General Eisenhower: Ideology and Discourse.

• Author: Olson, Gregory A.
• Position: Book Review

General Eisenhower: Ideology and Discourse. By Ira Chernus. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series, Martin J. Medhurst, ed., 2002; pp. vii + 366. $51.95.

Ira Chernus' volume on Dwight D. Eisenhower's pre-presidential discourse is a new addition to the Rhetoric and Public Affairs series. The books in this series have been consistent in their quality, and Chernus' volume is no exception. David Zarefsky (2003, p. 368) recently noted that academics in other disciplines are discovering the importance of rhetoric and discourse; Chernus' work is an excellent example of Zarefsky's point (Chernus teaches in a Department of Religious Studies). It is also refreshing to find communication scholarship taken seriously (Martin Medhurst, Robert Ivie, J. Michael Hogan and the writings of others in the field are central to Chernus' meticulous research). Chernus believes that political historians have mistakenly "studied leaders' beliefs and policy actions" but ignored language:

Language, the link between beliefs and policies, has been treated as an epiphenomenon--often as a smokescreen hiding reality, or at best as 'mere ideology' that can somehow be analytically separated from other causal factors (5).

Since previous published works on Eisenhower's rhetoric have focused largely on Eisenhower's presidency, Chernus' work fills a void. The mixture of the author's theological background with the examination of the General's discourse has led to interesting insights. This cross-disciplinary approach has been fostered by the Michigan State University series.

Although Chernus is no apologist for the pre-presidential Eisenhower, his work fits into the revisionist version of Eisenhower begun by Robert A. Divine's Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981) and Fred I. Greenstein's The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (1982). These works changed the perception of President Eisenhower from a passive leader to that of a commander-in-chief deeply involved with the running of government. Post-revisionists in the 1990s, Chernus points out, began to criticize the excesses of Eisenhower's anticommunism. While continuing in that tradition, Chernus sees a need to re-examine post-revisionist thought and to explore the cold war's "enduring grip on U.S. culture and society" (304). Indeed, the author undoubtedly sees his work as a way to begin that "reorientation."

Although expressing surprise by it, Chernus concludes that...