American President and former Allied General, Dwight D Eisenhower, addressing the nation in September 1958, on American intervention in Formosa. - Keystone/Hulton Archive/TNS
As an orator, Dwight D. Eisenhower was not in the same league with Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt. His roster of memorable speeches numbers a grand total of two, a paltry total for someone who served eight years as U.S. president. Yet some five decades after his death, those two speeches retain at least as much salience as anything Lincoln or FDR ever said. The second and more famous of those speeches was his Farewell Address in which Ike warned against the danger posed by what he called the “military-industrial complex.” The first, arguably less well remembered, became known as his “Cr...
