October 24, 2012 -- Updated 1650 GMT (0050 HKT)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses the nation on U.S. intervention in Formosa (now Taiwan), in 1958.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Evan Thomas: Biggest decision for next president could be on bombing Iran's nuclear facilities
- He says Eisenhower pondered a pre-emptive strike against a rising nuclear power: the USSR
- He was pressed by some to strike but grasped the magnitude and decided not to do it
- Thomas: Ike was good bluffer; faced with similar decision, will our next president fare as well?
In 1958, when he was
under tremendous pressure to build more missiles to catch up the
Russians, which had just launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and
seemed to be creating what the press and some Democrats were calling
"the missile gap," Ike seemed strangely passive. He knew that the CIA's
spy plane, the U-2, had not found any Soviet ICBMs, but he wanted to
keep the existence of the spy plane a secret.
The president's bland
public statements disappointed even his followers and gave rise to
mutterings that he was too old (68) and playing too much golf (about 100
times a year). In the winter of 1958, Eisenhower was visited by the
poet, Robert Frost, who gave him a book of his poems inscribed with the
notation, "The strong are saying nothing until they see." Ike wrote a
friend that Frost's words were his "favorite maxim."
Eisenhower was accustomed to carrying great responsibility.
In his breast pocket on
D-Day, he carried a note he had written in case the landings failed.
"The responsibility is mine alone," it read. On his first day as
president in 1953, Ike wrote in his diary, "Plenty of worries and
difficult problems. But such has been my portion for a long time."
Neither Obama nor Romney
have Eisenhower's experience or credentials. But you can see just by
looking at Obama's face that he has been forced to learn on the job. He
or Romney will face greater tests.
Both men have said that
containment is not an option when it comes to Iran getting the bomb.
Will either man strike first? Wait for Israel to strike first? Get ready
to join a wider Middle East war?
The strong are saying nothing until they see.
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