Eisenhower as Party Leader
Eisenhower, while Army Chief of Staff (1945-48) and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe (1950-52), was courted by notables of both political parties as candidate for the 1948 and 1952 presidential nominations. The general's party identification was obscure to the point that Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire (also chairman of the state's Eisenhowerfor-President committee) wrote the clerk of Dickinson County, Kansas, in futile quest of evidence of the general's party affiliation. I The clerk responded, "I don't think he has any politics." Henry Cabot Lodge then went to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters and returned with a declaration of party affiliation which satisfied the New Hampshire statutory requirement for evidence of affiliation with the party in whose primary he was being entered. Eisenhower spent a professional lifetime immersed in military politics and a decade rising from tutelage to mastery in the politics of nations before seeking the American presidency. But he lacked a record of party involvement when he deprived "Mr. Republican" Robert A. Taft of the nomination.2 And he proceeded to win the election in a campaign which relied heavily on antiorganization "amateurs" and the "new politics" of media and advertising.3