This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. That feeling when you're trying to build your credit, and it's like over and over again. Good news! Chase Credit Journey can help you with a personalized score improvement plan provided by Experian, so when you still need that credit built.
You have the guidance you need. You can even get a Chase Secure banking account with no monthly service fee if you're 17 to 24 years old. Hallelujah! This tool is for education purposes and doesn't guarantee you'll reach your credit score goal. The score you receive uses Vantage Score 3.0 model and may not be the model used by lenders.
Member FDIC. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and time. Finally, detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. Hi, I'm Steph, and I work at United Healthcare. When I think about United Healthcare's members, I think of my own family. My niece was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. I know how hard it is for families at United Healthcare.
We can make it easier. I'm Brian. I care because I know what it's like to not speak the language. It's not easy. Health insurance is complicated.
I would say our job is to make everything easy for our UXC members. I work for United Healthcare. I'm committed to care. This is how eBay Live usually goes. You tune into a stream just to browse.
Then something rare pops up for a total seal, like a vintage handbag or a rookie baseball card. The bids start flying, and browsing quickly turns into, I have to have this. And guess what? You win. And it's a rush because everyone else wanted it too, but you got it.
On eBay Live, you don't just watch the action, you're in it. Download the eBay app to watch live and shop live. eBay Live, things people love. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, and our favorite subject.
History And all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to study all the things that are beautiful in life, all the things that matter in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to hillsdale.edu. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading historians. Stephen Ambrose passed in 2002, but his storytelling accounts can now be heard here at Our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estate.
Ambrose wrote the definitive biography of Dwight Eisenhower. Ike was born in 1890 in a rented shack near the railroad tracks in Denison, Texas. He was raised in a family of Mennonites. fundamentalists in their Christian faith were also pacifists. Here's Stephen Ambrose with the story of Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Droit David Eisenhower was a great and a good man. These two qualities don't always or even often go together. But they did with him. Obviously, that is an assertion that needs proof.
Let me begin with some definitions. In 1954, President Eisenhower wrote his childhood friend, Sweet Hazlet, on the subject of greatness. He thought greatness depended either on achieving preeminence. in some broad field of human thought or endeavor, or on assuming some position of great responsibility. and then so discharging his duties as to have left a marked and favorable imprint upon the future.
The qualities of goodness in a man, I believe, include a broad sympathy for the human condition. That is an awareness of human weaknesses and shortcomings. and a willingness to be forgiving of them. A sense of responsibility toward others. A genuine modesty.
combined with justified self-confidence. A sense of humor. And most of all, A love. of life and of people. That last?
is the key. Eisenhower loved life and he loved people. To me, that's the heart of his character. From it flowed all the rest. In the fall of 1912, Third class cadet.
Dwight Eisenhower, 22 years old. was walking down a hallway at West Point. When a plebe Running full tilt on some fool errand for an upperclassman, ran into him. Knocked him over. Reacting with what he called a bellow of astonishment and mock indignation, Eisenhower scornfully demanded, Mr.
Dungard. a generic term for a plebe. What was your PCS? previous condition of servitude. What did you do before you became a cadet?
And then Eisenhower added sarcastically, you look like a barber. I was a barber, sir. It was Eisenhower's turn to go red with embarrassment. Without a word, he returned to his room. Where he told his roommate, I'm never going to haze another plebe as long as I'm at this place.
As a matter of fact, they'll have to run over and knock me out of the company street before I'll make any attempt again. I've just done something that was stupid and unforgivable. I managed to make a man ashamed of what he did to earn a living. He never hazed again. And as an adult, he never shamed a man.
Respect for others. Honesty in his dealings, love of life, these were some of the basic parts of his character. From whence did they come? Nurture and nature. played their respective roles in shaping Dwight Eisenhower.
Physically, he inherited a strong, tough, big athletic body and extremely good looks. With a quite fabulous grin, along with keen intelligence. He also inherited a strong competitive streak from his parents. plus a bad temper. along with unquestioning love, stern discipline, ambition, and religion.
They made him study, his parents did, read the Bible aloud, do chores. old jobs as soon as he was old enough. They instilled in him a series of controls over his emotions. His temper most of all, they gave him a solid Victorian outlook on the relations between the sexes and on proper conduct. All his life he would blush if he slipped and said a hell or a damn in front of a lady.
Thus, he grew up in a strong Christian atmosphere. Not a sectarian atmosphere. He said once as president, that this country has to be founded on a strong religious faith, and I don't care what it is. What he meant was, he didn't care if it was Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or River Brethren. He wants to find an atheist.
as someone who could watch Southern Methodists play Notre Dame and not care who won. Yeah. As president, he. Began attending church regularly because he felt it was important to set an example. It wasn't something that he had done earlier in his life.
But the religion was always very deeply there. He began his first inaugural address with a prayer. And it went over so well he decided to begin all of his cabinet meetings with prayers. About a year after he had been in office, he was a half hour into a cabinet meeting when he slapped himself on the head and said, God damn it, we forgot the prayer. From his parents.
And from his experiences in Abilene, which is after all almost exactly in the heart of America. The lower 48. He absorbed such values as honesty, And fair play in all dealings. into the very marrow of his bones. He abhorred the idea of cheating.
or lying. And he never did either. He also absorbed a fervent attachment to democracy. It amounted to a religious faith. This grew naturally in the soil of that little town out there on the Kansas Prairie.
And you've been listening to Stephen Ambrose tell the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower. More of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to ouramericanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
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Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S.
And can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. My name is Jessa.
One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do. I'm Ben and I work at United Healthcare.
I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me.
Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. Why did I search the internet for answers to my cold sore problem?
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Healthcare just got less painful. And we continue with our American stories and with the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower, told by the person who wrote the best book on Ike. And we're talking about Stephen Ambrose. Let's return.
to Ambrose with more of this remarkable story. At West Point, And in his first 25 years in the Army, Eisenhower satisfied few of his ambitions. He didn't get to war in the First War, the Great War. And he was still a lieutenant colonel when the Second World War began and about to be forcibly retired. But he had learned his profession.
And he had demonstrated another characteristic trait. Patience. And it was rewarded. After Pearl Harbor, his star rose. and soon he was in Washington making war plans for Chief of Staff George Marshall.
and then on to London to take command of the American forces in the European theater of operations. This threw him into the middle of the great decision-making process of the Allies at the very highest level. in London dealing daily. with Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He proved to be an outstanding diplomat and politician.
not only with Churchill, but with de Gaulle and other French leaders as well. He was successful because he was true to his character. The situation in North Africa following the invasion in the fall of 1942 was exceedingly complicated, with a lot of false promises coming from the British, the Americans, to the various French factions. But not from Eisnar. I know only one method of operation, he wrote in his diary, to be as honest with others as I am with myself.
When President Franklin Roosevelt pressured him to get tough with the local French, Eisenhower refused, explaining my whole strength in dealing with the French. has been based upon my refusal to quibble. or to stoop to any kind of subterfuge or double dealing. The French responded to this. De Gaulle told him, as long as you say that, I believe it.
He was equally successful with his sometimes difficult British subordinates. and is sometimes egotistical American subordinates. I need only mention the names of Montgomery and Pat, and you know what I'm talking about. They might not agree with his decisions, but they gave him their trust. Indeed, whenever his wartime associates described Eisenhower, whether they were superiors or subordinates, There was one word that almost every one of them used.
It was trust. Colonel Montgomery didn't think much of Eisenhower as a soldier. But he appreciated other qualities, his real strengths. lies in his human qualities, Montgomery said. He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as the magnet attracts the bit of metal.
He merely has to smile at you and you trust him at once. Scrupulous honesty was an integral part of Eisenhower's character and a learned experience. He saw and experienced the payoff for this trust. He knew that telling the truth was the only way to deal effectively with his problems. He also developed a technique to deliver his message.
I refuse. He wrote, I refuse to put anything in diplomatic or suave terminology. and carefully cultivate the manner and reputation of complete bluntness and honesty. Just a man too simple-minded. to indulge in circumlocution.
Thus did the Kansas farm boy approach Charles de Gaulle. and Winston Churchill. and Franklin Roosevelt. and so many others. And it always worked.
He was the general who hated war.
Some, like Patton, gloried in it, but Eisenhower could not. He signed every letter. of condolence coming out of Europe for three years. A very sobering experience. He was the one who ordered the bombing and shelling of German cities.
He hated doing that, too. hated having to destroy when he wanted to build. But he did his duty with all his skill and energy. In 1943, his older brother Arthur sent him a newspaper clipping that stressed his mother's. Pacifism.
And the irony of her son being a general. Eisenhower wrote back to say of the pacifist, I doubt whether any of them detest war as I do. They probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground or smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. Probably they have not visited a field hospital crowded with the desperately wounded. What separates me from the pacifist is that I hate the Nazis more than I hate war.
He told Mamie in a wartime letter: I think that all these trials and tribulations must come upon the world because of some great wickedness. Yet one would feel that man's mere intelligence To say nothing of his spiritual perceptions would find some way of eliminating war. The contrast between Eisenhower and those generals who gloried in war could not have been greater. He had a very keen sense of family. of the way in which each casualty meant a grieving family back home.
In 1963, when he was filming with Walter Cronkite a television special entitled D-Day Plus 20 Years, Cronkite. sitting on that stone wall that looks onto that magnificent cemetery at Omaha. Cronkite asked him what he thought about when he returned to Normandy. In reply, he spoke not of the things that other generals would have brought up. He didn't speak about the tanks or the guns or the planes or the ships or the personalities of the commanders or their opponents or how he fooled the Germans or of the victory.
Instead, He spoke of the families of the men buried in the American cemetery. He said he could never come to this spot. without thinking of how blessed he and Mamie were to have grandchildren. and how much it saddened him. to think of all the couples in America.
who had never had that blessing. because their only son was buried here.
So far he looks like a saint. But he was a healthy, vigorous man. in his early 50s during the war. And men at war are notoriously receptive to female charm when they are far from home and close to danger. Mm-hmm.
For many people, the test of character is the marriage vow. In other words, What about Kay Summersby? K was Ike's. personal secretary and sometime driver. She was young enough to be his daughter, very attractive, with a bubbly personality that Churchill and almost everyone else found charming.
She had lost her fiancée in North Africa and had fallen in love with her boss. For his part, How could he help but be responsive? He liked her enormously. Probably had a crush on her. They were always together.
but almost never alone. Decades later, in a book published after her death, Kay claimed that they had fallen in love. And that both had realized it in January 1944 when he returned to England from a short visit to Washington. They had their only evening together alone. There was a fireplace.
They sat on the floor. His kisses absolutely unraveled me. K wrote. According to her account, It was a passionate but unconsummated experience. Because after they took off each other's clothes, Eisenhower was flassened.
This may have been because, as one aide put it in a grand understatement, he had a lot on his mind. Yeah. More likely, it seems to me, his stern sense of morality, character, and honesty overrode his passion. He was incapable. of cheating on his wife.
Or maybe that the incident never happened. that it was merely an old woman's fantasy. No one will ever know. What is important to note is that not even Kay ever claimed that they had a genuine love affair. Nor is it true that Eisenhower asked President Harry Truman for permission to divorce his wife in order to marry Kaye.
Which was always a ridiculous story to begin with because. He was a five-star general. They don't ask anybody's permission to do anything. What he did ask Truman for was permission to have Mamie join him in occupied Germany. Throughout the war, when Kay was with him always, His love for Mamie was constant.
His sustaining force was the thought that when the war was over, he and Mamie could live together again. He loved Mamie for half a century. Except when he was off at war, they slept in the same bed. for 50 years. And you've been listening to the voice of Stephen Ambrose.
The story of Dwight D. Eisenhower continues. here on Our American Stories. That feeling when you're trying to build your credit. And it's like over and over again.
Good news! Chase Credit Journey can help you with a personalized score improvement plan provided by Experian, so when you still need that credit built. You have the guidance you need. You can even get a Chase Secure Banking account with no monthly service fee if you're 17 to 24 years old. Hallelujah!
This tool is for education purposes and doesn't guarantee you'll reach your credit score goal. The score you receive uses Vantage Score 3.0 model and may not be the model used by lenders. Member FDIC. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely Detection matter.
Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. Hi, I'm Steph and I work at United Healthcare. When I think about United Healthcare's members, I think of my own family. My niece was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic disorder.
I know how hard it is for our families at United Healthcare. We can make it easier. I'm Brian. I care because I know what it's like to not speak the language. It's not easy.
Health insurance is complicated. I would say our job is to make everything easy for our UXC members. I work for United Healthcare. I'm committed to care. Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts.
Why did I search the internet for answers to my cold sore problem?
Now I'm stuck down a rabbit hole filled with images of alarmingly graphic sores in various stages of ooze. I can clear my search history. But I can never unsee that. Don't go down the rabbit hole. Amazon Health AI gets you the right care fast.
Healthcare just got less painful. And we continue with our American stories and with the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower as told. By Stephen Ambrose. Let's return to the story.
Loving Mamie. did not necessarily preclude loving Kay. Or at least loving her under the special situation in which they lived from the summer of 1942 to the spring of 1945. He was lucky to have her around. And the Allies were lucky she was there.
The best advice in attempting to pass any judgment on the Eisenhower-Summersby relationship was given by one of Eisenhower's staff officers. to an office gossip. back in 1943, leave Kay and Ike alone. She's helping him win the war. In 1939, when it looked like he might be forcibly retired as a lieutenant colonel.
His son John had asked him if he regretted having spent his career in the Army. Not at all. Eisenhower replied. He said he had found his life in the Army wonderfully interesting. It brought me into contact with men of ability, honor, and a sense of high dedication to their country.
The real satisfaction for a man is to do the best he can. My ambition in the Army was to make everybody I worked for regretful when I was ordered to other duty. Leadership was another part of his character. He was born to lead. And he was trained to lead.
you He told John once, that leadership was the one art that could be learned. But of course only the born leader can say that. Eisenhower reinforced his natural talent. He studied the subject of leadership intensely. and he wrote some of his best analytical material on the subject.
An important part of leadership for Eisenhower rested on certain matters of character. These included modesty. and a genuine eagerness to share the applause. Thus, through the war, he never forgot how much he was dependent on others. Thus, through the war, when reporters came to him, he would say, go see Bradley, go see Patton, get your story there.
They're the ones that are winning this war for us. Carrying the credit for a success. and taking the personal blame for what went wrong was Eisenhower's leadership style. In all the announcements of D-Day, the operative words were the Allies or we. In the announcement Eisenhower wrote by hand.
to release to the press in the event of failure. The operative word was I. As in It's all my fault. Always take your job seriously, never yourself. It was one of his favorite lines.
A corollary to that sentiment was his willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole. In early 1944, Eisenhower wanted to put the Allied bombers to work on transportation targets in France in order to isolate Normandy. The bomber commander said no. They wanted to continue the strategic bombing campaign inside Germany. Eisenhower felt so strongly about the issue that he told the combined chiefs of staff that either they gave him his transportation targets.
railroads and turntables and marshalling yards and bridges and the like. In France, Four. I'm simply going to have to go home. In other words, Eisenhower was not ready to commit his forces to the attack until he was certain that he had utilized every asset he had to the uttermost. If he couldn't use the assets as he saw fit, he would resign his commission.
Okay. When he made the threat, he was holding the most coveted command in the history of warfare. He got his way. And the transportation plan was a big success. He later used the same threat in a knockdown dispute with Montgomery over strategy and command, and he again had his way.
It was an integral part of him, this ability to know exactly when to use his personal asset, the power of his name. to make the ultimate threat. It showed a nice sense of balance about political factors. and an accurate measurement of his own strength in a struggle over policy. He much preferred working with the team to having to act on his own.
A stress on teamwork began when he was a child. showed again at West Point and was reinforced by his experiences as a football coach. on various Army bases in the 1920s. By 1952, the year Eisenhower entered into politics at age 62. His character is formed by heredity and experience with set in cement.
It included, as I have said, the qualities of love, honesty, faithfulness, responsibility, modesty, generosity, duty, and leadership. along with a hatred of war. These were bedrock. Or were they? This paragon of virtue I am describing had lived in the shelter of the Army nearly all of his life.
Character testing opportunities or temptations. were almost unknown to him. It's easy to be virtuous when virtue is rewarded. And this will be a hard sell to many veterans in here, but it usually is in the Army. It's not so easy to be virtuous when virtue is ignored and partisanship is rewarded, as in politics.
He grew up in the Army. And he swore like a sergeant. Although the words he used were never segual or had anything to do with anatomy. They were always Christ and damn and God and Words like that. Once he was at a Lunch in with some cabinet members.
During the 56 reelection campaign, and someone said something about somebody proposing something, and Eisenhower snorted, these damned amateurs. He said, you know, they're going. In all the world, there's only two places where amateurs think that they're better than the professionals. Military strategy in prostitution. I'm in.
Now this was an all-meal luncheon. And having said that, he blushed. And confessed. A bit shamefacedly, that's the only off-cover story I know. Where his character showed most decisively was on questions of war.
and more specifically a first strike against the Soviet Union. or in Asia. He was president during the worst decade of the Cold War. He was the only president to have a decisive lead over the Soviets in nuclear weapons. A lead so decisive that he could have ordered a preventative war which would have destroyed the Soviet Union as a military power.
and they would have been unable to retaliate. Given the amounts of money the United States was spending in the arms race. And the fear it engendered, and the fact that the Soviets would soon be able to retaliate. and eventually might pull even in nuclear weaponry. The temptation to use the bomb while we still had the lead.
was tremendous. At the time of the NBN Phu in 1954, during the various crises over the Chinese offshore islands in the mid-50s, and regularly with regard to the Soviet Union, some of Eisenhower's principal advisers gave in to that temptation. These include his Joint Chiefs of Staff, his Vice President, his Secretary of State, members of his National Security Council, and many pundits. Told on May 1, 1954, that the National Security Council was preparing a paper calling for the use of atomic bombs to save the French at Dienbien Phu. Eisnar responded, I certainly do not think.
that the atom bomb can be used by the United States unilaterally. He then went on to get to the heart of the matter. You boys must be crazy. We can't use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than 10 years. My God.
And you're listening to Stephen Ambrose. Recounting Many of the stories he told in his definitive biography. of Dwight D. Eisenhower. And I love a few of the things he said about Ike's leadership style.
And this the most important Sharing the credit for success. and taking the blame for what went wrong. was his leadership style. And this quote perhaps best states his character. Always take your job seriously.
Not yourself. When we come back. More of this remarkable story with one of the great storytellers in American history. telling the story of one of the great Military leaders in American history, Ambrose on Eisenhower, here on Our American Stories. And we continue here with our American stories, and the story of Dwight D.
Eisenhower is told. By Stephen Ambrose. Let's return to the story. It was characteristic of him Always to ask what happens next. If we do section soul, What are the likely consequences?
Suppose we do pull it off, then what? And what do the other players do?
Okay. It was an attempt to look into the future and it stood him in good stead as president. After DNB and Fu fell, the Joint Chiefs recommended a preventative attack against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower asked them to think about what they were proposing. I want you to carry this question home with you.
Gain such a victory and what are you going to do with it? Here would be a great area from the Elba River all the way to Vladivostok, just torn up and destroyed without government, without its communications, just an area of starvation and disaster. I ask you, what would the civilized world do about it? I repeat, there is no victory except in your imagination. Another quality was patience.
Make no mistakes in a hurry. was a favorite axiom of his. When advisors urged him to destroy the Soviet Union while he could still get away with it, he told them to be patient. That in the end the Soviet system would implode. because it was rotten at its core.
That this would take a long time, maybe as long as 50 years. But they would have to educate their own people in order to stay up with modern technology, and when they did, They would sow the seeds of their own undoing. He was a good steward. In his farewell address, he pointed out We You and I. Our government.
must avoid plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren. without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. And then he uttered what of all his lines is my all-time favorite. He said.
We want democracy. to survive for all ages to come. That faith in democracy was total. even after five years of dealing with Congress. In 1957, he told Swede, each congressman thinks of himself as intensely patriotic.
But it does not take the average member long to conclude that his first duty to his country is to get himself re-elected. This leads to a capacity for rationalization that is beyond belief. It was characteristic of him to see compromise. Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong. He liked to say, The Democrats controlled Congress for six of his eight years in office, he got on with them smoothly.
A brief assessment of his accomplishments as president reveals something more of the man and his character. First and foremost, he presided over eight years of prosperity. marred only by two minor recessions. By later standards, it was a period of nearly full employment. The average unemployment rate in the 50s was 4%.
And no inflation. The average inflation rate in the 1950s was 1.5% a year, about which he worried. Awfully. There was a 4% rise in real wages each year. for blue-collar workers.
Indeed, by almost every standard, GNP, personal income and savings, home buying, auto purchases, capital investment, highway construction, and so forth. It was the best decade of the century. Shirley Eisenhower's fiscal policies. His refusal to cut taxes or increase defense spending, his insistence on a balanced budget played some role. in creating this happy situation.
His special triumphs came in the field of foreign affairs and were directly related to his character. By making peace in Korea five months after taking office and avoiding war thereafter, and by holding down the cost of the arms race. He achieved greatness. No one knows how much money he saved the United States. No one knows how many lives he saved by ending the war in Korea and refusing to enter any others.
Despite a half dozen and more virtually unanimous Recommendations. to do so. Dienbin Fu, Kamoi Maxu. Many others. But he made peace and he kept the peace.
Whether any other man could have led the country through that decade without going to war cannot be known. What we do know is that Eisenhower did it. Eisenhower seldom boasted. But he did on this one. The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration, he said.
We kept the peace. People ask how it happened. By God, it didn't just happen. I'll tell you that. His magnetic appeal to millions of his fellow citizens seemed to come about as a natural and effortless result of his sunny disposition.
But he worked at his apparent artlessness. That big grin and bouncy step often masked depression. Doubt. or utter weariness. He believed it was the critical duty of a leader to always exude optimism.
He made it a habit to save all of his doubts for his pillow. For 40 years, he chained smoked cigarettes. Four packs a day. At age 58, he quit cold turkey. And he never again touched tobacco.
Clearly, he was a man of tremendous willpower. Although at the Paris Summit, the abortive Paris Summit in May of 1960. When Khrushchev was going on and on about Francis Gary Powers and U2 and demanding an apology and pounding the table and so on, Eisenhower scribbled on the back of his memo pad, God, I wish I had a cigarette. He used that tremendous willpower to conquer his own most negative characteristic. an awful temper.
When he got mad, it just everybody knew immediately. His face just loaded up. Beet red. And the tension in his body was a palpable thing that could be felt all through the room. His aides lived in terror of those.
moments of outbreak of his temper.
Now anger that is contrived. that is put on for a show and a purpose, an actor's anger. can be an effective tool of leadership. It was one Eisenhower often used. But genuine anger.
Deep blind anger. is the enemy of leadership. I now often felt it. With Montgomery. With McCarthy, with others.
But he never acted on it. One way he controlled his anger was to do his best to follow his own rule, never question another man's motives. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives. He also tried to always assume the best about others. until shown otherwise.
He could do so consistently even in a world full of high-powered men whose motives were often self-serving or base. because of this most outstanding personal characteristic of his, his love. for life and for people. No one ever caught this better than Richard Nixon. Who observed on the day Eisenhower died in 1969 that everybody loved Ike?
Because I clubbed everybody. Nixon went on to confess that he could scarcely believe such a thing was possible. Yeah. Because he said, in my experience, most politicians are men with very strong hatreds.
Well, Lord knows that Nixon was a man full of such feelings. and a man who always questioned the other guy's motives. But as for Eisenhower, The only man he ever really hated was Adolf Hitler. He was the general who hated war.
But who hated the Nazis more? He was old-fashioned. A Victorian who came to power in the mid-20th century. His virtues were those of the 19th century. Honesty.
Integrity. and religious devotion and conviction were some of them. To my knowledge, He never lied in his private life. Not once. In his public responsibilities, he lied twice.
Once in 1944 to Hitler, about where he was going to invade. And once again on May Day 1960. to Khrushchev. about what Francis Gary Powers was doing in that U-2 over the Soviet Union. In my own life, When I'm faced with a moral question or a dilemma, or a personal problem of choice.
I'm in the habit of asking myself, what would I do? Sad to relate. I often come up short of his standards. My only consolation is That's so to most of the men I know. for whose lives I have studied.
And you've been listening to Stephen Ambrose and What Storytelling? A special thanks to the estate, also to Greg Hengler for pulling that all together. The story of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Told by Stephen Ambrose.
Here. on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
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Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced.
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