'Witch hunt' tried to take down another president in the 1950s

What a difference 65 years makes — NOT!

The “witch hunt” under way in Washington, D.C., where every flag-waving liberal in Washington, D.C., is looking for Russian “collusion” throughout the Trump administration, is not exactly new.

In fact, it was another Republican who was the subject of a similar witch hunt in 1952 (and throughout his two terms as president). Dwight D. Eisenhower, the five-star general who was Allied commander in Europe during World War II, was targeted both by Democrats and by fellow Republicans for being too cozy with communists.

I know it’s hard for liberals to see themselves playing the part of red-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but the facts speak for themselves, and just as McCarthy loved to grab headlines with outrageous allegations he couldn’t always prove, so too do the Democrats in Congress seem to have a penchant for trying to destroy lives with nary a hint of evidence.

It wasn’t just McCarthy who was gunning for Eisenhower though; there was a whole movement of people inside and outside the government who were after him. His Democratic opponents didn’t necessarily repeat the communist smears directly, but they came awfully close.

In 1952, the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, said of Ike and his allies, “They are apparently willing even today to let Europe collapse. But something more than blustering words is necessary to block the Kremlin plan for world dominion.”

Kind of reminiscent of the attack on Trump for his insistence that our NATO partners carry their own weight (and honor their own commitment!) as we face off against Russia in the 21st century.

Even President Truman, who in 1948 asked Eisenhower to run for president (with Truman demoting himself to vice president), could not tolerate the Republican version of Eisenhower when he ran against Stevenson.

In a visit to Cumberland, Maryland, on Oct. 23, 1952, Truman lashed out at Republicans, including Eisenhower:

“Today, freedom of thought and freedom of speech are under attack in our country. They are being attacked by the planned and deliberate use of lies, slanders and fear. A little group of people are using these weapons, on a wide scale, in an attempt to attain public office. They want to make it dangerous for anyone to express opinions different from theirs. They try to destroy the reputation of any man in public or private life who dares to stand up and oppose them.”

Truman referred to the “despicable ‘back street’ type of campaign, which usually, if exposed in time, backfires.” He said that type of smear campaign was “of a form and pattern designed to undermine and destroy the public faith and confidence in the basic American loyalty of a well-known figure.”

He was referring to the McCarthy-assisted campaign for Senate in Maryland in 1950, in which Democrats were attacked by Republicans for suspicions about their loyalty, but I have read no better assessment of what Democrats have tried to do to President Trump in raising the specter of “Russian collusion.” The goal is to “undermine and destroy the public faith” in the president, is it not?

The fact of the matter is that the campaign of 1952 and the succeeding years of Eisenhower’s two terms as president were replete with many lessons for us that we have failed to learn.

First of all, the vitriol of that campaign far exceeded anything we heard in 2016. And it wasn’t just Truman throwing verbal bombs. Earlier in October 1952, Eisenhower unloaded on both Truman and Stevenson while campaigning in Sacramento, declaring that they were talking “like the unintelligent people they apparently are.” Not surprising he would take that tack since the day before, Truman had told a crowd in Colorado that Eisenhower had “betrayed every principle about our foreign policy and our national defense that I thought he believed in.”

The Oil City (Pennsylvania) Derrick editorialized that Truman’s “whistle-stop smear” campaign is “the cheapest and frowziest act of attempted character assassination in the political history of his country,” bewailing the fact that Truman dared to suggest that Eisenhower had underestimated the post-war threat of communism and the Soviet Union.

As for Stevenson, the professorial Democrat, he questioned whether Eisenhower would be able to find the communists who had infiltrated the federal government.

“I think we are entitled to ask, ‘Is the Republican candidate seriously interested in trying to root communists out of the government or is he only interested in scaring the American people to get the old guard in?”

Obviously, the credibility of the pundits who constantly evoke the supposedly unprecedented brash talk of Donald Trump as a candidate is hovering near zero. The problem is trying to get pundits and reporters to lower their snooty noses out of the air and into a history book — a task that may be well nigh impossible in our pseudo-literate society.

So, besides the fact that one of our nation’s key allies in World War II was Soviet Russia (led by mass murderer Josef Stalin), what exactly led people to think that war hero Eisenhower was soft on communism? Trust me, the evidence was no stronger than what has been trotted out against Trump.

An advertisement in the Walla Walla (Washington) Union-Bulletin two days before the 1952 election conceded (tongue in cheek?) that “Eisenhower is not a communist,” but then excoriated him for cozying up to communists while he was president of Columbia University (yes, Republicans were still allowed to head up Ivy League colleges then!).

Turns out that in 1948, Eisenhower had accepted a $30,000 grant from the communist Polish government to establish a chair of Polish Studies at Columbia. Through 1952, the chair was occupied by Dr. Manfred Kridl, who was identified as a communist.

The ad informed its readers that “The National Council for American Education stated that: ‘In our opinion President Eisenhower performed for Columbia and himself a disservice when he accepted the Communist cash. Only a very naive person could think that Soviet-dominated countries have any purpose in endowing these chairs except to propagandize for their ideologies.’”

Eisenhower’s connection to communists was, if anything, much more direct and obvious than Trump’s connection to Russians, but — let’s face it — both “scandals” are — in the words of CNN’s Van Jones— “just a big nothing burger.”

Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. He can be reached at edit@dailyinterlake.com.