Commentary
A collection of speeches, articles and essays written and presented by Susan Eisenhower and distinguished guests.
Book Review: “Murderers in Mausoleums”
Susan Eisenhower reviews Jeffrey Tayler’s book Murderers in Mausoleums
Travel books bring vicarious excitement, enabling you to go places without packing suitcases or applying for visas, but you still have to decide on a route. You can choose Bill Bryson’s trail and laugh the entire way, or you can take one of Jeffrey Tayler’s daring paths, which sting the nostrils and chill the soul. Whether crossing the Sahara (in “Angry Wind”) or rafting down Siberia’s Lena River (in “River of No Reprieve”), Tayler does not see the mirth in faraway places so much as he sees the horror — and the glory — in them.
“Murderers in Mausoleums,” his sixth book, is unmistakably Tayler. He travels from Moscow to Beijing, passing through the Kalashnikov-littered Caucasus Mountains and energy-rich Central Asia. Corrupt cops, insolent officials, pop-crazed kids and populations seething with frustration line the route. It is little wonder that democracy has failed to take hold here, he muses: This land belonged to some of the bloodiest tyrants in history — Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong — and their authoritarian traditions live on.
Investing in America’s Power Grid
Wall Street Journal
Letters to the Editor
Samuel Palmisano’s call for greater investment in America’s power grid (”Let’s Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid,” op-ed, Jan. 13) evokes the network effect of the investment from the Interstate highway system begun in the 1950s. Indeed, one of the least remarked aspects of that national investment begun a half century ago is how the U.S. realized benefits far exceeding those that my grandfather and other champions of the system first envisioned: an estimated $1 trillion in gross-product cost reductions; the enabling of “just in time” delivery for more efficient production and the creation of a genuine national market for super-efficient retailers, among others.
Overall, it has been estimated that each $1 invested in the system has returned more than $6 in productivity gains.
With the myriad demands on the public fisc presently, and as we contemplate investments in smart grids such as Mr. Palmisano suggests, it is reassuring that the economic gains from such investment will likely far exceed what we can now foresee — and that private capital, not government funding, is willing and able to make these investments.
Susan Eisenhower
The Eisenhower Institute
Washington
Political Fear Mongering, the Coming Election and Why Barack Obama Should be our Next President
Political Fear Mongering, the Coming Election and Why Barack Obama Should be our Next President
By Susan Eisenhower
For more than fifteen years, I have regularly appeared in the media as a foreign policy expert. I’ve always tried to be accessible to everyone from all ends of the political spectrum. Citizen dialogue and education, I believe, are the cornerstones of a vibrant democracy. Over the years, I have been interviewed by outlets of every ideological stripe, but recent experience tells me how far our public discourse has deteriorated.
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The Consequences of No Consequences
Susan Eisenhower’s newest article originally appeared as “No Consequences Government” at The National Interest:
The Consequences of No Consequences
by Susan Eisenhower
The nation held its collective breath these last weeks as the country waited to see if Congress would finally act on the emergency measures to “rescue” our economy, and what the impact would be. While it was understandable that ordinary Americans were skeptical of what the media termed initially a “bailout,” the majority of their representatives took this one step further. They refused to vote for legislation deemed, by their own party leaderships, critical for avoiding a global financial meltdown.
The reasons for this revolt have been analyzed extensively in the last week, and I am in agreement that ideology, poor communication and the complexity of the issues played a role. However, an erosion of trust—within the system and between the American people and their government—has become evident. Years of zero-sum partisan politics has taken its toll and for one spellbinding week, one could see this in all its transparent horror. “The [no] vote is a reflection of a lack of political capital, not financial capital,” New York University professor Mitchell Moss told the Washington Post on September 30. This week the market brought the problems we are facing into even sharper relief.
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Presidential Children Don’t Belong in Battle
As the presidential election unfolds we make many presumptions about our candidates and their families. On September 28, 2008 my father, John S.D. Eisenhower, wrote a thought provoking piece in the New York Times, titled, “Presidential Children Don’t Belong in Battle.” He adds an historical perspective to a little discussed national security consideration.
Let me share a story, one that is tinged with regret. In the summer of 1952, when I was 30, the Army assigned me to an infantry unit fighting in Korea. Meanwhile, though, there was other news in my family: My father had become the Republican presidential nominee. As an ambitious young major, I refused any offers for other assignments. Avoiding combat duty was and is an unforgivable sin for a professional soldier.
As the time for my deployment approached, I discussed my intentions with my father. We met at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, just after the Republican convention, and I explained my position. My father, as a professional officer himself, understood and accepted it. However, he had a firm condition: under no circumstances must I ever be captured. He would accept the risk of my being killed or wounded, but if the Chinese Communists or North Koreans ever took me prisoner, and threatened blackmail, he could be forced to resign the presidency. I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly. I would take my life before being captured.
On looking back through the years, however, I now feel that I was being unfair and selfish and that my father was being far too conciliatory in giving me such permission. On the other hand, I don’t think that the Army should ever have given me an option in the matter.
Today the problem is worse than it was in my time.
REMARKS BY SUSAN EISENHOWER AT THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
INVESCO FIELD AT MILE HIGH, DENVER, COLORADO
9:12 P.M. EDT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2008
I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American. The Eisenhowers came to this great country in the 18th century, settling first amid the hills of Pennsylvania and later on the plains of Kansas. Like many of your ancestors, they built our nation and served it in times of national crisis and war.
I grew up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where my parents and grandparents, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, chose to live after Ike’s retirement as Supreme Commander, Europe, and as President of the United States. It was also in Gettysburg where Abraham Lincoln gave his historic address.
On the killing fields of Pickett’s Charge our country came of age and assured our nation would survive as one. Yet today the divisions in our country are deep and wide. Our cohesiveness as a nation is strained by multiple crises in finance and credit; energy and health care.
At the same time, we have knowingly saddled our children and grandchildren with a staggering debt. This is a moral failing – not just a financial one.
Overseas, our credibility is at an all time low. We must restore our international leadership position and the leverage that goes with it.
But rather than focus on the critical strategic issues, our national discourse has turned into a petty squabble.
Too many people in power have failed us. Belligerence has become a substitute for strength; stubbornness a substitute for leadership; and impulsive action has replaced measured and thoughtful response.
Once during the Eisenhower administration, Ike was under fire from his critics for moving too slowly in responding to political pressure. After a visit to the Oval Office by Robert Frost, the famous American poet sent the president a note of support. “The strong,” he wrote, “are saying nothing until they see.”
I believe that Barack Obama has the energy, but more importantly, the temperament, to run this country and provide the leadership we need. He knows that we can either advance on the distant hills of hope– or retreat to the garrisons of fear. He can mobilize and inspire all of us to show up for duty. Discipline will be required; as will compromise, flexibility and quiet strength.
The task before our next President will be overwhelming. But no undertaking can be more critical than bringing about a sense of national unity and purpose, built on mutual respect and bi-partisanship.
Unless we squarely face our challenges, as Americans—together– we risk losing the priceless heritage bestowed on us by the sweat and the sacrifice of our forbearers. If we do not pull together, we could lose the America that has been an inspiration to the world.
On December 1, 1862, in his Annual Message to Congress, Abraham Lincoln immortalized this thought when he said: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
Let us respond this November to President Lincoln’s challenge. Let us restore the hope, and bring the change, that our nation so desperately needs.
Yes we can!
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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY BE UPDATED.
Reflections on Leaving the Party
The National Interest
Reflections on Leaving the Party
by Susan Eisenhower
Read the editorial at The National Interest
August 21, 2008
I have decided I can no longer be a registered Republican. For the first time in my life I announced my support for a Democratic candidate for the presidency, in February of this year. This was not an endorsement of the Democratic platform, nor was it a slap in the face to the Republican Party. It was an expression of support specifically for Senator Barack Obama. I had always intended to go back to party ranks after the election and work with my many dedicated friends and colleagues to help reshape the GOP, especially in the foreign-policy arena. But I now know I will be more effective focusing on our national and international problems than I will be in trying to reinvigorate a political organization that has already consumed nearly all of its moderate “seed corn.” And now, as the party threatens to trivialize what promised to be a serious debate on our future direction, it will alienate many young people who might have come into party ranks.
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Why I’m Backing Obama
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term “military-industrial complex,” and he offered advice that is still relevant today. “As we peer into society’s future,” he said, we “must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
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Book Review: “Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars”
Susan Eisenhower reviews Ethan Pollock’s book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars
As the 20th century recedes, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain to younger generations the peculiar combination of idealism, naivete, cynicism and brutality that was the hallmark of that century’s totalitarian states. Ethan Pollock’s “Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars” looks at this phenomenon through the lens of Soviet science policy in the immediate postwar period to explain Josef Stalin’s determination to articulate and demonstrate “the compatibility of its ideology with all fields of knowledge.” While savage dictatorships in Nazi Germany and China played at the edges of harnessing science and its theories for the advancement of their ideological dogmas, nowhere was the attempt more comprehensive than in the Soviet Union. And nowhere before or since has a national leader involved himself in such detailed analyses of science and philosophy to assure their affinity with the conceptual underpinnings of his political power.
