WI: Eisenhower gets third term

What if, somehow, the 25th amendment was never passed. Eisenhower would definitely be the first president since Roosevelt to be popular enough to run for a third term. Let's say he does run and wins, what does that mean for America and the world? Do you think we'll still have the Vietnam War? Also, how do you think this will affect civil rights?
 
The 22nd Amendment was basically posthumous revenge by the Taftite/Goldwaterite Republican Congress on FDR. But Ike wanted out by 1958, too old, unhealthy, etc. Undoubtedly he would beat JFK. If Ike got involved in Vietnam, he'd win militarily by cutting the Trail, as he and MacArthur advised JFK, LBJ and Nixon to do in OTL. On civil rights, don't expect much- he privately wished they'd uphold Plessy v. Ferguson during the Brown saga.
 
The 22nd Amendment was basically posthumous revenge by the Taftite/Goldwaterite Republican Congress on FDR. But Ike wanted out by 1958, too old, unhealthy, etc. Undoubtedly he would beat JFK.

No such beast existed in 1947, Toryanna68.

Toryanna68 said:
If Ike got involved in Vietnam, he'd win militarily by cutting the Trail, as he and MacArthur advised JFK, LBJ and Nixon to do in OTL.

Well, if being in office for so long causes Ike to go gaga, then I suppose it's possible he comes to think that attempting to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail with massive WMD bombing is the way to go.

Or else he could just follow the logic of his decision not to nuke Dien Bien Phu in '54, and just refuse to escalate American power either conventionally on non-conventionally in the RVN . Dude, you have to read some of the existing counterfactual opinions of Eisenhower's possible Vietnam policy in a third term, and not just handwave/turn him into that aggressive presidential loser of OTL's '64...

Toryanna68 said:
On civil rights, don't expect much- he privately wished they'd uphold Plessy v. Ferguson during the Brown saga.

Cite?
 
Stephen Ambrose- Ike's personally designated biographer.

Still, Ike had a pretty good track record on Civil Rights. There's more to it than just segregation, and it depends - did he say that wanted it upheld because of the headache it would cause his administration, or because he actually disagreed with it?
 
Because he actually disagreed- Ike was often stationed in the South for most of his Stateside career, and was 6 when P v. F was issued. He told Earl Warren at a dinner for John W. Davis- the Board's lawyer- "These aren't bad people. They just don't want their daughters sitting next to some big overgrown Negroes."
 
Again, source. My impression for Eisenhower was that he didn't actively implement civil rights, but he didn't disagree with them per se. More of a do-nothing on civil rights then an actual opponent.
 
Toryanna68 said:
On civil rights, don't expect much- he privately wished they'd uphold Plessy v. Ferguson during the Brown saga.
Magniac said:
Stephen Ambrose- Ike's personally designated biographer.

I would like to see the exact passage where Ambrose writes that Eisenhower believed 'separate but equal' shouldn't have been touched in Brown.

Yes, he was sympathetic to the South, and he later said appointing Warren chief justice was a mistake, but I don't think he left any detailed critique opposing Brown versus Board of Education's overturning of precedent. Rather, I think he had the standard attitude of benign neglect towards the plight of African Americans that the vast majority in the US, even the North, held during that era. He just wouldn't have thought in terms of supporting the maintenance of Jim Crow laws.

Here's an extract from a work I found on Google book search that's pretty critical of Ike and his friendly attitude towards the segregationists--but nowhere does it say Eisenhower stated he "privately wished they'd uphold Plessy v. Ferguson." The author doesn't even go as far as to say he has actual evidence that that was Ike's view, despite obviously not liking the 34th president:

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=f7a5KxIcznAC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=Eisenhower+opinion+segregation&source=bl&ots=7agK63o9bF&sig=Oau2gHmwtPpjgfFuTdDU0zqk7yc&hl=en&ei=J5FoSu6gBYeCMoSC-c8M&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3

"President Eisenhower did nothing in this period to abolish the impression many had that he was supporting the South. He never made a public statement of support for the Brown decision. (Earl Warren later wrote: 'I still believe that much of our racial strife could have been avoided if President Eisenhower had at least observed that our country is dedicated to the principle that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."') He avoided commenting favorably about proposed legislation that would prohibit segregation in interstate transportation: 'I am not sure. I would have to consult the Attorney General...' He stressed his hope that the matter would be solved within the state, without federal goverment interference; and he expressed doubts about the usefulness of laws to 'change men's hearts.' The president stressed the need to rely on education to achieve change rather than on the force of law, but he refused to use the prestige of his office for that purpose. Instead, he issued what could easily be understood as an apology for Southern intransigence by reminding the country that 'the people who have this deep emotional reaction... were not acting over these past three generations in defiance of the law. They were acting in compliance with the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States under the decision of 1896.'

As the resistance movement grew, Eisenhower tried to ignore it. Indicating that he chose to stay out of the controversy, the president proclaimed that he 'would not make any assumption that the judicial branch of the Government is incapable of implementing the Supreme Court's decision'--meaning specifically that he did not wish to send in government troops. And if the FBI was sent in to investigate some of the more spectacular occurrences, as Ann Moody had said, 'the investigation was dropped as soon public interest died down.' This state of affairs led one analyst to declare that 'there can be little doubt that some of the South's political leaders took the President's continued neutrality to mean he was secretly on their side.' (Earl Warren later confided that before the Brown decision he had been invited to a White House dinner at which the president went out of his way to praise the South's counsel to the chief justice. 'The President... took me by the arm and as we walked along, speaking of the Southern states in the segregation cases, he said, "These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes..." Shortly thereafter the Brown case was decided, and with it went our cordial relations."' Pages 105, 106, Class, race, and the Civil Rights Movement, by Jack M. Bloom

If Stephen Ambrose decided to 'get inside Ike's head' and tell us exactly what the ex-president believed about that Supreme Court ruling, regardless of what the man left on the record both publicly and privately, then Ambrose was a shitty historian.

(Anyway, the line about sweet little girls and 'big overgrown Negroes' is a lot like what LBJ was saying to Republicans and liberals when he was trying to get a version of Herbert Brownell's Civil Rights Act through the senate without it being filibustered to death. Just because it sounds offensive today doesn't mean it's a smoking gun piece of evidence.)

This is the second time this week I've criticised the work of Ambrose on this forum (or is it?).
 
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