Great slogon, but that is all it was.

Ike was a great general.

Could have reversed the "New Deal", dismantled the welfare state, deregulated industry and cut taxes. Instead, he solidified all of the above. Pretty poor Republican.

Not a bad President, but he basically legitimized the big government mess that FDR mobilized. (The same way, as Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, Clinton has basically endorsed Reagan's economic policies (if not his rhetoric or character) by NOT going back to steep tax rates or protectionism...)

I really really want to like Ike, but I can't quite pull it off. I understand the argument that he did a great job leading SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) during World War 2, but I don't quite buy it. Sure he was excellent at promoting teamwork, but by no means was he a military genius like MacArthur or Patton. With a little more boldness and daring, I think we could have defeated the Germans much sooner. But OK, we don't want to consider his soldier days when we're rating him as a President. So let's look at how he handled the Cold War - by far the biggest issue facing his administration. Despite Churchill's constant begging (and begging is not too strong a word), Eisenhower consistently refused to meet with the heads of the Soviet government (Churchill coined the term "summit" to describe those meetings). Sure, things turned out OK, but I wonder if Ike's rigid approach to foreign policy caused the U.S. to miss opportunities to begin thawing our relationship with the USSR. And, if a few tiny things had gone differently during the Kennedy administration's Cuban Missile Crisis, the path Ike chose might have led us to nuclear destruction. Still, it's hard to speculate on such large, complex world events, so I'm not going to argue that Ike really missed the boat with the Soviets. But I will argue that he was not an especially intelligent man, that he failed to accomplish much of lasting value (the interstate highway system being an exception), and that he did not offer inspired leadership to the country at a critical time in our history.

Ike was his own man, he guided the country through some very difficult years...