Grade Eisenhower’s presidency

[TheReckoning]

B+. Best president post-WW2.

[vitoNova]

Surprisingly, many people of the time regarded the entire 1950s as a period of stagnation.  

Had JFK not been an Opus Dei cultist secretly taking marching orders from the Vatican, that would have been a landslide.  

[KaiserDave]

Eh. Somewhere around a C. No higher than a C+.

Edit: A B- might not be entirely inappropriate, but a C+ seems right to me.

[PSOL]

D, rampant militarism and setting the foundations for what has been expected of the CIA in Guatemala and Iran lessens his contributions elsewhere.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I prioritize foreign policy less than PSOL does when assessing US Presidents, but the Dulles-driven Cold War policy is still bad enough to knock him down to a C or C+.

[President Johnson]

A solid B, I'd say. Overall positive, but should have done more civil rights and avoid the disastrous coup in Iran.

[John Dule]

A. My third-favorite president.

[Big Abraham]

In addition to what PSOL and Nathan said, his greatest domestic achievement is usually regarded as the Interstate Highway System—a project which, while undoubtedly useful, has greatly accelerated the decline of dense, walkable legacy cities, caused them to go over to urban decay and concomitant de-industrialization, replaced urban beauty with highway overpasses, has fuelled the proliferation of unlivable suburbs bereft of any amenities or soul, and proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the national railway system as the main means of interstate commerce and travel, thus ensuring the supremacy of single-use motor-cars and diesel trucks and all the problems that come with it, to say nothing of the deleterious environmental effects. Not that Eisenhower could have necessarily predicted all that, but needless to say it would have been much better as a public works projects to invest in public transportation.

[Alben Barkley]

A-/B+

Last great Republican president. (Last good/decent one was HW Bush.)

People whining about his foreign policy... It was the Cold War. Most of what he did was sensible in that context. And the bad was still not nearly as bad as some of what followed under subsequent Democratic administrations, namely the escalation of Vietnam, and I say that as obviously a strong partisan Democrat. Hell, JFK and LBJ ran to the right of Ike and Nixon on foreign policy. "Missile gap" anyone? Ike was the one warning about the "military industrial complex" and saying "every gun that is made... is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, are cold but are not clothed." I would have thought leftists would like that more than I do!

[H. Ross Peron]

A-/B+

Last great Republican president. (Last good/decent one was HW Bush.)

People whining about his foreign policy... It was the Cold War. Most of what he did was sensible in that context. And the bad was still not nearly as bad as some of what followed under subsequent Democratic administrations, namely the escalation of Vietnam, and I say that as obviously a strong partisan Democrat. Hell, JFK and LBJ ran to the right of Ike and Nixon on foreign policy. "Missile gap" anyone? Ike was the one warning about the "military industrial complex" and saying "every gun that is made... is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, are cold but are not clothed." I would have thought leftists would like that more than I do!

I'm not going to let Democrats off the hook for their Cold War policy (see Vietnam) but Truman opposed overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran and I think would have been similarly sceptical in Guatemala as well.

I think Eisenhower was ok on domestic policy but even there his liberalism is overrated. While he did not seek to reverse the New Deal, Eisenhower certainly did not propose any new social programs such as universal healthcare or Social Security expansion that his Democratic predecessors and successors championed.

[John Dule]

A-/B+

Last great Republican president. (Last good/decent one was HW Bush.)

People whining about his foreign policy... It was the Cold War. Most of what he did was sensible in that context. And the bad was still not nearly as bad as some of what followed under subsequent Democratic administrations, namely the escalation of Vietnam, and I say that as obviously a strong partisan Democrat. Hell, JFK and LBJ ran to the right of Ike and Nixon on foreign policy. "Missile gap" anyone? Ike was the one warning about the "military industrial complex" and saying "every gun that is made... is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, are cold but are not clothed." I would have thought leftists would like that more than I do!

I'm not going to let Democrats off the hook for their Cold War policy (see Vietnam) but Truman opposed overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran and I think would have been similarly sceptical in Guatemala as well.

I think Eisenhower was ok on domestic policy but even there his liberalism is overrated. While he did not seek to reverse the New Deal, Eisenhower certainly did not propose any new social programs such as universal healthcare or Social Security expansion that his Democratic predecessors and successors championed.

Eisenhower's terrible successors championed a "War on Poverty" that has resulted in trillions of wasted taxpayer dollars and a net-zero reduction in the poverty rate.

[LM Brazilian Citizen]

C, because despite Eisenhower being a very correct and organized person, and his domestic policy appears to have been reasonable, he was behind the coups d'état and civil war in Guatemala in 1954 and Iran in 1953, in the term of office of the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. In addition, he conspired against the Congo (later Zaire) independence leader, Patrice Lumumba, assassinated three days before leave office, as well as many CIA programs like MK Ultra, Mockingbird and COINTELPRO, originated or expanded.

[dw93]

B- or C+. My opinion of his Presidency dipped a bit in recent years, but despite that he was still the best Republican President since Theodore Roosevelt.