he was not qualified. He was elected. There is a difference.
Well, he served, and he bequeathed us a world every bit as troubled, in so many ways more far gone in trouble, than the world Mr. Eisenhower took over when he began his long term of office. He harps perhaps more than on any other theme, on the necessity for a limited government and a balanced budget; but his budget was balanced only once during his eight years, and he was forever endorsing, in every field you ever heard of, an increase in the government’s role—while solemnly fighting epiphenomenal government activity, e.g., in the field of public power. He left office well after the great gold lesion had been struck open; when Khrushchev, cynically exploiting the author’s patience, was hard at work implementing his canny designs, in the cozy interstices between the Spirits of Geneva and Camp David. He did nothing, did not even try to do anything, about the monopoly labor unions, which continue, with effusive effrontery, to intimidate the nation and the worker. He did nothing when the Soviet Union, eschewing an assault against Quemoy and Matsu—which Eisenhower courageously hung on to, but doing so rather as an obsession than as a simple act of strategical consistency— settled instead for a salient into the Caribbean.
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