Hello and welcome back to another edition of the presidential election series as I’ll be going over the election of 1956, Dwight Eisenhower has been president for four years but now his gotta prove he still has what it takes to win re-election…
The Election of 1956; Eisenhower’s Presidency
Upon his decisive victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower had been very busy dealing with problems both at home and aboard as the president continued with the same New Deal policies that were used by his two Democratic predecessors and even created a new agency known today as the Department of Health and Human Services whose main focus can best be summed up by their motto “Improving the health, safety and well-being of America”. Eisenhower also helped in leading the way for space research which eventually led to the creation of NASA he pushed for the construction of the Interstate Highway System and used the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 to get the funds needed to build it with Ike seeing the highway as a big step in improving the country’s infrastructure.
When it came to foreign policy, however, Eisenhower’s record was a mixed bag with many of his positives centring around signing agreements that ended America’s involvement in the Korean War and the Soviet Union’s occupation of Austria. By far the biggest success for Eisenhower in terms of foreign affairs would have to be his handling of the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956 which saw countries like France, Britain and Israel invading Egypt in response to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision to nationalize the company that had control of the canal, so the president threatened the three invading countries with economic sanctions if they didn’t cease hostilities and soon afterward the United Nations helped in ending the crisis.
On the other opposite side of Eisenhower’s international policy, he allowed the CIA to overthrow a number of foreign leaders under the belief of the domino theory aka the idea that if Communism was allowed to exist in one part of the world then it would further spread in other areas around the globe. Many of these coup d’etats occurred in Guatemala, the Congo, the Dominican Republic and Iran with the latter seeing the CIA aid the British in a plot to overthrow the elected Iranian official, Mohammad Mossadegh who wished to nationalize the country’s oil supply only to be overthrown and replaced by a secular dictator who was friendly to the Western powers.
This case of agency meddling in Iran under the Eisenhower adminsration would come back to haunt the United States in the decades to come, but regardless Eisenhower was widley loved by many Americans and as a result he was easily renominated by the Republican Party with Richard Nixon again as his running mate…Now let’s take a look at his opponent in this election.
The Return of the Egghead
As election season started to roll around, the Democratic Party had the unenviable task of finding someone to go up against the very popular incumbent president in the upcoming race with the top three candidates being:
- Averell Harriman: The Governor of New York
- Estes Kefauver: Senator from Tennessee
- Adali Stevenson II: Former Governor of Illnois
Stevenson as you will recall from the previous election article reluctantly became the party’s nominee only to get wiped out both in the electoral and popular vote by Eisenhower, however the former governor of Illnois was more interested this time around to win the nomination.
Despite Harriman being the Governor of New York and getting the endorsement of former president Harry Truman, the race for the nomination was a tight between Stevenson and Kefauver with the first two primaries being won by the populist Senator from Tennessee; This eventually made way for the first ever live television debate between two candidates trying to get their party’s nomination in May of 1956 with Stevenson coming out on top and using that momentum to win the Florida and California primaries before Kefauver decided to drop out of the race.
Upon Stevenson winning the nomination for a second time at the Democratic Convention he decided to make things a lot more interesting by having the delegates choose who his running mate would be in the election with the two names that got the most attention being Kefauver and a fresh faced Senator from Massachusetts by the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy; By the end though most of the delegates switched their support to Kefauver making him Stevenson’s new running mate and the only election in which JFK actually lost.
So it’s a rematch from 1952 as it’s Eisenhower vs. Stevenson once again for the highest office in the land, let’s take a look at the campaigns and the political ads both sides used during this election.
The Election of 1956; The Campaigns & Election Ads
Much like the previous election, Stevenson was at a disadvantage almost from the beginning as he was running against not only the same man who beat him a few years earlier but also against very popular president.
So in order to have a chance he and Kefauver used television ads to get their messages for economic improvement, education reforms and even attempting to got after Eisenhower’s policies while at the same time campaigning on issues like ending the draft, increase spending on social programs, reducing military spending whilst signing treaties with the Soviet Union and ending Eisenhower’s Nuclear Bomb testing producures.
The ads by the Eisenhower team weren’t as iconic as the ‘I like Ike’ ad from ’52 but they were able to get the message across which was good for the 60 something year old president as he had suffered a heart attack a year before the election but had thankfully recovered.
The Eisenhower ads talked about the president pulling American troops out of Korea, keeping the country from getting involved in more war and they also centered on a specific demographic that being the women or more specifically housewives as female voters overwhelming voted for Ike in the previous election and now these new ads are designed to increase the woman vote for this election.
In addition to the political ads, Eisenhower was running on his record from both a domestic and foreign policy standpoint, plus he even supported the landmark Supreme Court decision on the case Brown v. Board of Education which paved the way for racial intregation in public schools and this led to around 40% of the African American community supporting the president (which will be the last time a candidate from the GOP will have that kind of support for the black community).
Now it’s time to take a look at the results.
The Election of 1956 Results
As you probably expected…Dwight Eisenhower easily won re-election remaining the 34th president in U.S. History; Ike this time won 41 states out of 48 including the state of Lousiana which hadn’t voted for the Republicans since 1876 and he increased his vote total a little bit more receiving 457 electoral votes and 57.4% of the popular vote.
Adlai Stevenson finished with just 73 electoral votes and 42% of the popular vote, in terms of both the electoral and popular vote this is the worse performance for a democratic candidate seeking the presidency where only two major candidates ran since Al Smith in the election of 1928.
This election would make Dwight Eisenhower the first republican president to be elected to a second term since William McKinley in 1900 and the first to served two full terms in office since Ulyssess S. Grant… As of the timing of this article, this election would be the last presidential election that was an exact rematch of the previous election.
And that was the election of 1956 Eisenhower easily won a second term and now his gonna lead the country in the early part of the 1960’s where things are going to get interesting especially when it comes to the next presidential election.
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