Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T22:43:16.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ronald Reagan—Another Hidden-Hand Ike?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Fred I. Greenstein
Fred I. Greenstein*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Name the president.

He was enormously popular during his eight years in the White House. In contrast to Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, he not only entered but also left office riding high in the polls. Yet when he stepped down the experts who make it their business to observe presidents closely did not join in the public adulation. The verdict of the Washington watchers was that he had been a passive participant in his own presidency, remaining disconnected from day-to-day politics and policy.

For the young this can have been only one president—Ronald Reagan. But those whose political memories reach back to the 1950s may recognize that he could also have been the only other two-term president in the post-New Deal era—Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The description of Ike as out of the loop in his own presidency was unquestioned at the time that Eisenhower left office. When Arthur Schlesinger asked a panel of distinguished students of the presidency to rank 31 American presidents in terms of greatness, they placed Eisenhower 21st—a tie with Chester A. Arthur (Schlesinger, 1962).

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 7 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Sherman. 1961. Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Anderson, Martin. 1988. Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Bundy, McGeorge. 1989. Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Burke, John P. and Greenstein, Fred I. 1989. How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Cannon, Lou. 1982. Reagan. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Deaver, Michael K. with Hershkowitz, Mickey. 1987. Behind the Scenes: In which the Author Talks about Ronald and Nancy Reagan … and Himself. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Draper, Theodore. August 17, 1989. “Revelations of the North Trial,” New York Review of Books 36: 54–9.Google Scholar
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 1963. The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953–1956. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Greenstein, Fred I. 1982. The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Greenstein, Fred I. 1988. “Dwight D. Eisenhower: Leadership Theorist in the White House,” in Greenstein, Fred I., ed., Leadership in the Modern Presidency. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 76–107.Google Scholar
Hoxie, Gordon. 1971. The White House: Organization and Operations. New York: Center for the Study of the Presidency.Google Scholar
Immerman, Richard. 1979. “Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?” Political Psychology 1: 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempton, Murray. 1967. “The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Esquire, pp. 108–109, 156.Google Scholar
Lyon, Peter. 1974. Eisenhower: Portrait of a Hero. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
McAuliffe, Mary S. 1981. “Eisenhower the President.” Journal of American History 68: 625–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborne, John. May 13, 1978. “White House Watch: Gabbing with Harlow,” New Republic, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar
Parmet, Herbert S. 1972. Eisenhower and the American Crusades. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Regan, Donald T. 1988. For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, A. M. (Sr.). July 26, 1962. “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians,” New York Times Magazine: 12+.Google Scholar
Smith, Hedrick. 1988. The Power Game: How Washington Works. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Speakes, Larry with Pack, Robert. 1988. Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Stockman, David A. 1986. The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. 1987. House. Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. Senate. Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguán Opposition. Report of the Congressional Committees investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. 100th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. No. 100–433, S. Rept. No. 100–216.Google Scholar
U.S. President. 1956. Public Papers of the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1955. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. President. 1987. Report of the President's Special Review Board (The Tower Commission Report). Washington, D.C.: President's Special Review Board. (Reprinted as John Tower, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft. 1987. The Tower Commission Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board. New York: Bantam Books and Times Books.)Google Scholar
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 1989. United States of America versus Oliver L. North. Transcript of the Trial. (Available at the National Security Archive, 1755 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.)Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob. 1987. Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar