Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 385strongest, and a larger percentage of American workers were in unions, and
many enjoying lifestyles–owning homes and cars, taking vacations, going to
college–than ever before. Civil Rights–which we will discuss in the next chap-
ter–was gaining momentum and would become the country’s most critical
issue. As Americans went to the polls to choose a new president in 1960, they
had a choice between what many saw as the past versus the present–Richard
Nixon or John F. Kennedy [JFK]. Nixon had established himself as an anti-
Communist warrior right after World War II and had been Eisenhower’s Vice-
President for 8 years. Kennedy’s record was similar, but he was young, only
43, handsome, and charismatic, and came from one of America’s leading
political families. He promised “vigor” and change and, in a close and perhaps
stolen election, defeated Nixon and became the 35th president. Ironically,
however, at the dawn of a new decade, it was the outgoing president,
Eisenhower, who spoke of the perils of the cold war and called for a new path
to peace.
In his “Military-Industrial Complex” speech–sort of a bookend to his
“Cross of Iron” speech at the beginning of his presidency–Eisenhower pre-
sented his farewell address to the nation just a few days before Kennedy was
inaugurated in 1961. During the election, Kennedy had accused Eisenhower
and Nixon of being weak against the Soviet Union, of allowing a “missile
gap” to develop that threatened American security. He was right–there was a
huge missile gap, in America’s favor, and JFK knew that! In 1960, the U.S. had
20,434 nuclear weapons and its ally, Great Britain, had another 30. The Soviet
Union had 1,605, or less than 10 percent the U.S. total. So Eisenhower spoke
out.
Perhaps because of that recognition and the growing fear that arms race
was so costly that it could endanger the American economy, Eisenhower, as
he left office in January 1961, eloquently warned against a continuation such
practices.Sounding like Robert Taft warning against the “garrison state” in the
late 1940s, he publicly railed against the military-industrial complex, the eco-
nomic system in which so much of the government’s resources was being used
to research, develop, and build weapons (about 100,000 scientists and nearly
every major corporation had a stake in the pentagon system). He cautioned
that “in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industri-
al complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and