Today, we wouldn’t like Ike, we’d love him

By LAURENCE REISMAN

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

ALONG INTERSTATE 70 — From atop a crest of the nation’s first stretch of interstate highway, you can see forever. Head a few miles west, and you’ll find the tiny town of Abilene, Kan., where Kuntz’s Drive-In still serves burgers and barbecue on trays perched on rolled-down car windows.

There, far away from the presidential campaign trail, Iraq, U.S. borders and Washington, D.C., sits the boyhood home of a man well suited for the presidency.

The record shows he can handle the world’s toughest crises, militarily and through diplomacy. He can appeal to leaders of both parties. He can lead an economic boom built around science and technology, encourage farmers to work their land, help the poor and elderly, preside over key medical discoveries and protect people’s voting rights.

The record also shows he can lead by example, by driving an electric car that, at 13 mph, travels 100 miles.

Unfortunately, he’s not running. His time has come and gone, and he served his country with distinction.

The best candidate to lead the United States in 2009 and beyond would have been Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Today’s 50-year-olds hadn’t been born when Eisenhower said he would enforce the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that led to the desegregation of schools. They were 2 when Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine started to end the terroristic reign of the crippling disease.

Most Americans were not born when Eisenhower, then 54, devised Operation Overlord, then made the decision to undertake it during a break in bad weather over the English Channel and northern France. Eisenhower’s call, and the courage of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, led to D-Day becoming the turning point in defeating Nazi Germany.

World War II, Eisenhower hoped, would be a lesson to the world, to learn that war is “folly,” steals food from the hungry and productive labor from workers. Is there one person running today who has credentials even close to those of Ike?

Today’s candidates have resumes that lead us to believe they could perform like, perhaps, the George Bushes, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson. Do they seem qualified enough to perform like Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton? Today’s candidates have a lot of experience — at getting elected.

Eisenhower didn’t, although he was president of Columbia University. A West Point graduate, Eisenhower kept a sign on his desk that in Latin said, “Gently in manner, strongly in deed.”

What a perfect message for today’s political scene, where demagoguery, attack ads and being anti-anything the other political party says are the rules of the day. It became clear dur9ing a recent visit to Eisenhower’s museum and boyhood home in Abilene that Ike-style leadership is necessary today.

At times in the 1940s and early 1950s, both parties agreed on one thing: Eisenhower would be their man, if he would have them. The Republicans, set to nominate Sen. Robert Taft, changed course late as delegates shifted to Ike.

The rest is history.

Is it too late to find another Eisenhower for 2008? Does one exist?

XLaurence Reisman is editorial page editor of the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers.