Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (41 page)

Congress was if anything even less interested in considering major social reforms in the early 1950s.
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This was especially so after the unexpected death of Taft from cancer in July 1953. "Mr. Republican" had hardly been a liberal, but he was not a reactionary either, and the responsibility of working for a Republican President for the first time in his congressional career had strengthened his sense of teamwork. Before his death he and Ike had become fairly good friends, even playing golf together. His passing genuinely upset the President, who held the hand of Mrs. Taft and repeated, "I don't know what I'll do without him; I don't know what I'll do without him." Thereafter the Senate Republican leader was William Knowland of California, a humorless and much more conservative figure. Eisenhower found Knowland—and the GOP right wing that henceforth dominated the party in the Senate—deaf to his "Modern Republicanism," and he gradually despaired of healing the ideological rifts in his party. On one occasion he confided to his diary about Know-land, "In his case, there seems to be no final answer to the question, 'How stupid can you get?'"
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For all these reasons Eisenhower's first term witnessed little significant domestic legislation. Aside from the extension of Social Security, which had the support of an increasingly well organized lobby for the elderly, the only important law approved was the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. This greatly increased federal subsidies for highway-building throughout the country.
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Many critics were appalled by this act, among them Lewis Mumford, who complained, "The most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they [the Congress] didn't have the faintest notion of what they were doing."
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Expanded in subsequent years, the building effort had often drastic effects on air quality, energy consumption, the ecology of cities, slum clearance and housing, mass transit, and railroads.
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But it greatly appealed to ordinary Americans, especially the expanding millions who owned cars. And it offered vast economic benefits to a wide circle of interests, including the automobile, trucking, construction, and petroleum industries, to say nothing of real estate developers, motel and restaurant chains, shopping mall entrepreneurs, engineers, and many others in virtually every congressional district. Highly popular in Congress, it promised to give something to almost everybody. It had enormous long-range importance, establishing the basis for the American transportation system for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.
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Congress otherwise acted with restraint. It refused to extend coverage under the minimum wage or to curb farm subsidies that benefited large commercial operators. Surplus crops continued to pile up, and millions of small farmers and farm workers, including millions of blacks, swelled an already substantial Great Migration into overburdened cities. Congress also did little to deal with poverty, education, or mounting urban problems. It seemed especially deaf to what was soon to become the greatest domestic controversy of all: race relations.
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Many of these issues, having been slighted, provoked ever-greater social and political divisions by the late 1950s. In the 1960s they dominated a much more activist legislative agenda.

It would be stretching things to say that Americans were especially happy with the Republican party's domestic record during Eisenhower's first term. Democrats recaptured both houses of Congress in the 1954 elections, after which interest groups continued to command center stage on Capitol Hill. But there was little doubt that Americans continued to like Ike personally; his carefully cultivated popularity persisted at extraordinarily high levels. Above all, the majority of middle-class Americans, expectant about the future, seemed more interested in private concerns than in domestic reforms after 1954. The Korean War was fading from memory; McCarthy was silenced; the economy was booming. Although Eisenhower had not done much to promote some of these developments, notably the downfall of McCarthy, he was widely credited with ending the war and with calming the roiling partisanship that had disturbed the nation in the Truman years. To millions in the mid-1950s he remained an admirable, even heroic figure.

10
World Affairs, 1953–1956

On March 1, 1954, the United States tested the world's first hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. More awesome than scientists anticipated, it proved to be 750 times more powerful than the A-bomb dropped at Hiroshima. Radioactive debris from the blast spread across 7,000 square miles of the Pacific, including inhabited islands, and enveloped a small Japanese fishing boat,
Fukuryu Maru
(the
Lucky Dragon
) that was some ninety miles east of Bikini at the time. Radioactive ash rained down on the fishermen. Some lost their appetites and grew nauseous. Their skin turned darker, and sores broke out on their fingers and necks, which had been most exposed to the radiation. When the boat got back to Japan two weeks later, twenty-three of the crew were said to be suffering from radiation sickness. Fishermen on other Japanese boats returned to port and also complained of contamination. An outcry arose, peaking six months later when Aikichi Kuboyama, a
Lucky Dragon
fisherman, died. American authorities said he had been felled by hepatitis acquired from a blood transfusion, but his organs revealed pronounced effects of radiation. Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, stated that the fishermen had belonged to a "Red spy outfit."
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Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was conducting its own atomic experiments. On September 14, 1954, military leaders exploded a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb in the air above 45,000 Red Army troops and thousands of civilians near the village of Totskoye. This was in the Ural Mountains, 600 miles southeast of Moscow and within 100 miles of a million people. The test, which was not disclosed until 1991, aimed at ascertaining whether troops (who were advised that the blast was an "imitation" atomic explosion) could continue to fight under such conditions. Films of the event revealed that some of the soldiers, who were less than two miles from blast center, indeed managed to struggle through maneuvers amid the smoke and dust and 115-degree heat. But many wore little or no protective clothing, and their exposure to radiation was enormous. A documentary concerning the episode later concluded that a number of soldiers and villagers fell sick, went blind, or developed cancer and other illnesses attributed to the radiation.
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These two events were among the most shocking of the early Cold War years. But they were hardly unique. The United States exploded at least 203 nuclear weapons in the Pacific and in Nevada between 1946 and 1961 and another ninety-six in 1962, exposing an estimated 200,000 civilian and military personnel to some degree of radiation. The Russians, the French, and the British also conducted tests. Americans near the Nevada sites were rocked and startled by the blasts and flashes of light from the explosions. Thousands of people employed in clean-up operations, as well as "downwinders" in the Pacific and in western states, claimed to suffer from the effects of radioactivity as a result of the tests.
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Whether scientists, politicians, and military leaders in the 1940s and early 1950s should have done more to warn the world about radiation remains a debated issue years later. Some scientists at the time were worried, not only about dangerous fallout from the tests but also about hundreds of experiments in which radiation was deliberately released into the environment and in which human beings were unknowingly dosed or injected with radioactive substances in order to learn more about bodily reactions. One such scientist, in 1950, warned the AEC that such experiments had "a little of the Buchenwald touch."
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By the mid-1950s many people were growing alarmed by what they heard and read. News items reported the presence of radioactive substances in the soil and in foods and predicted that leukemia, birth defects, possibly even horrible mutations might develop from explosions that had occurred far, far away.

Leading Eisenhower administration officials tended publicly to ignore or to dismiss such alarming reports. The evidence of danger, they said, was sketchy and debated by scientists. Many experts then believed that radioactive substances had beneficial potential: X-ray machines commonly measured foot sizes in shoe stores. Atomic testing and other kinds of experimentation, they added, were essential to national security and medical research. It is now clear, however, that these experts underestimated the dangers from the experiments. It is also clear that officials in charge of atomic testing knowingly exposed human beings to nuclear fallout. The AEC staged a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign on behalf of the peace-related blessings of atomic power, and Ike himself activated America's first commercial nuclear power plant in 1955.
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The AEC attempted to suppress evidence of long-range fallout problems as they became more evident by the mid-1950s.
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Those officials who were kept apprised of what the weapons could do, however, nonetheless grew nervous. Eisenhower was one. Following a briefing in 1955 on the outcome of a hypothetical atomic war with the Russians, he estimated privately that the Soviet Union (which lagged in the nuclear arms race) would incur three times as many casualties as would the United States but that 65 percent of Americans would require medical care, most of whom would be unable to get it. He observed, "It would literally be a business of digging ourselves out of the ashes, starting again."
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This was indeed an unthinkable prospect—the most horrifying of the many calamities that would befall the world if the Cold War could not be contained now that the major protagonists were amassing stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons. Dealing with this new world, which was considerably more frightening than the one that had confronted political leaders in the 1940s, was the most awesome task facing the Eisenhower administration. Ike's performance in the areas of foreign and defense policy could determine the fate of the earth.

E
ISENHOWER'S EARLY ACTIONS
in these respects seemed likely to intensify the Cold War. Repeating the tough anti-Communistic messages of his election campaign, he devoted much of his inaugural address to denouncing Communism. "Freedom," he said, "is pitted against slavery; lightness against dark." In his State of the Union message he added that the United States would "never acquiesce in the enslavement of any people."
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When Stalin died in early March, Ike made little effort to develop better diplomatic contacts with the new Soviet leadership. His neglect, which was studied, may have been unfortunate, for the new Soviet premier, Georgi Malenkov, seemed eager for contacts.
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Much later, when historians looked at once classified documents, it became clear that Eisenhower was wiser and subtler than his moralistic rhetoric suggested. He recognized, for instance, that world Communism was not monolithic, that the Soviet Union had severe internal problems, that Communist ideology was not the driving force behind Russian behavior, and that Soviet leaders did not intend to start a war. Conflicts between the Russians and the Chinese, he understood, were serious. Tensions with both nations must be reduced.

Eisenhower occasionally expressed these feelings to trusted aides, such as Emmet Hughes. "We are in an armaments race," he lamented in March 1953. "Where will it lead us? At worst, to atomic warfare. At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil." A month later he spoke out for a limit on arms and for international control of atomic energy. In December 1953 he delivered an "Atoms for Peace" speech to the UN. It called on the nuclear powers—the United States, the USSR, and the UK—to turn over some of their fissionable materials to an international agency.
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These efforts, however, were sporadic and not followed through. Some, such as Atoms for Peace, were at least in part propagandistic—the proposal would have weakened the Soviet Union more than the United States, which was ahead in nuclear development—and were ignored by the USSR. Eisenhower tended instead to sustain the harsh, sometimes nearly Manichean rhetoric of the campaign and of his inaugural address, especially in the first two years of his administration.

Eisenhower talked tough for many reasons. One was to reassure anti-Communist allies abroad of America's unbending resolve to stay the course. To have done otherwise, he thought, would have weakened support for NATO, which was then seeking to build up military forces and to embrace West Germany. Eisenhower also had to deal with hard-liners at home, McCarthy among them, who were stronger than ever before in Congress. Influential politicians on Capitol Hill worried not only about Soviet activity but also about maintaining the defense contracts that had become vital to the economic health of their districts during the Korean War. Many of the influential senators of the 1950s—GOP leaders William Knowland of California and Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Georgia Democrat Richard Russell (a power on the Armed Services Committee), Lyndon Johnson of Texas—ardently supported high levels of defense spending and firm foreign policy. So did important businessmen and many labor union leaders. The more than $350 billion in military spending during the Eisenhower era bolstered a host of corporations and defense workers in the country.

Above all, Eisenhower talked tough because neither he nor anyone else could be sure of Soviet or Chinese intentions. The Korean War, after all, was still killing American soldiers in July 1953. A month later the Soviets exploded their first thermonuclear device (not a bomb). In 1954 and 1955 high-level advisory committees, including the National Security Council, apprised the President of what they thought were significant increases in Soviet nuclear power. The Soviets, one such report warned in early 1955, then had the capacity to deliver a "knockout" attack on the United States.
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Though Ike knew that America had far superior nuclear resources, he could not afford to let his guard down in such circumstances. Like all American Presidents in the Cold War era, he had to take seriously an obviously powerful adversary. In doing so he frequently felt obliged to issue dire warnings about the dangers.

The President, like most Americans after years of Cold War hostility, in fact reflected a consensus that the Soviets were unbending and that signs of softness in dealing with them were tantamount to "appeasement." Most liberals and conservatives agreed on these apparently unchanging facts of the world order. They also believed that the United States, the world's greatest democracy, had a mission to promote democratic ideals throughout the world. For these reasons, too, Eisenhower did little, especially at first, to try to soften Cold War tensions. So while he possessed a subtler and more sophisticated knowledge of world affairs than many contemporaries, he seldom exposed his awareness to the public. He could have done more than he did during his presidency to educate the American people about the dangers of the fast-moving nuclear arms race.
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Eisenhower's top appointments in the fields of foreign and defense policy reflected his anti-Soviet priorities. One of these was Admiral Arthur Radford, who replaced General Bradley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May 1953. Radford was a favorite of Republican conservatives, who never forgave Bradley for opposing MacArthur in 1951. A strong advocate of atomic weapons development, Radford (and other leading military advisers in the 1950s) brought a larger naval-air emphasis, especially the use of aircraft carriers, to military planning. Radford proved a ready advocate of the use of force abroad, mainly in Asia. On five occasions in the next two years (three concerning Indochina, two concerning the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu off the Chinese mainland) Radford pressed for American attacks, possibly including the use of nuclear weapons. Ike overruled him all five times.
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Charles E. Wilson, the President's choice for Defense Secretary, was another strong Cold Warrior. Wilson appealed to the President because he had been head of General Motors, the nation's largest defense contractor. Ike hoped Wilson could bring businesslike economies to the Pentagon and control the interservice rivalries that still plagued defense planning. In his confirmation hearings, however, Wilson denied that he would have a conflict of interest, even though he owned $2.5 million in GM stock and had $600,000 due him in deferred compensation. Wilson further proclaimed at the hearings that "what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa"—a comment that opponents twisted to "what was good for General Motors was good for the country."
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Wilson was confirmed but did not manage to control the services. (This was never easy.) Moreover, he lost influence within the administration, in part because he could not curb his tongue. Perhaps his most memorable faux pas took place during the 1954 election campaigns, when he opposed further government aid to the unemployed by blurting, "I've always liked bird dogs better than kennel-fed dogs myself—you know, one who'll get out and hunt for food rather than sit on his fanny and yell."
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Well before then, however, government associates found him far too blunt for his own good. At a Cabinet meeting one aide listened to Wilson, then scribbled a note to another, "From now on I'm buying nothing but Plymouths." It was said that Wilson while at GM had invented the automatic transmission so that he would always be free to drive with one foot in his mouth.
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