Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (46 page)

News of the Israeli attack outraged Eisenhower, who stopped campaigning to take charge of the situation in Washington. Attempting at first to prevent British and French engagement, he sponsored a resolution in the UN calling on Israel to withdraw and urging other UN members to refrain from the use of force. The resolution later passed overwhelmingly, with the United States and the Soviet Union standing together against Britain and France. The British and French ignored the warning and began bombing, whereupon Nasser sank ships to block the canal.

The President was especially angry with Britain and France, for they had assured him that they would not use force. When he learned of the British bombing, he was furious with Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister whom he had known well since World War II. "Bombs, by God," he roared. "What does Anthony think he's doing?" He telephoned Eden and gave him a tongue-lashing that reduced the Prime Minister to tears. When Ike heard that paratroopers were about to land, he exclaimed, "I think it is the biggest error of our time, outside of losing China."
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The USSR then inflamed the mix by warning that it was prepared to use military power against the Israeli-British-French forces in the region. Eisenhower—it was election day—thought that the Soviets were bluffing, but he placed American military units on world-wide alert. If the Soviets intervened, he warned, the United States would send in its own troops to resist them. This was the tensest moment of the crisis and one of the most frightening of the entire Cold War. Emmet Hughes recalled that the President told him, "If those fellows start something, we may have to hit 'em—and if necessary, with
everything
in the bucket."
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At this flashpoint the protagonists came to their senses. The Russians did not intervene; the combatants agreed to a cease-fire and ultimately withdrew. A possible world war had been averted. But most of the major players gained little from the crisis. Nasser had become a hero to other Arab nationalists, but his army had been humiliated, and the closing of the canal for the next few months inflicted additional economic damage on his country. The Soviet Union scored a few propaganda points by posing as protector of Arab interests but did not advance its influence in the area. The Israelis had proved they were a tough fighting force but had been prevented from delivering a body blow to their enemies. The British and the French were the biggest losers by far. Having embarked on a foolish military mission, they had been isolated and forced to withdraw. They never regained their standing in the Middle East.

The United States, too, suffered a little from the crisis. Many people blamed Dulles for provoking the affair by withdrawing his offer of a loan. For this reason, and because the United States had been friendly with Israel since 1948, most Arab nations remained cool to Washington. The crisis, moreover, temporarily damaged America's relations with Britain and France. The weakening of Britain and France in the region, however, offered some benefit to the United States, which further expanded its increasingly globalistic reach by becoming the major Western power in the Middle East. Henceforth America was the most important guardian of Western oil interests there—a key to subsequent tensions in the region. In early 1957 Eisenhower stepped up military and economic aid to Middle Eastern nations and made it clear that the United States would intervene if necessary to secure stability in the area.
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Most important in the short run, Eisenhower's conduct of the Suez Affair earned him considerable admiration both abroad and at home. He deserved it. The administration had stood strongly against the use of force in the region during the tense negotiations following nationalization of the canal: Britain, France, and Israel could have had no doubt that military action would prompt the sort of American reaction that it did. When they attacked anyway, Eisenhower moved quickly and firmly. If his opposition to British and French colonialism did not satisfy Arab nationalists, it was nonetheless a prompt and decisive response under difficult circumstances. And he had even faced down the Russians without getting in a war! Americans again had reasons to be proud of their President.

While the Suez crisis was raging, Eisenhower found himself suddenly confronted with another bloody milestone of the Cold War, this time in Hungary. The Soviet satellite nations of eastern Europe had long stirred restlessly under the Russian yoke, especially following Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in February. In mid-1956 riots in Poland had forced the USSR to make some concessions, and in October discontent escalated to rebellion in Hungary. At first it seemed that Soviet diplomacy would contain the trouble, but on November 4 Khrushchev sent 200,000 troops and 4,000 tanks into Budapest and other areas to crush the opposition. This was two days before the American elections. The Soviet juggernaut did a brutally thorough job, killing some 40,000 Hungarian freedom fighters and forcing the flight of more than 150,000 refugees.
⁸⁶

The suppression of Hungary shocked the world and badly soiled the image of Communism. Was Khrushchev's rule any better than Stalin's? Still, the Eisenhower administration took some criticism for what had happened. By promoting since 1952 the goal of "liberation" of "captive peoples," it had implied that it would actively assist anti-Communist rebels. Broadcasts by the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe further encouraged foes of Soviet oppression in east Europe. The Eisenhower administration's doctrine of "liberation" appealed to dogmatic anti-Communists and to many eastern-European-Americans. But military reality in eastern Europe, which was occupied by the powerful Red Army, meant that liberation was a sham.

Eisenhower, who had spent most of his life in the army, knew this full well. Hungary, after all, was land-locked and virtually surrounded by Communist countries, including the Soviet Union, which had no toleration for rebellions next to its borders. Ike thus rejected CIA calls for the parachuting of arms and supplies to the Hungarian freedom fighters and refused to consider the dispatch of American forces. Hungary, he observed sadly, was "as inaccessible to us as Tibet." He realized—as knowledgeable observers long had known—that America's main military resource was atomic attack, or massive retaliation. This would do more to destroy Hungary than to rescue it.
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Eisenhower supporters nonetheless managed to derive some crumbs of satisfaction from the Hungarian revolution. The President, almost everyone acknowledged, did the sensible thing (indeed, it was the only thing) by not trying to challenge the Soviets in Budapest. Eisenhower again had used his understanding of military realities to avoid overreaction that might lead to war. Most important, perhaps, it was obvious that the major villains of the piece were not Americans but Soviets. Khrushchev's behavior had again seemed to prove the validity of two fundamental tenets of American thought about world affairs: the Soviets were tyrannical, and they must be contained.
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T
HE CRISES IN
S
UEZ AND
H
UNGARY
, still unfolding on election day, probably had little effect on the voting in the United States. The results of the balloting at any rate merely confirmed what everyone already anticipated: Eisenhower won a sweeping triumph. He received 35,590,472 votes to Stevenson's 26,022,752. This was more than 57 percent of the ballots. Stevenson actually received a million fewer votes in 1956 than he had in 1952; his margin of defeat was almost 3 million greater. Eisenhower carried every state outside the South (except Missouri) and even took five states there: Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. The electoral college was 457 for Ike to 73 for Stevenson.

The election was mainly a personal triumph for the President. He attracted a wide range of backers to his side, including a majority of the black vote in ten northern and twelve southern cities, a development that threatened the viability for the future of the Democratic electoral coalition.
⁸⁹
But he did not sweep his party in with him. The Democrats retained control of Congress, gaining one seat in both the House and the Senate. Eisenhower would have to confront a House in which Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 233 to 200 and a Senate where they had a majority of 49 to 47. It was the first time since 1848 that a presidential candidate had won without carrying either house of Congress with him.

Any number of things, of course, can explain a personal victory of such magnitude. Among them, many pundits thought, were the ineffective candidacy of Stevenson, as well as the economy (which was flourishing and therefore helped the incumbent). But all agreed that voters still liked Ike. And what they especially seemed to like, aside from his attractive personality, was his record in military and diplomatic affairs. The contrast between the mood in 1952, when the nation had been mired in Korea and McCarthyism, and 1956, by which time the United States had enjoyed three years of peace, was sharp and satisfying. If Ike and Dulles had missed chances to ease the tensions of the Cold War, if they had sometimes pursued provocative policies, they had nonetheless avoided serious blunders. Above all, they had managed to promote prosperity and to keep the country out of war. No wonder the voters were grateful.

11
The Biggest Boom Yet

Widely used words and phrases evoke the dynamism and quest for "fun" that pervaded the remarkably buoyant years of the mid-1950s, especially for the ever more numerous and steadily better-off middle classes. Hear a few: gung ho, cool jazz, hot rod, drag strip, ponytail, panty raid, sock hop, cookout, jet stream, windfall profit, discount house, split-level home, togetherness, hip, hula hoops, Formica, and (in 1959) Barbie Dolls.
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The whole world, many Americans seemed to think by 1957, was turning itself over to please the special, God-graced generation—and its children—that had triumphed over depression and fascism, that would sooner or later vanquish Communism, and that was destined to live happily ever after (well, almost) in a fairy tale of health, wealth, and happiness.

Not everyone, of course, had these grand expectations. Poverty and discrimination still afflicted millions, especially blacks, Mexican-Americans, and Indians. Cold War concerns, including nuclear testing, remained unnerving. A recession hit the country in 1958, temporarily souring the atmosphere. By then a number of groups—blacks, some of the young, women here and there—were openly restless. Still, the mid-1950s seemed almost wonderful, especially in a material sense, to millions of upwardly mobile people. The Korean War was fading from memory, the Red Scare was weakening, Eisenhower stood strong in command, and the consumer culture—what a marvel it appeared to be!—seemed well on its way to softening social divisions.
²

A few numbers tell this story, which was especially happy for the mid-decade years.
³
The GNP rose in constant 1958 dollars from $355.3 billion in 1950 to $452.5 billion in 1957, an improvement of 27.4 percent, or nearly 4 percent per year. By 1960 it had increased to $487.7 billion, or 37 percent for the 1950s as a whole.
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By 1960 the median family income was $5,620, 30 percent higher in purchasing power than in 1950. A staggeringly high total of 61.9 percent of homes were owner-occupied in 1960, compared to 43.6 percent in 1940 and 55 percent in 1950. Thanks in part to the fiscal restraint of the Eisenhower administration, prices remained stable after the inflationary years of the Korean War (the postage stamp for ordinary letters stayed at three cents until 1958), and unemployment (save in the recession year of 1958, when it averaged 6.8 percent) was remarkably low, bottoming out at between 4.1 and 4.4 percent between 1955 and 1957.
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Male college and university graduates were especially blessed during these years. Born in the Depression when the birth rate had fallen to a record low, these young, highly educated men were a relatively scarce and prized commodity. Corporate recruiters flocked to the campuses, sometimes making reservations a year ahead to be sure of having a place to interview. (Recruiters were not much interested in talented women, who were thought to be suited for roles as wives and mothers.) By the mid-1950s the average earnings of young men after a few years of graduation from college approached those of considerably older men.

It is doubtful that this highly favored group received a more rigorous education than earlier generations of university graduates. On the contrary, the rampant growth of schools and colleges, which accepted ever-larger percentages of high-school seniors, combined with other developments to create a longterm "dumbing down" of American secondary and higher education in many localities. That was a price of educational democratization as it accelerated in postwar America. Moreover, minority children and the poor generally received inferior schooling. Still, education flourished as one of many booming enterprises in the 1950s.
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As never before, a college degree literally paid off.
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M
ANY FORCES POWERED
this prosperity, which accelerated even more rapidly in the golden age of the 1960s: the GNP in 1958 dollars reached $658.1 billion in 1966, 35 percent higher than it had been in 1960. High among these forces were America's still substantial competitive advantage over war-damaged European and Japanese economies; the continuing availability of cheap oil, a source of energy that greatly spurred industrial and commercial growth; and ever-larger investment in research and development. R&D helped spur impressive advances in science and technology, keys to leaps in productivity and real per capita income. The 1950s witnessed especially rapid expansion of electronic and electrical firms, of tobacco, soft drink, and food-processing companies, and of the chemical, plastics, and pharmaceutical industries. IBM blossomed as a leader in the computer business, soon to become a guiding star of the American economy. Transistors, having been developed after the war, emerged to commercial significance, beginning in 1953 with their use in hearing aids. The airplane and airline industries also boomed, surging past railroads in passengers carried by 1957. In 1958 Americans could fly on Boeing 707 passenger jets. Two years later Eisenhower was dazzled by the speed and comfort of Air Force One, the first presidential jet.
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Several other forces added to economic growth in the 1950s. One was government defense spending, which had expanded enormously during the Korean War and remained significant, Eisenhower's economizing notwithstanding, throughout the decade. In some ways, of course, spending on military goods distorted priorities, depriving civilian sectors of the economy. Still, defense contracts, which averaged around 10 percent of GNP from 1954 through 1960, stimulated many corporations and employed large numbers of workers. Thanks in part to the log-rolling of southern and western representatives and senators, defense spending especially spurred economic growth in parts of the South and West, regions that had previously lagged in the American economy.
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The continuing baby boom further abetted economic progress, though in some ways unevenly.
¹⁰
America's population leaped from 151.7 million in 1950 to 180.7 million in 1960. This was a growth rate of 19.1 percent, the highest of any decade (save the 1900s) in the twentieth century.
¹¹
The population increase of 29 million was the biggest in American history before or since. Booms that had started in the late 1940s—in home-and school-building, suburban development, household gadgetry, automobiles, television, children's wear and toys—expanded in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Federal agencies and private producers fostered growth by energetically encouraging people to spend their money. As in the late 1940s, the Federal Housing and Veterans administrations offered low-interest loans to facilitate home-buying and suburban expansion. Retailers and manufacturers ("Buy Now, Pay Later," GM beckoned) offered enticing installment plans. In 1950 the credit card, courtesy of the Diner's Club, made its historic arrival; these and other cards spurred huge increases in borrowing. So did advertising, which sold $5.7 billion worth of ads in 1950 and $11.9 billion in 1960. It was one of the most celebrated growth areas of the 1950s. Private indebtedness jumped from $104.8 billion to $263.3 billion during the decade.
¹²
Older people who had scrimped and saved, especially during the Depression, rubbed their eyes in wonder at the willingness of people to go into debt to pay for household gadgets, large new cars, swimming pools, air-conditioning, sports events, eating out, travel, and buying binges at "supermarkets," another big growth area of the age. The consumer culture surged ahead, assaulting Depression-era values of thrift and saving and enticing the upwardly mobile millions to develop ever-rising expectations about the Good Life.

Spectator sports blossomed as never before in this more affluent world. Baseball continued to be the most popular, attracting 14.3 million people to the sixteen major league parks in 1953. In 1958 the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers took advantage of the growth of the West to move to San Francisco and Los Angeles, touching off subsequent westward movements of sports franchises and leading in the 1960s to dramatic expansion of the major leagues.
¹³
Some 2.3 million people attended pro basketball games in 1953, and 8 million watched college football. Estimated total attendance at football games at all levels in that year was 35 million. As if to anoint such growth,
Sports Illustrated
, a Luce publication, first appeared in August 1954. In sports, the magazine trumpeted, "the golden age is now."
¹⁴

The phenomenal financial success of the Dodgers in Los Angeles depended not only on westward migration (California surpassed New York as the nation's most populous state in 1965) but also on the ability of people to drive to the ball park, for the growth of L. A. rested on the megabuilding of multi-lane freeways. Road-building, much expanded by the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, greatly aided the petroleum, automobile, and construction industries and endowed the nation with a replicable on-the-road culture featuring motels and fast food. In August 1952 the first Holiday Inn opened, between Memphis and Nashville; by 1960 Holiday Inns had mushroomed into a hugely successful chain of franchises. In April 1955 Ray Kroc, a fifty-two-year-old businessman, built the first modern-style McDonald's—featuring the famous golden arches—in Des Plaines, Illinois. It sold hamburgers for fifteen cents (a price that did not rise until 1967, when it climbed to eighteen cents), coffee for a nickel, and milkshakes for twenty cents. A family of four could eat for $2 or less and do so in its cars if it wished. By 1960 there were 228 McDonald's franchises, with annual sales of $37 million.
¹⁵

Automobile manufacturers profited enormously from these changes. Sales of passenger cars jumped from 6.7 million in 1950 to a record 7.9 million in 1955. In that year GM, which sold roughly half of these cars, became the first American corporation to earn more than $1 billion. GM had assets greater than those of Argentina and revenues eight times those of New York State. (Defense Secretary Wilson had had a point in saying that "what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.")

GM and other auto manufacturers had special success in persuading Americans to turn in or dump their old models—some 4.5 million cars were scrapped annually in the 1950s—and to buy sleek, multi-colored, gas-guzzling, chrome-encrusted conveyances featuring (after 1955) sweeping and non-functional tail fins.
¹⁶
The driver behind the wheel of such garish but powerful wonders was king of the road, owner of a chunk of the American dream. By 1960 nearly 80 percent of American families had at least one car, and 15 percent had two or more. There were then 73.8 million cars registered, as opposed to 39.3 million ten years earlier.
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Many contemporary critics assailed the vulgarity of these automobiles. The new cars, one said, looked like chorus girls coming and fighter planes going. Another likened the cars to jukeboxes on wheels. But these critics missed the point, which was that millions of Americans had fallen in love with cars, the bigger and flashier the better. Automotive design—at its most flamboyant from 1955 to the early 1960s—expressed the dynamic and materialistic mood of the era. The designs deliberately recalled the lines of jet planes and generated a streamlined, futuristic feeling—one that was emulated in many other products, from toasters to garden furniture to new kitchens that featured all manner of sleekly crafted electrical conveniences. (Many of these kitchens led into colonial-style living rooms, but Americans did not seem to mind the contrast.) The TWA airline terminal in New York, designed by Eero Saarinen, captured this buoyancy. So did Dulles Airport in Virginia, also by Saarinen, and other new buildings with soaring, butterfly roofs, bold cantilevers, and forward-leaning facades.

The "baroque bender" of contemporary design, the historian Thomas Hine explains, revealed the "outright, thoroughly vulgar joy" that many prospering Americans felt in being able to live so well. It was just this sort of pride that Vice-President Nixon expressed in 1959 when he bragged truculently about gleaming American kitchen conveniences at a trade show in Moscow—a show that the
New York Times
called a "lavish testimonial to abundance"—in order to remind Khrushchev (and the world) of the fantastic economic potential of the American way of life.
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All these developments promoted grand expectations, especially among the educated middle classes, about the potential for further scientific and technological advances. This optimistic spirit—the feeling that there were no limits to progress—defined a guiding spirit of the age and, over time, unleashed ever more powerful popular pressures for expanded rights and gratifications. Many contemporaries talked as if there were almost nothing that American ingenuity—in science, industry, whatever—could not accomplish. Engineers and scientists were perfecting weather satellites, rockets, solar batteries, and atomic submarines. Things "atomic" continued to seem promising beyond belief. Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island talked of creating wonderful new hybrids of carnations in its radioactive "Gamma Garden." Researchers at Argonne Laboratory near Chicago experimented with potatoes, bread, and hot dogs to show that irradiation kept foods fresh and germ-free.
National Geographic
concluded that "the atomic revolution" would "shape and change our lives in ways undreamed of today—and there can be no turning back."
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