Joseph Sabino Mistick: Ike knew a thing or two about real leadership

“I like Ike” was Dwight David Eisenhower’s successful presidential campaign slogan in the 1950s. Nearly 75 years after he started his first run for the White House, there are still reasons to like Ike.

Republican Eisenhower served two terms as president, and it was hard not to like the retired Army general, even in households like ours that supported Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Ike was so popular nationally that both Republicans and Democrats had courted him to be their candidate.

As the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, he led the international military force that saved the free world. As the top general in charge of D-Day, he was responsible for the liberation of France and Western Europe — deploying 150,000 men, 12,000 aircraft and 7,000 vessels — eventually ending the war.

Ike was a real soldier, not a paper soldier. Before he gave the order to launch the attack at Normandy, he scribbled a statement that he would have released if the attack had failed.

“The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone,” he wrote.

Ike took those lessons that he learned as a soldier into the White House. “Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well,” he said.

Presidents and generals must be politically savvy, and Ike once said, “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that political party again.”

As a man who deserved the honor of military parades, he was strongly against them unless they marked a major military victory or a historic event. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss told the NPR radio show “All Things Considered” that Ike had rejected his aides’ suggestions that we have military parades like those in the Soviet Union. He believed that “we are the preeminent power on Earth” and that trying to imitate the Soviets “would make us look weak.”

Chester Pach, co-author of “The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” said, “He wasn’t someone invested in pomp and circumstance. He knew that power had to be effective in ways other than elaborate displays of military might.”

Now, there is also a question of priorities, relevant today, with the estimated cost of up to $45 million for the Army’s participation in the military parade this weekend. This comes at a time when millions of Americans — including many of our veterans — are about to lose health care and the supplemental support they need for life’s essentials.

In a 1953 speech, Ike called unnecessary military spending “… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

“It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is “a modern brick school in more than 30 cities … two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 … two fine, fully equipped hospitals … fifty miles of concrete pavement.”

“We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people,” he said.

I still like Ike.