A tradition which began with president theodore roosevelt. The great and the near great have addressed this audience and tonight we welcome a man who eventually we will record as preeminent among World Leaders in the area of greatest need. [applause] i have in mind the discussion of communist aggression as millions of people were enveloped behind an iron curtain. I have in mind the feeling of futility in korea, oppression in our homeland but to meet out the savings and troubling the motors of ourfree enterprise economy. Here then is the man, framed in more who will be acclaimed by future generations as the man who laid the foundations of peace. [applause] and more, he is our president who we love with a deep andabiding affection. [applause] [music] welcome to the Commonwealth Club, im george hammond, chair of the Commonwealth Club. This tech staff is helping to put together these online programs. Weve done dozens and dozens of them since the crisis began and its my great pleasure to introduce Susan Eisenhower who is with us today. Shes the granddaughter of president eisenhower and shes written a great book, how ike led. Its like a u2 spy plane overview of his whole, the principle that led his presidency but with a young girls point of view on the man himself and its quite a combination. Its a nice combination because its also a combination that you lift your life in, susan because youre a political analyst and youve lived your life this way and in addition to that you knew him personally for many years. That was interesting, he didnt pass away until you were in college or around the age. So welcome everybody and we are going to get started to talk about president eisenhower. Those of you who arent familiar with him, he was president from 1953 until 1961, jfk was the president afterward and he was the supreme allied commander during world war ii so susan, thank you very much for joining us from afar in our online world that weve all recognized, it happened much more easily than we thought but tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book . Youve been working in this field for a long time as a political consultant, advisor and you decided to write about your own grandfathers worked. It must have beeninteresting to try to be objective and subjective at the same time. You did it successfully but it couldnt have been easy. First of all i want to thank you somuch for the opportunity to be back at the Commonwealth Club. I have a wonderful opportunity of presenting books to the club in years past so its great to be back and to talk about this and yes, i think the question is a very interesting one that maybe as part of the disclaimer for our discussion this evening i should say that as a kid i was really pleased to compartmentalize what i knew about his politics, about the period in which he governed, about the issues that he dealt with. And on the other side, our relationship with his grandparents. So this book is really a marriage of those two things with you said and its quite an experience forme to put together in one place. Just because i was continually struck how we were doing as a family and some of you was dealing with some ofthese crises so that was interesting. The impetus for why i do it now, evolved around free events i guess. One is the 25th anniversary of the end of world war ii. Certainly vj day is about to occur but we had of course the 75thanniversary of the end of the war in europe. Back in mayof this year. Secondly, the eisenhower memorial in washington dc will be dedicated on september 17th. A much more scaledback version of its original self but it will nevertheless be open to the public after that and then finally, i would bring into an Election Year and theres always a lot of thinking about the presidency. As the most important for your election occurs. And so i thought that i had something to sayto us today. I guess thats the reason i put it together. You really did and i found that you took it from that angle but theres so many different elements thatwere so interesting to me , as applicable. One of them that i bought just a small tangent but there were people who decided in 1956 that were against him being reelected and youre going to actually be electing Richard Nixon, youre not going to beelecting eisenhower becauseeisenhower is sick. He just had this heart attack and so on so pretty soon Richard Nixon will be the president and same thing is going on in the democratic party. People are saying biden will never be president for more than a month or two so youre really electing , like harris so its interesting these things being thrown out of people. I dont want to speculate on whether thattheres a difference in approach. Ive been conscious of what it would be to be a diminished president. We have to remember a president wilson was really almost a scandal but people in the country didnt know how ill that president was ike was determined not to find himself in a situation for the good of the country and after he had three illnesses during his presidency and after each one of them he would give himself a very arduous test like a round the world trip or a trip to europe required lots of meetings and lots of steps and feed always tell his advisors if i dont perform at top level, you have to tell me becausethen ill resign. In any case, that never happened. He became actually a rather adroit at managing his time, managing his stress and generally positioning himself to get through his second term. It was interesting also, a small tangent doctors lied to him about the helium thing so he didntthink it was a serious. Kind of thought you might have made a different decision in 56 if they hadnt warned him about that. I thought that was interesting. One of the biggest decisions about when he was running as a second term as you point out, he had a heart attack in 1955 and he had a doctor named general Howard Snyder and although they were devoted friends and they been together in one for another is the war , Howard Snyder actually drove him off the wall because first of all he came up with all sorts of things eisenhower wasnt allowed to do including watching armynavy Football Game. Howard schneider decided it was going to raise the president s blood pressure. And he really did care about the outcome of the game. And so i think Howard Schneider was part of the team that kind of wasnt actually really direct with the president about his ileitis situation and back to your question ike was not going to be a diminished president so you might well have decided differently. But ithink he really in the day , my grandmother intervened the first time i think since the early part of their marriage and encouraged him to run again because he thought that he would probably die out another heart attack watching everything from the sidelines. I found it interesting the way your grandfather mothers decision was easy to understand. The doctors position wasthis is the guy whos making all these decisions about the war on korea , all these Big Decisions and youre worried about him watching the Football Game even if he takes it too seriously , it seemed a little bit ludicrous. I told that story in the book in the context of how an extraordinary amount of power, how that often worked relationships, you have with other people. It does mean that it makes some terrible bit of sense but it does change things and the doctors for some reason, i love this expression actually tried to handle this man which only make him more wound up because he was a guy who was used to making Big Decisions and was perfectly capable of taking any difficult news. One of his last years of life i saw this so often how brave he was and how ready he was to take whatever was coming. As a matter of fact he even volunteered for some rather exotic treatments for his condition because he thought it might help people after he was gone. But there wasnt anybody he wasnt straightforward with, i want to say. Its a good transition because the four we get to the big issues, i think its good to talkabout these personal relationships that he had. Friendships that he had, the people that kept him honest, his family and your own relationship with him and you have pictures to show include some pictures of yourselfwith him when you were younger so will get those up on the screen. Theres apicture weve been showing. This is him right around the end of worldwar ii. This picture was taken 1945. By that time he had is six star and i think he looks tired though. Idont know if youd agree but he looks content. Its if the picture were fulllength, you would see that hes wearing only a single bar of ribbons on his shoulder. He was not one to walk around like a soviet general metals all the way down to their waist. And i like this picture because i think he looks approachable. Though i would say tired and thats got to be a fairly accurate assessment since its impossible to know how you could be working 100 hours a week, 130 hours a week sometimes up all night, up in the middle of the night and not come out on a threeyear stint like that really deeply tired. And in 45, how old was he . Was born in 1890. It was 55 years old and as a matter of fact if you look at pictures , when he was president he actually looks younger than he does in that picture even though it was another five years later. Gave a lot of energy. The next picture is a picture of you. And this is you as a teenager. Is there a horse in the picture, you cant see it from here. Perfect. Well, he became an amateur photographer and we have the family collections, also to these homemade things read what i like about that picture is somebody else took a picture of ike taking a picture of me and i dont know every time i see this picture it makes me smile because of that bald head of his as my grandmother said she always loved to roll over in bed and pats little baldhead. But yes, and theres a horse in the picture from this standpoint i cant quite see it but i was the family horseback rider and so this was a bond we had because he loved horses. And the only animals on his farm that he indulgedin any way shape or form. You know, he was terrible with cattle and he certainly didnt like writing on cats but he loved his horsesso i think its a rather sweet picture. You have a short story in your book about when you were 11 and he had just put in a putting green. A very special putting green, tell that story. Because i think it showsyour relationship. I think the story says a lot about ikes compassion and my lifetime guilt because he had just put in a putting green and he put the putting green in the cause he wanted to have some privacy while he practiced. Otherwise he would have had to go to the Gettysburg Country club which he enjoyed doing and seeing people but that wasnt actually any privacy. People came out to watch him golf so one evening i was padlocking a gate and five of the horses on the farm pushed against the gate, sort of almost knocked me over and then went running all around the lawn in front of my parents, their parents sitting area where they always sat in the evening and all five of these forces are running around circling here and going there. And then made a huge sweep across his golf green. And i was more than in a state of panic. Everybody came out, field hands, secret service, everybody and we were trying to wrap around which we finally did and i had to go and now have they ruined my golfgreen but i was late for dinner. So it was one of those moments in childhood you dont forget. So i walked in, he always sat in a swivel chair and he swiveled around and looked at me and he said you know what i said to your grandmother . I havent seen horses runlike that since i was a kid in abilene kansas. The course i apologize after that but i never heard of it again and it was a very smart move on his part. Because the guilt would be lingering. He would never make a mistake like that again he was very nice not to bring it up or hold it against me or hold it over my head because he was devastated. And he wouldnt do it again. Its one of those experiences that ended in a disney cartoon that a child makes that mistake of irresponsibility and in the ones where the parentsare good, they do what ike did and when their bad they look like a witch. Five and one more thing, i had a great expense to apologize profusely and take full responsibility and i think that went down very well. I would have had a significant ongoing lecture about personal accountability had i not done so. I learned that one. So gary, i assume that youre in that picture. Can see from the postcard hes painting, they photograph, its my mother and three of my four siblings. My youngest was born in 1955 after that fortress was painted but it was taken at camp david and against one of the helpers at camp david came in and took a picture of him during that but he took up painting actually after the war. He sort of mentioned churchills example, he was impressed by how much painting the Prime Ministers did while he was trying to get his set together and also his own painter gave him some oil paints as a present and ike took it up then then became really very attached as a pastime because he found that it centered him. And while he was concentrating on the painting , he was allowing his mind to work through some verygood problems. You have a short story in the book about how he got an exhibit and at an art museum and he saidtheres only one reason theyre being shown here and thats because i was president. They never give a guy like me and exhibit for painting that look like this. Exactly, he was very modest, not like churchill who took his painting so seriously that he wanted to be regarded almost as a professional. Ike did it to give away his gets and he gave cabinet memberspaintings of them. He painted all his wartime colleagues. He actually even painted Prince Charles for the queen of england and always was full of apologiesabout their execution but actually he had some talent i think. We have a picture here of the picture of churchill. At the next picture. Looks talented. Its not amateur. Not bad. The other charming thing about this painting is that he was able to present it to Prime Minister churchill when churchill had just stepped down and was visiting in the United States. Thats a wonderful picture of churchill looking it over. Like churchill the painter would. Ike also painted field Marshal Bernard montgomery. Its a lovely, lovely painting in the British Embassy in washington dc. You said its one of his interesting personalities, they got along but they were enemies to so in the next picture, thats one that he gave to you. Theres a little story about this one. Theres a story aboutthis one. I often stood behind him when he was at the easel. He had in addition to his retirement years, he always insisted on having a studio somewhere nearby so in the white house it was on the second floor overlooking lafayette park. And it was around that time was standing behind him, admiring his work. This is a landscape, i dont know what the scene is as i said before, he painted usually postcards. And they were more landscapes he did were always serene and its been noted that its something ironic about it because probably every picture is some kind of turbulence hes trying to make sense of. This painting at the bottom is dated the heat, 1957 in 1957, many things happen but i was intrigued when i lookat the back of it that says to susan, 1958. That means its likely painting was done for cabal during the little rock crisis when eisenhower since the hundred First Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock High School into to escort nonafricanamericans to school that september. And then right after that of course was slightly, the soviet union launched its first artificialsatellite. So i look at this painting and think theres brushstrokes, i must have provided somerelief. So it was a great controversy. Going to go back to people talk about october surprises and in 1956, your grandfather certainly got to really huge ones. But lets finish the pictures and then we will go ahead. By the way for the audience, if you have any questions just send them into the chat room. And we will ask them, will get to the korean conflict a little bit later. So next picture is. And thats you ryan . It is me, i look like terribly thoughtful and he looks terribly kind. I like that picture because i have always wanted people to know that he had some very very tough decisions and some very dark times during our history because think about what you saw and what he had ordered during the war but you know, he never becamehard or cynical. And i think as those Family Members, both in a Family Member and an analyst i think itsremarkable. It says a lotabout his character. One of the hardest things to do is to make those decisions , to know that so many people will die and at worst, you dont even succeed at what youre trying to accomplish and more people die. The people who made those decisions for us, i think its why they get acquired for decades and evencenturies to come because its so crucial. The next picture. We have acouple of pictures of him. Theres a picture of him as a young man, just so that you can seehim before his ball. Thats right. I was looking, its always fun to see ikewith a full head of hair. Though he is, george, maybe you coulddescribe which one he is. Thats exactly right. This is the Abilene High School and he was on the baseball team. He was a very good baseball player but i think his real passion was football. He lost his way for a little while when he broke his knee andwas unable to continue playing football west point. He had played against jim for as a matter of fact in the army versus carlisle game and he was regarded very fast , effective Football Player and that was very discouragingfor him. And he had to learn how to snap out of that downer. After taking a cigarette, of course. One tangent, i didnt plan on going there but i thought it wasinteresting you mention , all these people that he was kind of a kind of not a bad boy but he got himself in trouble he was at west point he didnt even go there to become a soldier ready weather for the free education. Another very interesting candidate. He shared that with utiliti