Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough shares his thoughts on Ike’s Bluff – President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle To Save The World, by Evan Thomas (2012). The book is a startling account of how the underrated Dwight Eisenhower saved the world from nuclear holocaust.
Summary Thoughts
- Inspirational book on judgment and accountability in decision making
- Sharp contrast to the broken #PoliticalClass concepts of leadership in America today
- “His greatest victories were the wars he did not fight” –Evan Thomas #indeed
Content Highlights
- “Eisenhower was the first President to use TV as a bully pulpit, but he was not particularly good at it” (pg 16) #authenticity
- “The people, judging from Eisenshower’s high poll ratings, believed that he had sound judgment” (pg 16)
- “too many cups of coffee, smoked too many cigarettes, slept badly, and worried far too much.” (pg 18) #accountability
- “He knew that he had a gift: the power to make people – indeed, whole peoples – trust him” (pg 28) #trust
- “His firstborn child… “Icky”, died of scarlet fever in 1921… and he never really recovered from the loss” (pg 30) like #Jefferson
- “Eisenhower had grown up poor in Abilene, Kansas” (pg 33) #perspective
- “President Eisenhower’s day usually proceeded with the precision of a military band.” (pg 43) very #process/routine oriented
- “Let’s not make our mistakes in a hurry” was one of his standard sayings.” (pg 45) very #patient, risk manager of a man
- “Never get in a pissing match with the skunk” (pg 57) to his brother Milton about #McCarthy
- “What we found was the result of seven years of yapping was exactly zero. We have no plan.” (pg 59) Ike on #Stalin’s death
- “Miss America contestants were asked to state their opinion of Karl Marx” (pg 69) #1950 zeitgeist in America during Korean War
- “More significant was the death of Stalin, the leader most responsible for the conflict” (pg 81) good chapter contextualizing Korea
- “The war is over and I hope my son is coming home soon” (pg 81) wars different vs recent US Presidents; #personal responsibility
- “Learning To Love The Bomb” (pg 101) Chapter 7, illustrates how politicians in America marketed/sold #fear
- “we live by emotion, prejudice, and pride” (pg 105) Ike in an excellent leadership note to #Churchill
- “Eisenhower, himself a heavy editor, fiddled with his speeches until the last possible moment” (pg 111) #accountability
- “You’ve got to stick your butt out more, Mr President” (pg 115) loved #golf, this was advice from Sam Snead at Augusta
- “Eisenhower was astonished at the foolishness of the French” (pg 120) annoyed w/ France at Dien Bien Phu #Vietnam
- “You have a row of dominos set up, and you knock the first one over” (pg 127) why he kept USA out of Vietnam #1954
- “Eisenhower was an expert in finding reasons for not doing things” (pg 130) –Andy Goodpaster, his Staff Secretary
- “Scientists and industrialists must be given the greatest possible freedom to carry out their research” (pg 146) #evolve
- “Don’t Worry, I’ll Confuse Them” (Chapter 10) fascinating #strategy chapter on how he’s play the Chinese
- “Chiang might have dragged out the crisis had the Red Chinese not backed down. But they did.” (pg 164)
- “Eisenhower had read Clausewitz’s On War – three times” (page 203) #study
- “This fellow’s licked and what’s more he knows it” (pg 209) Ike on Adlai Stevenson’s challenge for the Presidency #1956
- “icy with anger, warm with satisfaction, sharp with concern” (pg 215) when Ike learned of the #U2 intelligence on Russia
- “A crisis in leadership” (pg 255) that’s what Time Magazine said about Ike in #1957, #embarrassing editorial times
- “The President must be in some kind of partial retirement” –Walter Lippmann (pg 255) #1957, not knowing what Ike knew
- “You can understand that there are many things that I don’t care to allude to publicly” –Eisenhower (pg 260)
- “Patience and privacy were virtues of leadership, vices of politics… he was the lonely keeper of the nation’s secrets” (pg 260)
- “Psychologically, he could handle the pressure. But physically, he could not” (pg 260) I get it
- “The Roman Empire controlled the world… Now the communists have established a foothold in outer space” –#LBJ! (pg 276)
- “Ike, who regarded LBJ as a phony” (pg 277) Life Magazine put Lyndon Johnson on the cover, Russian space #FearMongering
- “Alsop did what newsmen do: he found other sources. One was Johnson, who cultivated Alsop” (pg 310) gotta love #NYTimes
- “Eisenhower was, in effect, his own secretary of defense” (pg 314) #experienced practitioner, not political parrot
- “honesty of purpose, calmness, and inexhaustible patience” (pg 331) Ike, on himself, and virtues of #leadership
- “Khruschev was surprised and overjoyed to be invited to America by Eisenhower” (pg 335), keep your #enemies close
- “He found her and crawled in beside her” (pg 352) Eisenhower’s best friend, his wife #Mamie
- “I’m Just Fed Up!” Chapter 25, classic – U2 crisis blows up with Russia/Khruschev; Eisenhower diffuses the risk, again
- “Ike was more comfortable as a soldier, yet his greatest victories were the wars he did not fight” (pg 404) #conclusion
