When we gauge the current
political scene, Dwight Eisenhower seems a pretty reasonable Republican in
retrospect, even to decidedly liberal sensibilities. It’s hard not to look back
on him as a solid, level-headed leader. He saw Joseph McCarthy for the tinhorn
thug he was and worked to undermine McCarthyism, the hysterical scourge of the
1950s that ruined so many lives and careers. He established the Interstate
highway system, and while the effects of that haven’t necessarily been all
positive, contributing to the rise of a costly car culture, with all the
pollution, sprawl and urban decay that followed, it’s hard to blame him for
that. The Interstates from the beginning have been a tremendous economic
engine, and it was Ike’s vision that got them rolling. He started NASA, a
magnificent legacy. His final warning against the military-industrial complex
(his term, that stuck) was dead-on, though we haven’t listened. This Dream Song
is grounded in its moment and comments on Eisenhower’s career. It’s more
critical of him than not.
Ike was the first TV president. When
reading this poem you have to imagine the small, fuzzy screen of a 50s-era
black and white television set, signal zoning in and out, picture rolling up or
down and you can’t get it to hold still, the diagonal adjustment flipping out
so that the picture is suddenly jagged black and white lines from corner to
corner. You adjust the rabbit-ear antennae, maybe hang strips of aluminum foil
on them, slap the side of the wooden cabinet, and carefully turn four different
dials to try and clear up the picture, but it fades into static and back again.
You get up to adjust the controls but your body affects the signal, so when you
sit back down, it all reverts to noise. (Anyone under 40 probably has no idea
what I’m talking about.) The poem’s “ech” and “awk” and “bang” and “er—er”
break things up and set the whole shebang down smack in the static-filled TV
age.
B.’s not as happy with Ike as I
think most people ought to be with his legacy. I suspect Ike understood his
strategy in World War II war better than B. gives him credit for, and I don’t
think his grin was that empty. Adlai Stevenson was the end of the line for the
New Deal, and there’s a lament for that. It’s all about the 50s, and no Happy Days or Back to the Future. Cool.
And then there’s this: I was born
in ’58, and I have to say it, while the ’56 and ’57 Ford Thunderbirds are some
of the coolest, most gorgeous damn cars ever to cruise the wide-open American
road, the ’58 T-bird is awkward and weird and signaled the end of a great era
in automotive design. So there’s that about the 1950s. Made in the shade,
Daddy-O.
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