Abstract

Blanche Wiesen Cook

The article focuses on the liberalism of former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. For thirty years I have been privileged to study America's great liberals, particularly Dwight Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt. To see how far along a dastardly path we have crawled, it is important to remember that Eisenhower called himself "a militant liberal." Together with Eleanor Roosevelt and her friend Esther Lape, Eisenhower fought for a single-payer health system to cover all Americans. Eisenhower increased the minimum wage, extended the excess-profits tax, expanded the public-housing program and warned the nation of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, which he originally called the Congressional-industrial-military complex. Eleanor Roosevelt's work for affordable housing was central to her democratic vision. In her last book, "Tomorrow Is Now," published posthumously in l963, she called for ardent courage and refortified liberalism.