Newton: IKE’S SPEECH
A few months ago, Grant Moos was closing his boathouse, near Hackensack, Minnesota, as he does every summer, tying up loose ends, sweeping up debris. This year, though, his sister Kathy insisted that it was finally time to do something about six cardboard boxes that for decades had been stacked in a corner next to a 7.5-horsepower Evinrude engine.
The boxes belonged to their father, Malcolm Moos, a journalist and academic who was a speechwriter for President Dwight Eisenhower. When Moos left the White House, in 1961, he donated some of his papers to the Eisenhower Presidential Library, in Abilene, Kansas, but he kept some, too.
The boxes were full of pine needles, acorns, and mouse droppings, and smelled of campfires. As Moos looked through the contents, he came across a batch of folders marked “Farewell Address.” He looked up the Eisenhower Library, and sent the boxes off to Abilene.
At first, the library did not know what it had. As archivists began to go through the papers, however, they discovered a trove of drafts, memos, and research materials that had long been missing from the record of one of the twentieth century’s most important speeches. For fifty years, Americans have regarded Eisenhower’s Farewell Address with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. Speaking three nights before the end of his Presidency, in 1961, Eisenhower warned of a “scientific-technological élite” that would dominate public policy, and of a “military-industrial complex” that would claim “our toil, resources, and livelihood.”
In the decades since, Eisenhower’s warning has seemed prescient. The convergence of American military might and a powerful arms industry has characterized wars from Vietnam to Iraq, and the web of power that he described seems present in American society today. Still, generations have wondered what prompted the most celebrated general of the Second World War to leave the White House with a warning about the military. Eisenhower’s grandson David writes in a new memoir that Ike “developed a kind of split personality about the most controversial speech of his life,” downplaying its significance to old military and business friends while professing pride in it to others.
Part 1: Eisenhower’s Farewell Address Jan 17, 1961
Part 2: Eisenhower’s Farewell Address Jan 17, 1961
Some historians have regarded the Farewell Address as an afterthought, hastily composed at the end of 1960 as an adjunct to the 1961 State of the Union. Others have regarded it as the soulful expression of an aging President who was determined to warn the American people of dangers ahead. But the Moos papers make clear that the address, far from being an afterthought, was among the most deliberate speeches of Eisenhower’s Presidency. Regarded in his day as inarticulate and detached, Eisenhower in these papers is fully engaged, grappling with the language of the text and the radical questions that it raised.
Contrary to what some historians have speculated, it was not Moos or his assistant, Ralph Williams, who suggested a farewell address. On May 20, 1959, Moos was meeting with the President, when Eisenhower proposed an idea for “one speech he would like very much to make.” It was to be, Moos recorded, “a ten-minute farewell address to the Congress and the American people.” Moos deemed the idea “brilliant” and began making notes.
Eisenhower was a rigorous editor. Major speeches such as the State of the Union might be refined ten or twelve times. Even by those standards, however, the Farewell Address was special. Eisenhower personally rewrote the opening passages, and his brother Milton overhauled the entire speech. It was batted back and forth for months; in the end, it underwent twenty-nine drafts (twenty-one previously unknown drafts were found in the boathouse papers).
The papers also debunk a myth. Some historians have credited Norman Cousins, the editor of The Saturday Review, with helping to shape the speech, in December of 1960. It’s true that Cousins called the President on December 14th, but “the idea of trying to get anyone like Norman Cousins working on it would be dreadful,” Eisenhower’s secretary wrote to Moos. “How in the world do we diplomatically thank him, but say No?”
One core idea dominates every version: the first draft described “the conjunction of a large and permanent military establishment and a large and permanent arms industry.” Policing it would require “all the organizing genius we possess” to insure “that liberty and security are both well served.” It added, “We must be especially careful to avoid measures which would enable any segment of this vast military-industrial complex to sharpen the focus of its power.” Through scores of revisions, that idea persisted. As delivered, the speech memorably read, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
At the library, the staff is ecstatic about the find. Karl Weissenbach, the director, predicted that the new documents will “change the history and interpretation of the most famous farewell address in American history.”
It’s also a reminder of the contingency of historical research. Had Moos vacationed in Florida rather than in Minnesota, the documents might have disintegrated. Instead, the memos and drafts survived, snug in a boathouse corner, rejoining history just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower’s address.
Published December 20, 2010, by Jim Newton for the New Yorker
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Growing up in a state like North Dakota where once-upon-a-time you could do a political biopsy on a Republican and it may come up ‘Independent’..that was the prime mover in the 40′s, 50′s; but no,not anymore. Back then, partisan lines were a macrame of right, left and middle; weaving a sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious array of either/or candidates like Wild Bill Langer.
Or case in point( and yes, I’m getting back to the issue), like my father called himself an Independent Republican and often said “Never vote for a military man for president. Dad voted for Eisenhower. Even for Johnson. “Johnson’ he said was a politician’s politician and so at least you knew where he was going even if it wasn’t to your liking.”…something like that.
Now you’ve got a state so ‘beholden’ to its military for its livelihood and explored and exploited land use-wise, by oil and wind farms – wind generator development which has no track record as being the greatest alternative, eh? So we should wait until those soon dominant wind tree farms meet a few of Dakota’s fierce prairie winds and as one prairie dog commented..”when prairie winds come, those ugly metal wind spinners that cut off our prized sunsets, will be falling like windmills in a good tornado…so watch out!”
Back to Ike who was a rare human being challenging all imposed political and military labels because he was one president who represented not power-abuse or exceptionalism but peace and justice was his hallmark, yes indeed.
footnote; Moos was Ike’s speech writer but also President of the University of Minnesota; not just another ‘academic’. And might as well add too…ask Minnesota country boy, Garrison Kelller how he treated Moos’s ex-wife….enough already
The publisher, JB, and I, being of the same birth year, both grew up under the leadership of President Ike. I always lumped him with my grandfathers as they were also the same age. My preceding family having been conservative Republicans, naturally loved Grandpa Ike and anything he did was OK by them. I did feel a certain trust toward him and really nothing has happened to dislodge that trust. When he left office I was older and had openly Democrat teachers now, I was disturbed to hear open criticisms of Ike as a do nothing. It seemed to me that after WWII and Korea, we needed a little do nothing to regain our strength.
As it would turn out, I was made to watch his farewell address by my mother and over the years, I’m glad I did. Naturally, at that time, I did not understand it. Many years later, I was able to end several discussions about whether it was actually said or not. It seems people on both sides of the spectrum don’t/won’t believe that Ike warned the country of the power wielded by these multi-billion dollar, in 1950s billions, groups and their special interest minions.
While I am more conservative now than ever, I have grown to appreciate grandpa Ike’s warnings more and more. He inadvertently gave great credence to many of the ideas about the conspiracies of the ultra-rich to control the free world countries. I buy it about the wanting to control part, how about you?