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Presidency of Everett Dirksen
Everett Dirksen was the 34th President of the United States from 1957 to 1961. Elected on a platform promising “dynamic prosperity” and “a secure peace”, Everett Dirksen delivered neither and is considered one of the worst postwar Presidents by historians. The public at the time was similarly antipathetic towards Dirksen, giving him an average approval rating of 45.3%, the lowest on record since 1945.
Much of this discontent was a result of the so-called “Dirksen recessions” with a peak unemployment of 7.0% in 1958, as well as sluggish economic growth and an unparalleled postwar nadir in overall monthly job creation. All of this helped the Democrats attain veto-proof majorities in the 1958 midterms, who were pressured by the Civil Rights Movement to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960, considered to be the highlight of Dirksen’s presidency. In foreign affairs, the Sputnik crisis harmed the credibility of Dirksen’s overarching strategy of slashing military spending and reorienting focus towards nuclear weapons as a deterrent, although the creation of the Southeast Asian Defense Organization among other collective security pacts are considered to be noteworthy achievements. Both of these were ultimately overshadowed by his decision to overthrow Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro in 1960, which would lead to the far-reaching ramifications of the U.S. occupation of Cuba.
Domestic policies
Economy
Main articles: Dirksen recessions
President Everett Dirksen presided over two significant recessions - the “Dirksen recessions” of 1958 and 1960-1961. His predecessor, Harry Truman, had left Dirksen with an unemployment rate of 4.2%, but in the midst of the recession it peaked at 7.0%. Dirksen reassured the public that economic downturns were an expected and necessary process by which inflation could be kept in check, but the public registered their disapproval by electing the Democrats to veto-proof majorities in both houses in the 1958 midterm elections. The economy began to recover in 1959 as millions of Americans returned to work, before it took another turn to the worse the following year, with unemployment reaching 6.5% by the autumn of 1960.
Dirksen’s administration had also underperformed in the shadow of his predecessor by other metrics. Over the course of Truman’s two elected terms, the GDP grew at an average rate of 6.6%. In Dirksen’s term, average GDP growth was 4.0%. The Dow Jones also dipped and had only modest growth throughout his term, while Truman saw it more than double. Finally, there were less jobs created under the Dirksen administration per month than any other President since the end of the Second World War.
Civil Rights
Main articles: Civil Rights Movement, Pilgrimage for Freedom, “Give Us the Ballot”, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960
The Civil Rights Movement was ascendant in the United States during the latter half of the 1950’s, encouraged by the end of the “separate but equal” doctrine as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1954. The movement organized voter registration drives, as well sit-ins at restaurants that discriminated against African-American customers in the South. The Montgomery bus boycott made Martin Luther King Jr. a nationally known figure who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Pilgrimage for Freedom on June 19, 1957 at the Lincoln Memorial was widely attended and filmed, wherein Martin Luther King gave his historic Give Us the Ballot speech.
President Everett Dirksen was a passionate advocate for the cause while in the Senate, helping to attain the passage of the first bill towards that end since Reconstruction. He thus sought action to that end, only to be blocked by the familiar Conservative coalition led by Southern Democrats and right-wing Republicans. However, the 1958 midterm elections gave progressive Democrats, and their Republican allies, the commanding majorities they needed to address the concerns of the Civil Rights Movement. As the economy seemingly stabilized by the spring of 1960, Dirksen attained the political capital he needed to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960 into law, giving a well-regarded speech in favor of it. He would recall this as his “greatest accomplishment”, and although historians are divided on the amount of credit he can take for the legislation, President Dirksen’s civil rights record has been the most enduringly positive aspect of his presidency.
Foreign affairs
Massive retaliation
Main article: Massive retaliation
Dirksen was confronted with a more aggressive Soviet Union under the helm of Premier Vyacheslav Molotov, who pursued the so-called “Molotov Doctrine” informed by his belief that there was no special geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. known as the Cold War, just an ideological class war between the capitalists and the socialists of the world. Dirksen believed that, instead of using the United Nations as a tool to ensure peace abroad and the conventional military geared to confront the Soviet Union anywhere in the world as President Truman had done, the costs of the armed forces could be reduced and challenges to American power would mainly be met by threats of “massive retaliation” with its nuclear arsenal.
Sputnik crisis
Main articles: Sputnik crisis and Space race
President Dirksen earned early antipathy for his foreign policy approach due to the Sputnik crisis, wherein after a sharp reduction of defense spending, the Soviet Union managed to launch the first artificial satellite into Low Earth Orbit on November 7, 1957. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson sharply criticized Dirksen for allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviet Union, and Dirksen’s approval rating took a slide as most of the public agreed. Defense contractors, who had a reciprocated disdain for Secretary of State Dwight D. Eisenhower, contributed as much as possible to the Democrats in their crushing victory in the 1958 midterms. Thereafter, more spending was allocated to scientific research and NASA, beginning the space race.
Pactomania
Main articles: Manila Pact, Treaty of Madrid
Despite these setbacks, President Dirksen was able to establish new alliances for the United States in a flurry of treaties known as the “Pactomania”. The ascendant Communist insurgency in Thailand gave rise to concern of internal Communist subversion that could not be adequately addressed under the auspices of the United Nations. The Manila Pact, or the Southeast Asia Defense Organization (SADO), was an alliance between Australia, Cambodia, France, Laos, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam formed on March 14, 1959 to contain communism in the region through mutual support of each of their domestic armies. Dirksen also successfully normalized relations with Francoist Spain, presenting nearly $500 million in grant-based military aid through the Treaty of Madrid (1960).
Latin America
Main articles: United States embargo against Guatemala, United States intervention against Cuba
Under Decree 900 or the Agrarian Reform Law, Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán seized 234,000 acres (947 kilometers squared) of uncultivated land belonging to the United Front Company in 1953. President Guzmán awarded them over $600,000 in bonds that they had claimed was the worth of the land in their taxes, but United Fruit Company lobbied the U.S. State Department and claimed that it was truly worth nearly $16 million while arguing that it was a prelude for Communist takeover. President Truman was unconvinced, but President Dirksen placed an embargo against Guatemala in 1957, to last until the expropriated assets were returned. Instead of yielding, Guzmán took control of all 550,000 acres (2,200 kilometers) of United Fruit Company land - accounting for 42% of Guatemalan arable land - without compensation. Dirksen responded with bilateral mutual defense pacts with Nicaragua and Honduras to isolate Guatemala further, resulting in the Sino-Guatemalan alliance and trade relationship.
Similar trouble was brewing in Cuba, where charismatic lawyer and revolutionary Prime Minister Fidel Castro had sought out an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1959, after American oil companies in Cuba refused to process Soviet crude while Dirksen cut importation of Cuban sugar. In February 1960, Cuba nationalized over $800 million in U.S. assets and signed an arms deal with the Soviet Union. President Dirksen addressed the American people and the world, first through reading aloud text from a resolution of the Organization of American States (OAS) condemning “Soviet intervention in the Western hemisphere”, and the dictatorial policies of the Castro ministry. He then warned that the nation was “an infectious spot” that will “be used to build up the Communist element in the Americas”.
On March 28, 1960, the U.S. armed forces established a beachhead in Cuba and made a quick warpath to Havana. April 6th saw the capital captured, with a new government established under provisional President José Antonio Echeverría, a revolutionary who led the Student Revolutionary Directorate during the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro fled to an unknown location with almost all of his high-ranking government officials and military officers. Despite the evident victory, most Cubans had approved of the Castro ministry, and vehemently opposed the new government, requiring President Echeverría to essentially be under house arrest at all times in his palace. Officials from the Echeverría government were regularly murdered by guerrillas, who called for the “restoration of Cuban sovereignty” via rebel radio. This would be a sign of the future problems that Dirksen’s successors would have in Cuba.
Everett Dirksen was the 34th President of the United States from 1957 to 1961. Elected on a platform promising “dynamic prosperity” and “a secure peace”, Everett Dirksen delivered neither and is considered one of the worst postwar Presidents by historians. The public at the time was similarly antipathetic towards Dirksen, giving him an average approval rating of 45.3%, the lowest on record since 1945.
Much of this discontent was a result of the so-called “Dirksen recessions” with a peak unemployment of 7.0% in 1958, as well as sluggish economic growth and an unparalleled postwar nadir in overall monthly job creation. All of this helped the Democrats attain veto-proof majorities in the 1958 midterms, who were pressured by the Civil Rights Movement to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960, considered to be the highlight of Dirksen’s presidency. In foreign affairs, the Sputnik crisis harmed the credibility of Dirksen’s overarching strategy of slashing military spending and reorienting focus towards nuclear weapons as a deterrent, although the creation of the Southeast Asian Defense Organization among other collective security pacts are considered to be noteworthy achievements. Both of these were ultimately overshadowed by his decision to overthrow Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro in 1960, which would lead to the far-reaching ramifications of the U.S. occupation of Cuba.
Domestic policies
Economy
Main articles: Dirksen recessions
President Everett Dirksen presided over two significant recessions - the “Dirksen recessions” of 1958 and 1960-1961. His predecessor, Harry Truman, had left Dirksen with an unemployment rate of 4.2%, but in the midst of the recession it peaked at 7.0%. Dirksen reassured the public that economic downturns were an expected and necessary process by which inflation could be kept in check, but the public registered their disapproval by electing the Democrats to veto-proof majorities in both houses in the 1958 midterm elections. The economy began to recover in 1959 as millions of Americans returned to work, before it took another turn to the worse the following year, with unemployment reaching 6.5% by the autumn of 1960.
Dirksen’s administration had also underperformed in the shadow of his predecessor by other metrics. Over the course of Truman’s two elected terms, the GDP grew at an average rate of 6.6%. In Dirksen’s term, average GDP growth was 4.0%. The Dow Jones also dipped and had only modest growth throughout his term, while Truman saw it more than double. Finally, there were less jobs created under the Dirksen administration per month than any other President since the end of the Second World War.
Civil Rights
Main articles: Civil Rights Movement, Pilgrimage for Freedom, “Give Us the Ballot”, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960
The Civil Rights Movement was ascendant in the United States during the latter half of the 1950’s, encouraged by the end of the “separate but equal” doctrine as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1954. The movement organized voter registration drives, as well sit-ins at restaurants that discriminated against African-American customers in the South. The Montgomery bus boycott made Martin Luther King Jr. a nationally known figure who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Pilgrimage for Freedom on June 19, 1957 at the Lincoln Memorial was widely attended and filmed, wherein Martin Luther King gave his historic Give Us the Ballot speech.
President Everett Dirksen was a passionate advocate for the cause while in the Senate, helping to attain the passage of the first bill towards that end since Reconstruction. He thus sought action to that end, only to be blocked by the familiar Conservative coalition led by Southern Democrats and right-wing Republicans. However, the 1958 midterm elections gave progressive Democrats, and their Republican allies, the commanding majorities they needed to address the concerns of the Civil Rights Movement. As the economy seemingly stabilized by the spring of 1960, Dirksen attained the political capital he needed to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Voting Rights Act of 1960 into law, giving a well-regarded speech in favor of it. He would recall this as his “greatest accomplishment”, and although historians are divided on the amount of credit he can take for the legislation, President Dirksen’s civil rights record has been the most enduringly positive aspect of his presidency.
Foreign affairs
Massive retaliation
Main article: Massive retaliation
Dirksen was confronted with a more aggressive Soviet Union under the helm of Premier Vyacheslav Molotov, who pursued the so-called “Molotov Doctrine” informed by his belief that there was no special geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. known as the Cold War, just an ideological class war between the capitalists and the socialists of the world. Dirksen believed that, instead of using the United Nations as a tool to ensure peace abroad and the conventional military geared to confront the Soviet Union anywhere in the world as President Truman had done, the costs of the armed forces could be reduced and challenges to American power would mainly be met by threats of “massive retaliation” with its nuclear arsenal.
Sputnik crisis
Main articles: Sputnik crisis and Space race
President Dirksen earned early antipathy for his foreign policy approach due to the Sputnik crisis, wherein after a sharp reduction of defense spending, the Soviet Union managed to launch the first artificial satellite into Low Earth Orbit on November 7, 1957. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson sharply criticized Dirksen for allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviet Union, and Dirksen’s approval rating took a slide as most of the public agreed. Defense contractors, who had a reciprocated disdain for Secretary of State Dwight D. Eisenhower, contributed as much as possible to the Democrats in their crushing victory in the 1958 midterms. Thereafter, more spending was allocated to scientific research and NASA, beginning the space race.
Pactomania
Main articles: Manila Pact, Treaty of Madrid
Despite these setbacks, President Dirksen was able to establish new alliances for the United States in a flurry of treaties known as the “Pactomania”. The ascendant Communist insurgency in Thailand gave rise to concern of internal Communist subversion that could not be adequately addressed under the auspices of the United Nations. The Manila Pact, or the Southeast Asia Defense Organization (SADO), was an alliance between Australia, Cambodia, France, Laos, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam formed on March 14, 1959 to contain communism in the region through mutual support of each of their domestic armies. Dirksen also successfully normalized relations with Francoist Spain, presenting nearly $500 million in grant-based military aid through the Treaty of Madrid (1960).
Latin America
Main articles: United States embargo against Guatemala, United States intervention against Cuba
Under Decree 900 or the Agrarian Reform Law, Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán seized 234,000 acres (947 kilometers squared) of uncultivated land belonging to the United Front Company in 1953. President Guzmán awarded them over $600,000 in bonds that they had claimed was the worth of the land in their taxes, but United Fruit Company lobbied the U.S. State Department and claimed that it was truly worth nearly $16 million while arguing that it was a prelude for Communist takeover. President Truman was unconvinced, but President Dirksen placed an embargo against Guatemala in 1957, to last until the expropriated assets were returned. Instead of yielding, Guzmán took control of all 550,000 acres (2,200 kilometers) of United Fruit Company land - accounting for 42% of Guatemalan arable land - without compensation. Dirksen responded with bilateral mutual defense pacts with Nicaragua and Honduras to isolate Guatemala further, resulting in the Sino-Guatemalan alliance and trade relationship.
Similar trouble was brewing in Cuba, where charismatic lawyer and revolutionary Prime Minister Fidel Castro had sought out an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1959, after American oil companies in Cuba refused to process Soviet crude while Dirksen cut importation of Cuban sugar. In February 1960, Cuba nationalized over $800 million in U.S. assets and signed an arms deal with the Soviet Union. President Dirksen addressed the American people and the world, first through reading aloud text from a resolution of the Organization of American States (OAS) condemning “Soviet intervention in the Western hemisphere”, and the dictatorial policies of the Castro ministry. He then warned that the nation was “an infectious spot” that will “be used to build up the Communist element in the Americas”.
On March 28, 1960, the U.S. armed forces established a beachhead in Cuba and made a quick warpath to Havana. April 6th saw the capital captured, with a new government established under provisional President José Antonio Echeverría, a revolutionary who led the Student Revolutionary Directorate during the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro fled to an unknown location with almost all of his high-ranking government officials and military officers. Despite the evident victory, most Cubans had approved of the Castro ministry, and vehemently opposed the new government, requiring President Echeverría to essentially be under house arrest at all times in his palace. Officials from the Echeverría government were regularly murdered by guerrillas, who called for the “restoration of Cuban sovereignty” via rebel radio. This would be a sign of the future problems that Dirksen’s successors would have in Cuba.