review of the 1952 presidential election pitting republican party nominee eisenhower against democratic candidate adley stevenson. it's no exaggeration to say that this talk has been in the making for more than 35 years. bob wrote his doctoral dissertation about it, which was shortly published thereafter as his first book, the first of 17 that he's either written or edited. a seriously revised version of that first book, the doctoral dissertation, on the 1952 campaign is now forth coming. it won't be available tonight, unfortunately, but you'll be able to order it on amazon soon enough. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome bob greene. [ applause ]

>> you're not going to be able to close this place. never in a million years. thank you so much, henry. good evening, everybody, how are you? wonderful kansas city weather out there. [ laughter ] i was worried about you people with snow and now i got to be worried about you with torrential downpours. it's so good to be back. it's always an awful lot of fun to come back from kas nofia college in upstate new york, where the snow comes and comes and comes and comes and comes. but it's wonderful to come from here to here, i have to tell you, i've said this to you before, and i mean it every time. this is one of the best venues to speak at in the entire

country. i speak -- [ applause ] absolutely. the truman forum room has this wonderful ability to be scholarly and intimate at the same time. the audiences are among the best educated and usually the best behaved of the audiences that i speak at, and coming here to the truman forum, is something that i look forward to every single year. we started talking about this talk, henry and i, oh, about six or seven months ago. and for anybody in the p.r. business, you know that when you get invited someplace, they immediately want a blurb about what you're going to talk about. this is six months before the talk and i came up with this concept, talking about the myths that persist about the 1952

presidential race. i had no idea what i was going to say about them six months ago. i polished it up just a little bit ago, but i kept this idea of myths as the basis of my talk tonight. when you get involved in academics as a young scholar -- and i was young once -- [ laughter ] a hell of a long time ago -- and you get your doctoral dissertation, and you get that opportunity to say something, you get that opportunity to give back to the academy, you get that opportunity to make an historical case to the public for the first time, you want to say something important. i mean, that's what books really are supposed to be. books are supposed to say something important, something lasting. you don't want to say the same thing over and over and over again. you don't want to just simply

latch onto the myths of the past, that may or may not be correct -- what is it that people say? if it's not true, it should be. you know. and you don't want to simply repeat over and over again what people have said about a specific event. you are immediately drawn, as a young person, i think, to want to write something new, to revise history, not to make it untrue, but to say something that people haven't said before about the elections, about presidential scholarship, about history in general. that you want to re-interpret what was an orthodox view. that's what i did with my first really bad book, that was published in 1985. it was as henry said, a -- well,

it was my dissertation, i didn't even revise it too much. i was really in a hurry to get it in print. it was on the presidential election of 1952, entitled "the crusade." what i wanted to do was to say something different about the election than had been said before. so what i did was, i tackled the myths of the presidential election. and what i centered on was the myth of the draft. you all know what it is. dwight eisenhower was drafted. he didn't want to run. and he was drafted by a group that was fronted by the citizens for eisenhower, that was organized by tom dewey who i'm going to talk about a little more later, and he was drafted against his will. and adlai stevenson who didn't want to run, was drafted by a group of people who were fronted

by walter johnson of the university of chicago, leo lerner of the volunteers in illinois. so he was drafted against his well. so what did i say in this first book? none of this happened. that's what i said, none of this happened. i said that neither one of them were drafted, that it was a myth. i thought it was great. the reviews were pretty good. and then i went to a conference in 1992. now, this is a where's waldo? you got to find me in this picture. i'm the guy fifth from the left with black hair. standing next to mr. and mrs. john miner wisdom, you might see herb brownel, earl stason. and for a good three hours at the eisenhower library, they

beat me up senseless about how wrong i was with my book. it was a very humbling experience. i kind of thought that by hiding behind an "i like ike" button would somehow make me more objective, but i walked away from this seriously wondering whether or not what i had said a few years before was even valid, was even correct. over the years and in between other projects, and i've been fortunate enough to speak to you about these other projects, as henry so graciously said. i've never let the presidential election of 1952 get away. it's kind of like my first child. who doesn't want to go away either, but that's neither here nor there. [ laughter ] and the more that i thought about it, the more that i realized that what i wasn't doing, i wasn't really saying material that was false.

it wasn't a myth, but it was not the whole story. the acclaimed nigerian author, chiti came up with the idea of a single story in a ted talk -- ted chance for technology, education, and design -- talk in 2009, and she spoke of the dangers of taking an historical event and seeing only one part of it, because that's what you want to talk about. that's what interests you. that's what you know the best. and the problem with that is that first of all, it is a stereotype. breaking down the myths of the eisenhower/stevenson draft was a stereotype in itself. and it's what i wanted to do. but it was incomplete.

what a historian needs, and i think it's taken me 35 years of writing and teaching to really grasp this, is texture. context. not just to write about what happened, but about what it meant. presidential elections are a perfect forum for that. because they're exciting. they're dramatic. they're often looney. and don't get me started. i'm from new york. and they're good stories, but if you take them and you take them just in and of themselves, you've only got part of the story. what they do is, they forecast the future. if you look at what we call

re-aligning elections, 1932, 1832, 1789, 1960, 2000 -- those elections changed what happened in american history. 1952 did the exact same thing. and i was more interested in 1985 and telling everybody what i knew about the elections than i was telling people what the election meant. and i have a wonderful opportunity now thanks to the american presidential election series at the university of kansas, not to redo everything, but to rethink everything. i am of the opinion now -- and this, i was speaking with chuck myers who is here in the audience and my editor at kansas press just a little bit ago, i saw him blanch when i suggested this, that every author who gets

a contract should be automatically given a contract to re-write their book 20 years later. it has to be mandatory. you have to do this. because you're going to get a different book 20 years later. and that's what i'm working on now and i want to share with you and i want to talk about some of the context from which this comes. no, that's not a typo. because the presidential election of 1952 begins with the problems that harry truman was having after 1949. you can't divorce that election from what was happening after 1949. nothing that truman wanted was going through congress -- the republican congress. he was faced with scandals. remember the 5 percenters, the problems with skimming off the top? and harry truman was never implicated in any of that, but

it hurt his administration badly. remember the great debate? i'm going to talk more about bob taft in just a second, about whether or not the nation should be participating in any kind of mutual security with nato, or the united nations, or whether we should be withdrawing within ourselves after world war ii. the whole concept of truman lost china, that's been completely debunked by modern scholars, but the republicans were beating him over the head with the loss of china in the evacuation to taiwan and the china lobby was making life miserable for truman in congress. and he had become -- truman had the interesting distinction of beginning his presidency as a war-time president and ending his presidency as a war-time president, with two different wars. and the domestic war that he unleashed upon himself by

recalling douglas macarthur was hurting his administration. and the issue of communism on the inside, the rise of joe mccarthy, all of these things, and on the domestic front, the fact that the south, which had walked out of the 1948 convention over the civil rights platform, the dixiecrats, were showing every single sign -- this was key to the 1952 election -- of walking out again in 1952, over both civil rights and the issue of the tidelands oil, whether louisiana, alabama, and california, could own the oil that was right off their coasts, or whether or not that oil was owned by the federal government. all these problems made truman vulnerable. truman could have run again in 1952. and virtually everybody right

down to december of 1951, thought that he was going to. bob taft, senator from ohio, who had already run for the presidency three times, began his fourth presidential campaign moments after he lost the 1948 convention -- or nomination to tom dewey. taft was a honorable, eloquent, thoughtful senator. old-school, articulate, less conservative in domestic affairs than people have given him credit for, but clearly the voice of unabashed isolationism. withdrawal from nato. withdrawal from the united nations. and he owned the republican party after tom dewey's third failure as president. everybody through the latter

part of 1951, thought it was going to be an inevitable taft-truman race in 1952. he did not want to run. the correspondence is absolutely clear. he also didn't want to be its shape. he didn't want to be at nato. he was assigned there by harry truman, perhaps to get eisenhower out of the country as a political threat. but truman's correspondence is equally clear that he believed eisenhower would never run. duty. duty to the world. duty to his nation, as head of nato. if you take sentences of eisenhower's correspondence out of context, which i did as a kid, you can find hints that maybe he might run under the right circumstances.

but if you let eisenhower and in a moment, adlai stevenson talk to you through their correspondence as a whole, it's absolutely certain neither one of them wanted to be run. but dwight eisenhower changes his mind. we know this because he did it. there's no debating it. in december of 1951, his correspondence suddenly gets to the point where, i might allow myself to be a candidate in january of 1952, eisenhower says, okay, i will accept a nomination. and three months later he's back campaigning in the united states. he does actively change his mind. and what changed his mind was very simple. he didn't want taft to win. he did not want taft's policy of isolationism to compromise what he had built at nato. and he was willing, against his

will, to run for the presidency, a job that he abhorred, and he had seen literally, ruin so many men, not necessarily the presidents, but the people around them. he didn't want any part of that. and, yes, he would have been opposed by minor candidates, yes, smaller pictures. harold staffson, and earl warren. harold stason of minnesota, before he began to run for the presidency over and over and over again, harold stason was the youngest governor in the united states in minnesota. they called him the boy wonder. and earl warren, while he had not yet certainly become what he would become as chief justice, had already run for vice president of the united states. these were two fairly major players, but they were never,

ever major enough to deal in the same circles in 1952 with either eisenhower or bob taft. it was always between the two of them. as eisenhower's mind suddenly started changing, as his correspondence showed that he was becoming more and more troubled by the stance that bob taft was taking, what was happening at -- concurrently, running parallel with his change of mind, were the politicos were starting to organize a campaign without a candidate. tom dewey, as early as 1949, knew that he couldn't run again. he wanted to desperately, but he knew he couldn't. he would be humiliated at the convention, taft would beat his brains in. so he instead decides he's going to become a king-maker. and he starts pulling

like-minded republican leaders -- carlson from kansas, duff from pennsylvania -- and others together in kind of a shadow organization for eisenhower, keeping his name out there. he keeps a link to eisenhower through the gentleman in the center, general lucius clay. clay was one of eisenhower's closest friends, a constant companion of eisenhower at nato and paris. and dewey communicated with eisenhower through clay. by the way, clay was the individual who masterminded the berlin airlift. and when they finally got to the point where they needed to have some sort of an organization on the ground, they turned to the junior senator from massachusetts, henry cabot lodge, who was then working so hard for eisenhower that he kind of let slide a challenge by a kid that he never thought could beat him in 1952, young

congressman john f. kennedy. what lodge gave to eisenhower in 1952 hurt him in the long run. these three gentlemen here formed what i call just the eisenhower committee. it was never really a name for it. so when eisenhower changes his mind, he comes back to an organization that's already there and running for him. eisenhower decides he's going to be willing to accept a nomination as long as he doesn't have to run for it. but he does come back to run. what changes his mind? three things. the first is a ticket from an extraordinary -- and you should really take a look at this online -- an event at madison square garden, and the rally itself was a rally run by

jacqueline cochran and her husband, television and radio tar tax mcquarry. they put this thing together and had over 20,000 people at this event, and then with the mind of a p.r. person, they take the tape, fly it to paris, and show it to eisenhower. eisenhower writes in his diary that he cried. he was so choked up. he didn't really accept until that point that people really wanted him. and then he was shown that in two primaries. and he's not -- he doesn't campaign for either one of them. in new hampshire, he goes up against bob taft, beats him without having set foot in the state. in minnesota, he comes in second to harold stason in his own

state, without even being on the ballot. he was a write-in. it was these events that made eisenhower believe that people wanted him, but taft started winning. he wins in wisconsin. and by the way, this is a different primary set-up. today the primaries run everything. we will have our two nominees, as you well know, we will have our two nominees probably by may, if not by april of next year. the primaries, there were only 12 of them in 1952. the primaries chose a very small number of delegates. the rest was done with back-room dealing. with the kand -- or with the delegates, which taft had sewn

up. taft was so far ahead of eisenhower going into chicago, and after winning the wisconsin primary, eisenhower realized that if he didn't come back, he was going to lose the nomination. so he does on june 1st, 1952, eisenhower comes back and announces his candidacy, which had already happened, in his hometown of abilene, kansas, right down the road. it was a very inauspicious beginning, eisenhower's speech was absolutely lousy. he was halting and he said to himself the next day, which is what this photo is of -- when he met the press one-on-one and he wasn't delivering a set speech, it was like night and day. and the eisenhower committee knew just exactly what they wanted to do with him in the fall, if he won the nomination, and what kind of a speaker he was going to be. so eisenhower comes back in, in

june of 1952, as a candidate, and he's got three months -- i'm sorry -- two months before the convention to try and deal and get delegates away from bob taft. meanwhile, there's another political party in this country, and harry truman treated it as his personal property. harry truman had decided as early as 1949 not to run. harry truman is wonderful in that he wrote letters to himself. these are extraordinary letters and they're also letters that truman wrote where he would -- because best went to bed very early and harry truman would stay up very late, he would write a letter to put on her pillow so she would see it in the morning. and it was almost like a diary entry. he said he didn't want to run in

1952, but he was not about to give up his control of the democratic party. he was going to name an heir apparent, and this is almost like a comedy errors because nobody wants it. what we need to keep in context, nobody wanted to run against bob taft. not eisenhower, but bob taft, they figured they'd end up losing. truman's first choice is the chief justice of the supreme court, fred vinson, there in the picture. vinson dressed for business and i don't know what truman's dressed for. [ laughter ] this was actually down in key west. vinson came to the conclusion that his health would preclude him from running. and he dies just a few years later. so he must have known something. he tells truman no, and truman is disappointed because he saw something special in vinson that people in truman's staff didn't

see. clark clifford didn't quite see this marriage as happening. but truman has been linked in to -- through jacob arvee and some others out in the midwest, another possible candidate for the presidency. estes keyfauber, senator from tennessee, who made his mark running against the crump machine, the memphis crump machine, by putting on a coon skin cap, is the first reality show presidential candidate. you might remember the keyfauber crime hearing. that was the subject of my master's thesis which has long since been lost to the dustbin, but it was a lot of fun to write

about because key fauber was the first politician to use a nationally televised event long before mccarthy. and in so doing, keyfauber goes into stee after city and exposes corruption in the democratic party, and he wants the democratic nomination. he couldn't figure this out. truman hated his guts. called him senator cow fever. [ laughter ] so he wins several primaries, but it's never, ever going to be the person who truman will support. truman's heard about somebody else. a young governor of illinois had built his reputation as a progressive, had built his reputation on a veto of a conservative legislature's laws

against civil rights. i'll say more about stevenson's articulateness in a moment. but it's important to note here that even more than eisenhower, stevenson didn't want it, and more than eisenhower, stevenson kept his word. he would stay absolutely true to that. stevenson never did become a candidate for the nomination. wasn't drafted. but he never did become a candidate for the nomination, and on three separate occasions he tells harry truman no. and truman is apo plektic now, truman can't figure this out. he writes about why people don't take this. he can give them the nomination, he can give them delegates, and they don't want it. all he's got to deal with is keyfauber.

so truman gets mad enough to stay in the new hampshire primary against the advice of all of his aides, and keyfauber beats him. outright square beats him with his name on the ballot. one myth that is absolutely untrue, that truman wants to perpetuate that he didn't un in 1952. he did, he allowed his name to stay on the ballot. i don't know how he can repress a smile, it's only been done three times in american history. truman goes ballistic and finally, since he's lost the primary, decides that he's going to make good, even though he doesn't have an heir. stevenson and vinson had turned him down, and he's in the middle of the steel strike. he finally decides that the jefferson jackson day dinner, march of 1952, at the old armory

in d.c., march 31st, he announces that he will not be a candidate. and it's interesting how he words it, because he had already been a candidate in new hampshire, but he will not be a candidate in 1952. and all of the reporters at the event, it's kind of like were looking at truman and then everybody who was there said all the reporters looked and found stevenson in the room and just started staring at him. but there were others who decided that they were going to try to fill in the vacuum of truman's withdrawal. but they all had their liabilities. richard russell of georgia was too southern. bob kerr of oklahoma was too rich. avril harryman of new york didn't know how to give a

speech. so truman finally settled on a 72-year-old partially blind man. his vice president, alvin barkley of kentucky. you have to ask yourself, and i think it's fair to ask, why, when stevenson is saying no, and vinson is said no, why does truman settle on barkley, who desperately wanted the job, he had been an outstanding majority leader under franklin roosevelt. but truman says i'm going to give you your support, and he does it in the presence of advisers. barkley's in the room and he says i'm going to deliver you my support at the convention and barkley takes him at his word. if you go to wikipedia, where all good knowledge goesdi --

[ laughter ] -- and you type in convention -- i typed in republican convention 1952 -- this is what shows up. not the convention, but the draft eisenhower movement. the myth of the draft continues. and so many writers want to perpetuate it, and it wasn't so. it didn't happen. first off, he allowed his name to be put in in january, then he runs for two months as a candidate. that's not a draft. and when he gets to the convention, taft is so far ahead that what they have to do is change the rules. they change the rules. the fair play amendment. the amendment that said that you couldn't vote on your own on anything before the convention if you were a contested delegation. it changed the rules that were in place since 1912. it was masterful. it was all henry cabot lodge.

eisenhower wins the nomination. but it wasn't a draft. it wasn't even close. and this was not a last-minute choice by any stretch of the imagination. tom dewey had met with young richard nixon, the junior senator from california, early in 1952 at his suite in new york city, and offered, why isn't he running yet! and dewey offers him the vice presidential nomination. nixon helped to deliver, or he was going to deliver the california delegation, but it turned out he didn't have to, the fair play amendment threw it to eisenhower. and nixon is perfect for this. when you think of a vice presidential candidate, you want him to fill gaps. young. conservative so the presidential candidate can be a moderate, brings a western state in,

energetic, the second leading public face for anti-communism in the country at the time. nixon was an absolutely perfect choice. he doesn't look too excited, does he? [ laughter ] on the other side of the coin, i type in democratic convention, and what do i get? the successful movement to draft eisenhower. what's with wikipedia anyway. this myth also needs to be undone, but it's kind of harder than it is with ike. because ike was a candidate and stevenson never was. there was a draft movement. it was run by walter johnson. the history professor from the university of chicago, but it did not draft stevenson. this is what i thought happened. that harry truman stepped out in suddenly said, you're my boy. but that's not what happened.

what happened -- and the story is much more complicated -- is that a group of labor leaders go to albin barkley who's got harry truman's word that he's going to support him, and those labor leaders say to barkley, you're too old, we can't support you. barkley is many things, but he's not a political ne-yo fight. without labor, he can't be nominated. he withdraws just before the convention opens. and in his memoirs, he blames truman, and there's a lot to be said for that. truman could have and did not stop that meeting. truman may have actually had the meeting scheduled. truman always wanted stevenson. he went to barkley as a last resort. now, the key to the convention

was stopping another dixiecrat walk-out. if that meant going with stevenson, that would be great. if it meant going with somebody else, that would be great. for truman, it was anybody but keyfauber. on monday of the convention, something happens that we haven't been able to document, even with the great scholars that i've been able to bring to the table. stevenson changes his mind and we don't know why. we can only guess. he definitely changes his mind, because he announces as a candidate. he says, i'm going to let the governor of indiana, henry sh wild ca wild-carder put my name into the candidate. that's a candidate. a draft did not do that. stevenson consistently said to the draft, leave me alone, and he shuts them out. they had no role to play in terms of getting stevenson's name in there. he announces himself as a candidate. i have come to the conclusion

that stevenson believed that he was the only person who could stop a southern walk-out. particularly if he chose a southerner as his vice presidential candidate. a moderate southerner, john sparkman of alabama. he was no dixiecrat. his views on race were repressed during the campaign, but he had quietly worked against the dixiecratic movement in alabama and against the dixiecrats with the loyalty pledge at the convention. stevenson did it himself. neither man -- eisenhower, nor stevenson, was drafted. people however simply want to continue saying that they were drafted because they fit into the mythology of both dwight eisenhower and adlai stevenson and the way that people want to

perceive them. this, i believe, is the only picture of the two men together. it was during the transition in december of 1952. stevenson's smiling because it's over. eisenhower's smiling because it's just beginning. how as a writer should i write on a rouk? on a massacre? eisenhower never once trailed in the polls. eisenhower scholars do this by calling it eminently predictable. it was a foregone conclusion, i liked ike and so did everybody else. it helps them to give validity to the age of eisenhower. stevenson scholars when they

talk about the election, the fall campaign, they emphasize that in a losing cause, adlai stevenson raised the bar of political discourse to such a level that it didn't matter that he lost. in fact, one of the most heavily quoted quotes of the fall campaign is when nixon -- nixon -- when stevenson says -- nixon will be here in a minute -- when stevenson says to governor alan shivers of texas, i don't have to win. both those assessments have some merit. but both have become cliches. allowing historians to avoid any real discussion of the fall campaign. everything that has been written, and my book right now, to put it charitably weak book

is the only book on the 1952 presidential election. i think that one of the reasons for that is because people think that a route is uninteresting. well, another way to deal with it is to kind of take a page from nixon scholarship. as we're going to see in a see nixon scholars have looked at the chapter speech and used it to forecast what nixon would become. if you take a look at several moments in the 1952 campaign, several decisions, several changes, 1952 becomes not only a lot more interesting, but a lot more important. to forecast, if you will, where politics is going. and for that, both eisenhower

and stevenson can take credit. this election has been written as if eisenhower didn't run against anybody. it doesn't work like that. i think what you have to do with that, though, is to think in terms of context, in terms of texture. nobody has done this on 195 2, least of all me in 1985. so let's take a few minutes and talk about what they bring to the table. the first is called the morning side heights. eisenhower who had just prior to going to nato served as a college president at columbia university, still maintained his home there at morningside heights in upper new york city. he invites bob taft there to bury the hatchet and hopefully

not have bob taft bury the hatchet in him. because bob taft, there were a lot of confer testifies who were hurt at what happened at the convention and the change in the rules and if bob taft did not in any way, shape or form support eisenhower, eisenhower was going to have a difficult time of it. the two men finally meet, and i suggest to you that this is the last time that you are going to see a moderate and conservative being nice to each other in the republican party to the present day. before the republican party is rent apart by nixon and r rockefeller, by goldwater. this is bipartisanship within a party. there's got to be a name for that. and if anybody can think of a name, let hihe, me know. maybe the word is just smart.

long before nixon discovered in 1968 that race-baiting in the south would bring republican votes to the table and take them away from the democratic party, dwight eisenhower makes the first moves. he overrules all of his advisers and campaigns in the south. not for very long, but he goes deep in the south. yes, the brown states stayed with stevenson, and most of the deep south did. but the real story of that demographic is that texas, missouri, tennessee, virginia, florida and maryland shift into the republican column. long before we have the dynamic that we do today, it's diet eisenhower's very simple decision, and he says this to his advisers, i want to campaign

as a candidate of the american people that drives this bus. the simple decision to make television spots rather than make television speeches, which had been tried in 1948, changes the face of presidential campaigning to the present day. citizens for eisenhower, which, as a group, many continue to say we drafted eisenhower. they did not. but what they did do is that they paid for and fronted much of the advertising that was done in 1952. they were very simple spots. they showed men and women off the streets, saying something and eisenhower answering it. they were devastatingly clear. they showed the candidate. they weren't negative spots in any way. but once these became a hit, and stevenson wouldn't do it.

he said it cheapened the campaign. there's something to be said for that. but eisenhower won. and in so doing, with these ads, changes the landscape of politics forever. adlai stevenson was articulate. he was a gifted speecher. he was not a gifted speaker. he could read a n articulate speech better than any politician in 1952 and perhaps since then. what stevenson could not do was converse with somebody about baseball. what stevenson did with his speeches, and let's face it, one of the best-selling books of 1953 were a collection of

stevenson's speeches, and he was the losing did the. it begins the branding of the democratic party as being intellectual egghead, elite and liberal. 1956 would complete that. the death of the intellectual in politics. john f. kennedy figured out immediately that he couldn't campaign like this in 1960. in an unfortunate way, stevenson's gifts as a writer of speeches and as a deliverer of those written speeches brings the death of that kind of intellectualism in american politics to the point where i would argue we haven't seen it since. but that doesn't mean that he couldn't be a cutthroat politician. stevenson decides right from the

start that harry truman isn't going to play any role in this campaign. he lets slip, three days after the nomination, that there's a mess in washington. there was a mess in washington, but a democrat was at the center of it. and the president of the united states to boot. what would have happened had stevenson and sparkman allowed truman to campaign for them? well, you do that at your own peril. hubert humphrey shut out lyndon johnson in 1968 because of the war in vietnam. al gore shut out bill clinton in 2000. the exception who made it work? bush and reagan in 1980. reagan sat the campaign out, largely, and bush was able to praise reagan enough publicly, to be able to bring the conservatives to the table. how will the democratic candidate in 2016 deal with

president barack obama? technically technically, particularly, if his polls drop near the level that harry truman's polls dropped? the fund crisis was small potatoes. the fight over keeping richard nixon on the ticket was never serious. it had absolutely no impact on the presidential election of 1952. in the election, it is completely unimportant. no one votes for a vice presidential candidate. they didn't in 1952. they don't today. this was nothing. nexten had it right. he kept telling the eisenhower people that they should ignore it, and it would go away. it would have, but eisenhower's people, particularly tom dewey

panicked and forced nixon to a public apology on tv. the gop should have done nothing. but this is of particular importance in the future. and this is an easy one. he makes it one of his six vcri. for him everything would flow from the crises and the checker speech. but in the presidential election, i've got to have pretty much a disastrous chain of events for the vice presidential candidates to mean anything. this was a picture that nobody ever thought would happen. eisenhower, when he was done, said that he felt dirty from the touch of joe mccarthy. but in milwaukee, eisenhower

goes in and consciously, finally tracked this down through a lot of research, consciously deleted from a speech a reference that criticized mccarthy for criticizing general george marshall. calling him a dupe of communists. eisenhower either took it out himself or had somebody take it out. it's a little fuzzy there. some say he waffled. m but maybe, just maybe, this is what was called the hidden-hand presidency. eisenhower doing things behind the scenes. maybe this was the beginning of whew eisenhower hoped would be a mob with mccarthy. he hoped that mccarthy would blow away, and he didn't.

and he used richard nixon to help bring him down. but what does this say about the future president of the united states? and no one speech changes a campaign. october 16th in hartford, eisenhower says, i shall go to korea. the impact of that has been way overdone. the campaign is over by that point. the stories of steven gaining a little after that are way exaggerated. he went from 44 points down in the polls to 45. they were both struggling with how to deal with the korean war in the campaign in ways that are almost eerily like the way that richard nixon and hubert humphrey deal with vietnam in '68. so what does nixon do? he says he has a secret plan to end the war. so did eisenhower. what was eisenhower's secret plan? i shall go to korea. nixon just didn't tell anybody what his plan was.

eisenhower made a trip. maybe there's a parallel there. this, by the way, as ike with 15th regiment trips in korea in 1 1952. to me, that makes more sense, particularly with where the election turns out with where things are going to go in the future. you can put up all the statistics in the world. and by the way, you put up numbers and college students just go [ snoring ] let me break this down a little bit. eisenhower won, he won big town. >> blue states for stevenson. eisenhower won just about everything else. but there are some things to be said for the future. eisenhower, as we've said, made inroads into the south. again, i'd call your attention to virginia, tennessee, texas and florida. he broke into the fdr coalition,

the ethnic vote, the polish vote, the german vote went for eisenhower, and in a stunning for the moment demographic, women voted for eisenhower and abandoned the democrats. but it was the middle class, loosely defined, living out in the suburbs and watching "leave it to beaver", that made eisenhower's victory to big. stevenson does hold together from the fdr coalition two major constituenci constituencies. the african-american vote and jew eaish vote. and it should not be presented that this was any kind of sweep for the republican party, when you have three votes in the house and one in the senate, it's not a realigning victory for the party. it was a personal victory for eisenhower. i shouldn't belittle it, but we should call it what it is.

i got somewhat defense i've long the way, when people were telling me that i wasn't really telling the whole story of 1952 when i was challenged in reviews. my reaction was something like this. but i was young at one point in time. the more research that you do, the more time that you give yourself to think through and not just write what you know and 5,000 footnotes and 750 pages of detail, we have a name for those. those are called encyclopedias. and you actually think through to what it means. maybe something new will come. and then maybe like eisenhower and like stevenson, people can change their minds. and i changed my mind. on many things with 1952 as i sit this summer and write.

maybe george bernard shaw had the answer. thank you very, very much. it has been a pleasure speaking with you. [ applause ]r  >> now. >> i got it. >> thank you so much, bob. we will be taking questions at either one of these two microphones, and remember my instrubss. >> okay. yes, that's right. in all of the instructions and it would not, henry, it just wouldn't be the same without you. thank you so much for everything that you have done for the kansas city public library. [ applause ] >> hi. is there anything stevenson

could have done different that would have made any difference? >> no. >> in this election? >> no. no. and that's the problem with writing about a rout. you have to go through, and there's no dramatic moment where you can say, had you done this you would have gained 15 points. it was impossible. so the job of the historian, then, if you believe that this was an important election, as i do, is to show how it's important for the future. no, stevenson could have done nothing. but i want to take, i'm going to go kind of like this. i do want to say this. people think that the nixon moment, the checkers speech could have saved it for stevenson. so many nixon biographers teach it as if nixon had dropped off the ticket and done the honorable thing, stevenson would have become president, that's nonsense. >> richard nixon was not that important in 1952. and there are days when i write,

and i will say this, that i feel that just like john sparkman, he was not important at all, because he was a vice presidential nominee. yes, sir. >> given the land slide victory of eisenhower, do you think stevenson actually thought he a good chance? >> that's a different question than this one. >> and also, if he didn't, then why the heck did he go through the same torture four years later? >> you have to be a special type of individual. i'm being kind here, to run for president of the united states. you have to be like an athlete on a 0-42 team. you have to believe that the next moment is going to get you your first victory. you have to be, if you're carly fiorina, you have to believe every single day that you are going to wake up and you are going to be ahead of donald trump in the polls or you can't

run. stevenson acted that way. and people thought that was phony. either that or naïve, that he was a fool, but it's just what a politician does. if you can't do that you shouldn't be in politics. this guy grew up in illinois politics. >> i'm a native of illinois. >> he was no babe in the woods. so he believed he somehow could win. more's the pity. yes, ma'am? >> you said that no one ever votes for a vice presidential candidate. >> correct. >> my question is does anyone besides me ever vote against a vice presidential candidate and therefore the whole ticket? i'm thinking of mccain and palin. >> and palin. the statistics [ laughter ] on that election show that the numbers of people who voted against mccain for palin were very, very small.

again, like the nixon literature, palin herself and people who have written "game change", the book, makes palin out to be some kind of game changer. that's what the whole thesis of the book was about. she did not move that many votes. political scientists will just tell you that is simply not the case. but if you're going to go on, richard nexten, sarah palin. you position your vice presidential run to be more important to the ticket than it really was. >> thinking of the eisenhower administration, democracy is overthrown by covert operations and supporting the rise of dictatorships, what would have, what do you think would have been the result of a stevenson presidency? what would have been the difference in his foreign policy, do you think? >> i read a book, you might have

seen it, 15 things that didn't happen this american history but should have, if we had lost at bunker hill and if picket's charge had, you know, if he had actually made it. i don't, i don't know. i don't know the answer to that. so i'll only speculate, because that's what this game is about. by the way, i fail students for doing that. i tell them history is history. anything else is your little, you know, your little conceded fiction. but let's do that for a moment. and i submit to you it would have been very close to the same. because stevenson would have inherited many of the cold war supporters, i'm sorry, advisers of the truman administration who were setting the table for what happened in iran and iraq, for are setting the table and you don't mention one, which i think is the key, in cuba and abandoning bautista. and i think stevenson would have done that as quickly as dwight

eisenhower did, but who knows. it's a good question. yes, ma'am? >> i'm usually interested in the women behind the presidents. what was mamie's thoughts on being first lady? and was she instrumental in working with dwight? or -- >> if i may, let me answer the question holistically and start with stevenson as a divorced candidate. and there were, throughout the campaign, there were rumors of stevenson being gay. and these rumors we now know through a couple of books were perpetuated by none other than everybody's favorite person, j. edgar hoover, who had a file on stevenson, and so stevenson had to bring his sister, buffy ives onto the trail with him in a completely contrived situation where a lot of people thought she was the wife. and that was infin italy more interesting to what mamie did which was stay in the background. remember the whistle stopping and everything that happened

during the campaign. mamie was often ill. she was not drunk. she was often ill on the campaign trail. and the stress really hurt her. the stress bothered her. and she was constantly in the face of eisenhower's adviser saying you're working him too hard. what mamie wanted to happen may have been a good thing. she wanted him to take two weeks off in the middle of the campaign. he was winning anyway. she wanted him to go to denver, come back to abilene. she didn't win that battle. and by the way, there's an excellent biographer of mamie eisenhower in the first lady series from kansas. i recommend it to you very highly. i had the occasion to review it. it's really plushflushed her ou really well. >> there's the story that a few years before, truman had tried to recruit eisenhower as his successor. so what happened in the interim, and why did eisenhower run as a

republican if he could have easily run as a democrat in 1952. >> you're talking about an actual offer that was made to eisenhower before the 1948 convention where truman says i will help you get anything you want, including the presidency of the united states. eisenhower did not brielieve in 1948 that he had the constituency to win. and he puts out to harold finder, i believe is his name, a very shermanesque statement, i'm not going to run, period. what happened in between is that eisenhower fell into great dislike with harry truman. he did not like the way that truman's administration was running. he thought he was more of a republican than a democrat, and he was not going to allow himself to be manipulated. this is eisenhower's view, manipulated by harry truman in the race at all. so there was never any doubt in anybody's mind, although they

tried to make a bit of a deal out of it. there was never any doubt in anybody's mind in 1952 that ike would run as a republican. to distance himself from harry truman as adlai stevenson did. >> question, general marshall had been the yoda for eisenhower for many years, having to appoint him as the commander in europe. >> mm-hm. >> i was just wondering, it seems like mccarthy could take shots at people, and eisenhower did nothing about that. i ask you that question. >> mm-hm. the other one, it almost seems like reagan and eisenhower's elections overall, could have been eerily similar. >> i'll take a pass on the last one for a moment, not because it's not an interesting question but because i have to think it through. they have gotten comparisons because of their age, their politics and the size of their

victories. but the times were so different. i'd have to think about that one. but in terms of what happens with the moment in milwaukee. one way of looking at this is that eisenhower deluded what could have been a strong statement of support for his mentor. in so doing, he could have made and taken the opportunity to position his presidency against such irresponsible statements. even if they were true. >> yes. >> right? >> like he doesn't do that. he either, he does one of two things for certain. he either amends the speech himself, or he allows his speechwriters, john hughes, to cut this out at his bequest. what does that say about eisenhower? that says that either eisenhower wants to try to keep peace in the valley with mccarthy, and he

sees mccarthy as being too big to take on on the national stage right here, or he needs to win wisconsin. i minean, wisconsin's a lot of electoral votes now. you don't throw those away. >> must have take and page out of fdr's book then. >> that's an interesting point. that's a good point. i know you. >> so, dr. greene, bob, thank you very much for another excellent program. [ applause ] if the library can find a way to get you back for a fifth program in five years, i'll certainly be here. >> thank you, henry. thank you all . just some of the fairs and festivals this fall on c-span 2's book tv.

american history tv airs all weekend every weekend on c-span 3 and in primetime on weeknights when congress is in recess. we cover all periods of american history and a wide diversity of topics. at our website, you can watch all of our programs, find our tv schedule, see youtube clips of upcoming shows, and connect with us on twitter and facebook. this is american history tv only on c-span 3. join american history tv on saturday, november 7th for tours and live interviews from the national world war ii museum in new orleans. we'll explore the u.s.s. tang experiment in new orleans. we'll take your questions for historians joining us from new orleans throughout the day. world war ii 70 years later live from the national world war ii museum saturday, november 7th beginning at 11:00 a.m. eastern

here on american history tv on c-span 3. on saturday evening, american history tv was at gettysburg college for a conversation with president dwight d. eisenhower's grandchildren. they talked about his political career, his legacy, and about the grandfather they remember. this discussion was part of the ike 125 celebration commemorating the 125th anniversary of his birth. it's about two hours. ♪ ♪ o say, can you see by the dawn's early light ♪ ♪ what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? ♪ ♪ whose broad stripes and bright stars

through the perilous fight ♪ ♪ o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? ♪ ♪ and the rockets' red glare the bombs bursting in air ♪ ♪ gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ♪ ♪ oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ ♪ o'er the land of the free ♪ ♪ and the home of the brave? ♪

[ applause ] tonight continues a wonderful weekend and for that matter yearlong of programming and activities at the eisenhower institute that is celebrating the 125th birthday of dwight d. eisenhower. it's been a team effort and we are grateful to all of them. in short, at gettysburg college we still like ike. and i'd like at this point to turn the program over to steve scully, who will be moderating our town hall forum. >> jeffrey, thank you very much. before i begin, i want to recognize some of the brave men who served under general dwight eisenhower. we are pleased and honored and

thrilled to have you here tonight. i think you all deserve a round of applause. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> you all do as tom brokaw put it represent a great generation. we have three of the four living grandchildren of dwight d. eisenhower. i want to thank the eisenhower institute for allowing me to be part of this program. anne eisenhower was born at west point, new york. she is a world class interior designer. her work has been featured in leading books and magazine on display in new york city at

tiffany's. she's been written about in leading newspapers around the world. she's on the board of new york school interior design and her involvement with breast cancer research foundation. for more than a quarter century, she has contributed to the great work at the center for arts and education in new york city. anne eisenhower, thank you for being with us. [ applause ] mary eisenhower spent much of her life devoted to humanitarian and education work. think about this. it was founded on september 11th, 1956. dwight eisenhower created the exchange program because he had seen enough war and his feeling was it's time to end the bloodshed and begin some diplomacy. she has made her mark around the

world. she has received countless awards and honors, including the harry s. truman award for public service. thank you for being with us. [ applause ] and susan eisenhower is the chairman and ceo of the eisenhower group here in the united states, around the world, in asia especially. she has served our government in a number of capacities. a member of three blue ribbon commissions for the department of energy. her work with the national academy of sciences and the nasa advisory council. nasa began during the eisenhower administration. she has authored and coauthored a number of books on national security issues. she has lectured at west point and the army war college. her opposi-eds are often seen ie

washington post. eight years, a remarkable eight years. what should we know now that we didn't really know when he left office? >> there's a wonderful expression. the future is bright but the past is unpredictable. this is an old soviet joke. i sometimes feel like this is the way it is in this country too. we're beginning to discover more and more about our history, and dwight eisenhower is an interesting figure because he had a very different leadership style. he sometimes dialled back the rhetoric in favor of doing things behind the scenes. my sister will certainly confirm that his chief death bed wish was that his archives be open as quickly as possible. ever since that process started, people are learning more and

more about how utterly engaged he was on all of these issues. i think this is one of the reasons for the last 20 years of an intense interest developed over this period of time, this very dynamic period of time in the 1940s, and and 50s. >> but anne, you remember him as the oldest grandchild. what are your thoughts? >> olde esest granddaughter. >> granddaughter. david is not here. >> david is much older. >> what do you remember about him? >> where do you start? he was very much part of our lives. we often lived near him. and things that come to mind are things like him reading my report card as sitting president with david's report card right

next to it. anne, why did you get an a-minus while david got an "a"? he was very much a grandfather to us, so it was a very unusual upbringing as a normal person and yet you'd see him in the crowds and wonder what was going on. >> mary, one of the quotes from your grandfather, you don't lead by hitting people over the head. that is assault, not leadership. in terms of what we're seeing today in the republican party primary, what do you think about this quote? >> i didn't think i was going to get any -- >> i just read the quote. >> i didn't think i was going to get any loaded questions. i think we need to stop hitting each other on the head. it's a completely different dynamic than it was of course when he was around. both houses were democratic, and

he got long famously with everybody and got lots through. there wasn't this party line. i think once the elections were over people became americans as opposed to democrat or republican. he actually -- maybe i'll divert and tell a little story, but when i was in school here in gettysburg, yea, i heard two rumors about him in school that i was sure were absolutely wrong. and of course i was young, so the intensity was just terrible. i went straight from school to his house. we lived right on the edge of the farm. and he was in his nap room at the time of the day. i said, grand dad, i heard two things about you today that i just can't believe. and he said, what?

i said, is it true that your name is really david dwight and not dwight david? he said there were so many davids in the family that i got tired of being called bud, so i changed it to dwight. and i heard you were raised a democrat. i didn't claim a party while i was in the army. back then, the officers didn't customarily vote for their commander and chief. i said, oh, what made you decide to become a republican? he got this look on his face. i was beginning already to regret the conversation because i knew i was in for a lesson. he said he was concerned about the frontrunner taft being an isolationist. he said this is a two-party country and the democrats have been in power long enough.

i said, but grand dad, what if you lost? he said, well, how's your weight coming along. >> both parties in 1952 wanted him to be their nominee. >> this is true. this is sort of hard to imagine now, isn't it? it is impossible to imagine. because they came out of military circles, they had a very i wouldn't say bipartisan way of thinking about themselves but a non-partisan way. our grandmother would say i don't want to know anything about what party people are from when they come to the white house. they're in america's home. it was often perceived she didn't know that much about politics. she knew plenty about politics. she didn't just want any part of it at the white house. i think it goes to