Word: ike
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...President needs presence, dignity, a certain touch of distance and even mystery; he is also expected to be "human." F.D.R. and Ike set a high standard. The aloofness of a De Gaulle would not sit well in the U.S. He needs courage, physical (just to go outdoors) and moral. He must be tough, even ruthless, but not find sick enjoyment in ruthlessness. He needs a deep self-confidence, stopping short of a grandiose sense of destiny...
...must be steady and stable, housing his exceptional combination of gifts within a personality approximately "normal." Among the modern Presidents, the most nearly "normal" personalities are probably Truman, Ike, Ford, Reagan. "I am disgustingly sane," said Ford. It may be significant that Ford and Truman had not aspired to the presidency, and Ike began to think of it only in his late 50s, when he had already won world fame in a job about as big as President. Reagan had had two satisfying careers in the public eye, as actor and after-dinner free-enterprise speaker, before turning to politics...
...much the same uplift have people always foraged for the small, personal glimmers in the lives of the powerful. Several U.S. Presidents endeared themselves to the public through their pastimes: Ike's golf, Kennedy's touch football, Truman's piano playing. Hoover took to fishing and throwing a medicine ball, though not at the same time. Nixon had no hobbies to speak of, unless one counts the knotting of one's ties. The most interesting pastimes were those of Calvin Coolidge, who reportedly took pleasure in the mechanical horse and pitching hay. The former probably delimited...
Jules Feiffer's America: From Reagan to Eisenhower, the cartoonist's belated 25th anniversary album, is valuable not only for Feiffer's witty, ironic insights but also for its telling social history. By mixing Bernard and Huey--and a host of other unnamed husbands, wives, lovers, and children--with Ike, Jack, Lyndon, Dick, Jerry, Jimmy, and Ronald, Feiffer's collection uniquely bridges the gap between the timeless New Yorker genre of cartoon and the dated, sharply topical political humor of a Herblock or an Oliphant. The combination effectively gives Feiffer's particular perspective on how one segment of the country...
RATHER THAN just providing a pleasant hodgepodge of drawings, like most such collections, Feiffer introduces each section with a snappy summary of his motivating psychology. "During the 'Ike Age,'" he writes, "the economy prospered, the middle class grew, the attention span died." People had simple political worries--The Bomb. Accordingly, the cartoons centered on muddled fears of nuclear war and confrontation with communists. Bernard and Huey's associates are obsessed with nonconformism and the nations' apathy...