Was Dwight Eisenhower A Good President?

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Dwight Eisenhower was president from 1953 until 1961. During this time, he was able to make big accomplishments and changes in American society. These were things like balancing the budget, stopping inflation, keeping the peace, and constructing the interstate system. However, Eisenhower also had faults like his inability to speak out on public issues such as desegregation and Joseph McCarthy striking fear in all Americans as well as his lack of being able to deal with foreign affairs, which left the country vulnerable. These events did not make him the most popular, but that’s not to say he wasn’t still a good president. I believe that Dwight Eisenhower was a good president in our history, however, I think that his spot was always more in …show more content…

I believe that Eisenhower was a good president in general, definitely not at the bottom of the list. Eisenhower was a great general and Supreme Commander of the United States Army and led the D-Day invasion on Normandy, which helped lead us to victory in WWII. So naturally, some of this success carried into his presidency. During his eight years in office, the economy had much prosperity with only two minor recessions. From this, we had almost eight full years of no unemployment and no inflation, which is a great achievement in the history of our country. Adding to this was a great eight years of peace and tranquility in our nation. Almost everyone was doing good and living great lives. Even lower-class Americans were getting better living conditions and gaining more opportunities. He also gained public popularity by doing things like building the interstate highway system and keeping the national park land how it was, allowing citizens to enjoy the preserved nature and beauty of the country. In civil rights, Eisenhower did the best he felt he could. He had achievements like appointing Earl Warren to Chief Justice, desegregating the armed forces, and eventually stepping into the debacle with the Little Rock Nine. Although Dwight Eisenhower did try to the best of his abilities, he did have flaws as well that landed him to be not so popular in the history …show more content…

These flaws included him not achieving much in regard to foreign policy or desegregation of schools, his failure to give attention to Joseph McCarthy, and his lack of leadership that was felt in America. Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, was causing mass panic in America by saying that communist spies were everywhere in America and planning on trying to take over. Now, instead of attacking this head-on and getting him to stop, Eisenhower actually did basically nothing and let McCarthy play this out until it eventually failed on him. That was not the right move as citizens now felt that Eisenhower couldn’t be trusted to take his leadership role and protect American morale in the times of the early Cold War. This was seen again when Eisenhower wouldn’t comment anything about the racial issues in America or about his feelings about Brown v. Board of Education. This, of course, did not win over the people of color and the oppressed in America as they felt that Eisenhower was putting them on the back burner and not fighting for them. All of these issues show Dwight Eisenhower’s overall lack of leadership needed when being the president. He wouldn’t take any problem head-on by himself and instead tried to focus on things that made him more popular with the bigger majority, avoiding some of the biggest problems to sort of save face in case things went