<--PREV Doc #112  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #114 Document #113; March 27, 1953 To Leonard V. Finder Series: EM, WHCF, President's Personal File 219 ; Category: Personal and confidential The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953 Chapter 2: "A number of misunderstandings": Party and International Struggles   Dear Leonard:1 Thank you very much for your letter. I am quite sure that your report is accurate; I have had similar ones from impatient individuals.2 Sometime please find and read the book "Lincoln, Master of Men."3 Particularly I commend that you contemplate on his methods. It is also well to remember that there are a few people who never did admit that he had any sense. It, of course, goes without saying that our form of government needs leadership and this must be provided by the President. It is equally clear that in the case of the Congress, such leadership must be exercised through responsible individuals in the Congress itself. It might be possible in one or two instances to achieve a tactical victory by direct action. In the long run the attempt to do so would be fatal. With personal regard, Sincerely 1 Finder, vice-president of the Universal Match Corporation in St. Louis, had encouraged Eisenhower to run for the presidency in 1948 and again in 1952 (Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 351; Galambos, Columbia University, no. 7). 2 "A pall of fear is being spread by the activities of Senator McCarthy and the few others like him," Finder had written on March 24 (WHCF/PPF 219). "Although many persons deplored his excesses before, some of us tried during the campaign to justify him as a product of the Administration's indifference then to the problem of communism. Current developments make yesterday's fears as nothing by comparison with the widespread prevailing apprehension," he said further, citing McCarthy's growing power, "an atmosphere destructive to the maintenance of our democratic liberties," and the "impatient observation" that Eisenhower had permitted other men to usurp his leadership. 3 Alonzo Rothschild, Lincoln, Master of Men: A Study in Character (Boston and New York, 1906), surveyed the sixteenth president's sometimes elliptical but always successful dealings with political rivals, headstrong Cabinet officers, and martinets in the Army. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To Leonard V. Finder, 27 March 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 113. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/113.cfm <--PREV Doc #112  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #114

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission 1629 K Street, NW Suite 801 Washington DC 20006 Phone: 202.296.0004    Fax: 202.296.6464