title: Jon Glaser

text: Jonathan Daniel Glaser (born June 20, 1968) is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for his work as a writer and sketch performer for many years on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", creating and starring in the Adult Swim series "Delocated" and "Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter" as well as the truTV series "Jon Glaser Loves Gear".


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser had a recurring role as Councilman Jeremy Jamm on the NBC series "Parks and Recreation" and appeared as Laird on the HBO series "Girls". Glaser was also a writer on the Comedy Central sketch series "Inside Amy Schumer".


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser was born and raised in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. He attended Southfield-Lathrup High School, graduating in 1986.


title: Jon Glaser

text: He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he performed in the sketch comedy troupes Comedy Company and Just Kidding with Jon Hein, H. Anthony Lehv, Matthew Schlein, Kristin Sobditch, Sara K. Mathison, and Craig Neuman. He is of Jewish background.


title: Jon Glaser

text: Jon Glaser is a five-time Emmy nominee with the writing staff of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien". He has appeared in the films "Pootie Tang", "School for Scoundrels", and "Be Kind Rewind", and he has guest-starred on comedy programs such as "Curb Your Enthusiasm", "Louie", "Wonder Showzen", "Bob's Burgers" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force". He was also a lead voice actor in several animated comedy programs such as "Stroker and Hoop", "Freak Show", and "Lucy the Daughter of The Devil". In 2012, he began a recurring role as Leslie Knope's rival, Councilman Jeremy Jamm in the fifth and sixth seasons of the NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation".


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser is the creator and star of the live-action Adult Swim series "Delocated", about "Jon", a man in the witness protection program with his own reality show. The show aired its final episode on March 7, 2013. Glaser's "Delocated" character, "Jon" was also featured as a DJ on an Adult Swim-themed radio station in the video game "". In February 2012, Glaser appeared as the spokesman in a series of Subway commercials playing his Delocated character.


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser was a member of the mainstage cast of "The Second City" during the mid-1990s, performing alongside future "Saturday Night Live" head writer Adam McKay and cast member Rachel Dratch, as well as future "Mr. Show" and "30 Rock" cast member Scott Adsit. In Second City's award-winning revue "Pinata Full of Bees," which was directed by Tom Gianas, Glaser sang about the importance of not betraying a friendship by pretending not to have legs in order to play in a wheelchair basketball league. He also provided musical accompaniment for the show's climax by drumming in a demonic pig mask, and appeared onstage throughout the show to pass judgement on audience members for laughing at jokes he considered socially irresponsible.


title: Jon Glaser

text: Early in his television career, Glaser wrote and occasionally performed on the short-lived sketch comedy programs "The Jenny McCarthy Show" on MTV and "The Dana Carvey Show". He also made one appearance as a correspondent on "The Daily Show" in 2004. Glaser is also known for his comedic partnership with H. Jon Benjamin. For a number of years they hosted a live sketch show together in New York City called "Midnight Pajama Jam", and have also performed stand-up comedy together for many years, often playing characters who bicker and argue with each other while on stage. Glaser created and starred in the Comedy Central web-series "Tiny Hands", which has been shown on the channel's short film series "Atom TV" a number of times. More recently Glaser worked as a contributing writer and occasional performer on the sketch comedy programs "Human Giant", "Jon Benjamin Has a Van" and "Nick Swardson's Pretend Time", as well as providing voices in the animated film "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters". In 2009, Glaser worked as the head writer and segment producer on the HBO sports program "Joe Buck Live". Glaser also appeared on the ESPN classic show "Cheap Seats", providing such roles as "Beamy" and the "Score Settler".


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser is currently a voice actor for the animated version of the cartoon strip "Get Your War On" and appearing as "Video Cowboy" in ESPN's "Mayne Street" starring Kenny Mayne. Glaser was also the lead singer in the New York City-based comedy band "Detroit Octane"; they performed their song "Barack Obama-sistible" (sung to the tune of the Robert Palmer song "Simply Irresistible") on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on June 17, 2008. He was also the bass player in "A Matter of Trust", another comedy music project he was involved in with comedians H. Jon Benjamin, Todd Barry and Tom Shillue. The band's gimmick was that they only played the Billy Joel song "A Matter of Trust" over and over again, and refused to play any other songs. They performed as an opening act for The New Pornographers in 2006. He also appeared in seasons 2, 3 and 4 of HBO's "Girls" as Laird, a recovering addict and neighbor of Lena Dunham's character Hannah. He appears in the film "Trainwreck".


title: Jon Glaser

text: Glaser appeared on Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor Podcast on April 24, 2015. The episode was recorded live as part of the 2015 Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival in Boston.


title: Classic rock

text: Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, primarily focusing on commercially successful blues rock and hard rock popularized in the 1970s AOR format. The radio format became increasingly popular with the baby boomer demographic by the end of the 1990s.


title: Classic rock

text: Although classic rock has mostly appealed to adult listeners, music associated with this format received more exposure with younger listeners with the presence of the Internet and digital downloading. Some classic rock stations also play a limited number of current releases which are stylistically consistent with the station's sound, or by heritage acts which are still active and producing new music.


title: Classic rock

text: Conceptually, classic rock has been analyzed by academics as an effort by critics, media, and music establishments to canonize rock music and commodify 1960s Western culture for audiences living in a post-baby boomer economy. The music predominantly selected for the format has been identified as commercially successful songs by white male acts from the Anglosphere, expressing values of Romanticism, self-aggrandizement, and politically undemanding ideologies. It has been associated with the album era (1960s–2000s), particularly the period's early pop/rock music.


title: Classic rock

text: The classic rock format evolved from AOR radio stations that were attempting to appeal to an older audience by including familiar songs of the past with current hits. In 1980, AOR radio station M105 in Cleveland began billing itself as "Cleveland's Classic Rock", playing a mix of rock music from the mid-1960s to the present. Similarly, WMET called itself "Chicago's Classic Rock" in 1981. In 1982, radio consultant Lee Abrams developed the "Timeless Rock" format which combined contemporary AOR with rock hits from the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Classic rock

text: KRBE, an AM station in Houston, was an early classic rock radio station. In 1983 program director Paul Christy designed a format which played only early album rock, from the 1960s and early 1970s, without current music or any titles from the pop or dance side of Top 40. Another AM station airing classic rock, beginning in 1983, was KRQX in Dallas-Fort Worth. KRQX was co-owned with an album rock station, 97.9 KZEW. Management saw the benefit in the FM station appealing to younger rock fans and the AM station appealing a bit older. The ratings of both stations could be added together to appeal to advertisers. Classic rock soon became the widely used descriptor for the format and became the commonly used term among the general public for early album rock music.


title: Classic rock

text: In the mid-1980s, the format's widespread proliferation came on the heels of Jacobs Media's (Fred Jacobs) success at WCXR, in Washington, D.C., and Edinborough Rand's (Gary Guthrie) success at WZLX in Boston. Between Guthrie and Jacobs, they converted more than 40 major market radio stations to their individual brand of classic rock over the next several years.


title: Classic rock

text: "Billboard" magazine's Kim Freeman posits that "while classic rock's origins can be traced back earlier, 1986 is generally cited as the year of its birth". By 1986, the success of the format resulted in oldies accounting for 60–80% of the music played on album rock stations. Although it began as a niche format spun off from AOR, by 2001 classic rock had surpassed album rock in market share nationally.


title: Classic rock

text: During the mid-1980s, the classic rock format was mainly tailored to the adult male demographic ages 25–34, which remained its largest demographic through the mid-1990s. As the format's audience aged, its demographics skewed toward older age groups. By 2006, the 35–44 age group was the format's largest audience and by 2014 the 45–54 year-old demographic was the largest.


title: Classic rock

text: Typically, classic rock stations play rock songs from the mid-1960s through the 1980s and began adding 1990s music in the early 2010s. Most recently there has been a "newer classic rock" under the slogan of the next generation of classic rock. Stations such as WLLZ in Detroit, WBOS in Boston, and WKQQ in Lexington play music focusing more on harder edge classic rock from the 1980s to the 2000s. There has been a recent revival in the older fashions of classic rock in the early 2000s. Back in the prime of classic rock radio during the 1970s and 1980s, when it was mainstream, and radio was the main form of accessing the music, classic rock soared in to every individual's ear. Classic rock will not overtake the current style of hip-hop/pop, but teenagers specifically are set to introduce the contents of classic rock into their rotation of music. The peak of classic rock in the 1980s had its downfall in the 1990s and has risen back to streaming platforms and internet sources.


title: Classic rock

text: Some of the artists that are featured heavily on classic rock radio are The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Quiet Riot, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Boston, The Cars, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, Elton John, Eric Clapton, The Who, Van Halen, Rush, Black Sabbath, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Eagles, the Doors, Styx, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. The songs of the Rolling Stones, particularly from the 1970s, have become staples of classic rock radio. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Under My Thumb" (1966), "Paint It, Black" (1966), and "Miss You" (1978) are among their most popular selections, with "Complex" calling the latter "an eternal mainstay on classic-rock radio".


title: Classic rock

text: A 2006 "Rolling Stone" article noted that teens were surprisingly interested in classic rock and speculated that the interest in the older bands might be related to the absence of any new, dominant sounds in rock music since the advent of grunge.


title: Classic rock

text: Classic-rock radio programmers largely play "tried and proven" hit songs from the past based on their "high listener recognition and identification", says media academic Roy Shuker, who also identifies white male rock acts from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper"-era through the end of the 1970s as the focus of their playlists. As Catherine Strong observes, classic rock songs are generally performed by white male acts from either the United States or the United Kingdom, "have a four-four time, very rarely exceed the time limit of four minutes, were composed by the musicians themselves, are sung in English, played by a 'classical' rock formation (drums, bass, guitar, keyboard instruments) and were released on a major label after 1964." Classic rock has also been associated with the album era (1960s–2000s), by writers Bob Lefsetz and Matthew Restall, who says the term is a relabeling of the "virtuoso pop/rock" from the era's early decades.


title: Classic rock

text: The format's origins are traced by music scholar Jon Stratton to the emergence of a classic-rock canon. This canon arose in part from music journalism and superlative lists ranking certain albums and songs that are consequently reinforced to the collective and public memory. Robert Christgau says the classic-rock concept transmogrified rock music into a "myth of rock as art-that-stands-the-test-of-time". He also believes it was inevitable that certain rock artists would be canonized by critics, major media, and music establishment entities such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2018 Steven Hyden recalls how the appearance of classic rock as a timeless music lent it a distinction from the "inherently nihilistic" pop he had first listened to on the radio as a teenager in the early 1990s. "[I]t seemed to have been around forever," he writes of the classic rock format. "It was there long before I was born, and I was sure it was still going to be around after I was gone."


title: Classic rock

text: Politically, the mindset underlying classic rock is regarded by Christgau as regressive. He says the music in this format abandoned ironic sensibilities in favor of unintellectual, conventional aesthetics rooted in Victorian era Romanticism, while downplaying the more radical aspects of 1960s counterculture, such as politics, race, African-American music, and pop in the art sense. "Though classic rock draws its inspiration and most of its heroes from the '60s, it is, of course, a construction of the '70s," he writes in 1991 for "Details" magazine. "It was invented by prepunk/predisco radio programmers who knew that before they could totally commodify '60s culture they'd have to rework it—that is, selectively distort it till it threatened no one ... In the official rock pantheon the Doors and Led Zeppelin are Great Artists while Chuck Berry and Little Richard are Primitive Forefathers and James Brown and Sly Stone are Something Else."


title: Classic rock

text: Regarding the relationship of economics to the rise of classic rock, Christgau believes there was compromised socioeconomic security and diminishing collective consciousness of a new generation of listeners in the 1970s, who succeeded rock's early years during baby-boomer economic prosperity in the United States: "Not for nothing did classic rock crown the Doors' mystagogic middlebrow escapism and Led Zep's chest-thumping megalomaniac grandeur. Rhetorical self-aggrandizement that made no demands on everyday life was exactly what the times called for." Shuker attributes the rise of classic-rock radio in part to "the consumer power of the aging post-war 'baby boomers' and the appeal of this group to radio advertisers". In his opinion, classic rock also produced a rock music ideology and discussion of the music that was "heavily gendered", celebrating "a male homosocial paradigm of musicianship" that "continued to dominate subsequent discourse, not just around rock music, but of popular music more generally."


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts is a performing arts conservatoire based in Woking, England. It was founded in 1911 by Italia Conti, an actress. The first production at Italia Conti Academy was the play "Where the Rainbow Ends". For that play, Italia Conti was asked to take over the job of training the cast.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The academy then moved to a church building in Lamb's Conduit Street. However, during World War II, the academy was bombed, destroying all early records. In 1972, the academy relocated to a building in Landor Road, Clapham. It was the home to all full-time Italia Conti pupils for nine years.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: In 1981, the academy started running Junior and Musical Theatre courses in Islington. The BA (Hons) Acting and CertHe Intro to Acting courses continued to be delivered from the Avondale site in Clapham, until all courses moved to Woking in August 2022. Italia Conti is a member of the Federation of Drama Schools and accredited by the Council for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The BA (Hons) Acting Course, validated by the University of East London and accredited by the Federation of Drama Schools, is a three-year full-time professional actor's training for students over the age of 18. It is based in the newly build Italia Conti building in Woking, Surrey. The course is run by Bradley Leech (Head of School of Acting), with staff and directors including Kate Williams, Paulette Randall, Karen Henthorn, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, Lawrence Evans, John Gillett and Anna Jordan. Graduates of this programme include Karla Crome, Mark Ebulué, Jess Ellis, Karen Gillan, Aisling Jarrett-Gavin, Matt Lapinskas, Carla Langley, Bethany Muir, James Nelson-Joyce, Racheal Ofori, Gemma Salter, Lucie Shorthouse, Fiona Skinner, Gary Trainor, Nina Toussaint-White and Dwane Walcott.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The CertHE Intro to Acting Programme, validated by the University of East London, is a one-year full-time preparation and foundation training for students aged 18+ who wish to explore an actor-training, or vocational courses within a performance-related field. The course operates alongside the BA (Hons) Acting Course in Italia Conti's Woking building, and was previously known as the Foundation Acting Course.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The BA (Hons) Musical Theatre Course, validated by the University of East London, is a three-year full-time professional musical theatre training for students above the age of 18. The first intake of students for this programme was in 2018.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: Following the success of the CertHE Introduction to Acting course, the School for Musical Theatre & Dance validated a similar foundation course for Musical Theatre. The first student enrollment process for this course took place in 2021. It is a one-year full-time preparation and foundation training for students above the age of 18.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Professional Musical Theatre Course is a three-year full-time course for students from the age of 16; validated by Trinity College London. It is designed for students who require an all-round training in performing arts. The emphasis is on training in the three main art forms; acting, singing and dancing.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Professional Dance Course is a three-year full-time course for students from the age of 16; validated by Trinity College London. It is designed to provide students with a comprehensive training in all aspects of dance.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: Recognising the gap for students who had previous matriculated with a Diploma within the performing arts, but were without a HE degree, Italia Conti developed a course designed to be completed entirely through distance learning that would allow students to 'top up' from a Level 5 or Level 6 non degree qualification to a BA (Hons). The first intake of students for this course was January 2022.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Performing Arts with Dance Teacher Training is a three-year full-time course for students from the age of 16 and takes place at the Italia Conti Arts Centre. The course trains students to become performers and dance teachers by providing performing arts training and dance teaching qualifications. With the introduction of the ISTD (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) qualifications in 2006, the academy provided students with the opportunity to take these examinations. The course follows the same path as the Performing Arts Course but also incorporates the teacher training by offering the FDI (Foundation in Dance Instruction) qualifications in classical ballet, tap and modern dance. This allows students to become qualified dance teachers to teach up to grade 5 in the ISTD syllabus. Aspects of the course include Dance, Acting, Singing, Contextual Studies and Additional Content such as ISTD examinations, PGCE work, latin dance, music, performance, pilates, presentation and professional skills, stage combat, video production and theatre in education production.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Theatre Arts School, also known as the "‘Juniors’", was a co-educational independent school for pupils aged from 10 to 16 years old. The Theatre Arts School was located firstly in the Avondale building in Clapham, London and then in then at Goswell House, Barbican, London. The school was accredited by the Independent Schools Council and monitored by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Pupils would follow an academic curriculum to ensure they graduated with qualifications whilst also studying a range of performance skills. In May 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was announced that the Theatre Arts school would close in the summer of 2021 after 109 years.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: In August 2022 Italia Conti moved to a new bespoke-built facility in Woking, Surrey. This facility brings together the School of Acting, which was previously delivered from the Avondale Building in Clapham North, London, and the School of Musical Theatre & Dance which was split between Barbican, London, and Guildford, Surrey sites.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: 'Italia Conti House', commonly referred to as 'The Academy', was based in a former office block in Goswell Road, Islington, London. It was home to the Musical Theatre BA (Hons), Diploma courses and Dance Diploma Course. The Goswell Road campus also housed the Theatre Arts school until it closed in 2020. The building was set over nine floors and had 18 dance, acting and singing studios, equipped with sprung floors, full length mirrors, ballet barres and sound systems. Italia Conti House had lecture rooms, academic school rooms, specialist classrooms, an art room, a video studio and editing suite, an IT suite, a resource library, first aid and treatment room, dressing room, student common room and a canteen.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The BA (Hons) Acting and CertHE Intro to Acting courses were based in the 'Avondale' building, in Clapham, London. The impressive Edwardian building was originally the home of all courses before the Theatre Arts School and Musical Theatre courses moved to Goswell Road. The building featured the Avondale Theatre and Sheridan Studio Theatre, six acting and movement studios, a fully equipped recording studio, a sound studio, a TV edit studio, green room, IT facilities, a library, property store rooms, dressing rooms and student social spaces.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Italia Conti Arts Centre was based in Guildford and housed the degree and diploma Musical Theatre courses as well as the Performing Arts with Dance Teacher Training Course. The Arts Centre had seven air-conditioned studios with sprung floor and mirrors. Other facilities at the Arts Centre include a dance wear shop, a recording and video studio with editing suite, a class room, lounge and cafeteria area, student common rooms and changing rooms. The building continues to be the base for Italia Conti Associates Guildford.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Italia Conti Associate Schools offer a wide range of classes, providing students with the opportunity to receive a full and thorough training and learn a wide range of performance skills.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: Listed below are the locations of associate school branches which take place around the country and provide courses in part-time performing arts training:


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: A CBBC series following pupils at The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts as they juggle the glamour and excitement of careers in TV, film and theatre with the highs and lows of school life. GCSE exams, tests, the school prom and End of Year School Performance. Each series followed a set of students during the school term. The series mainly featured the Theatre Arts School (Juniors) as well as occasionally featuring students from the various 16+ courses. "School For Stars" first aired in 2011 and a third series began on 2 September 2013. The show is narrated by Reggie Yates.


title: Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

text: The Italia Conti Academy was the inspiration for the drama school in "At Freddie's", a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, who taught at the academy in the 1960s.


title: 1928 German federal election

text: Federal elections were held in Germany on 20 May 1928. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) remained the largest party in the Reichstag after winning 153 of the 491 seats. Voter turnout was 75.6%.


title: 1928 German federal election

text: The only two parties to gain significantly were the SPD, which received almost a third of the vote, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which completed a thorough victory of the left wing. However, the SPD still failed to win a clear majority, resulting in another coalition government, led by Hermann Müller. Following his appointment as Chancellor, Müller, who had previously held the post for four months in 1920, created a grand coalition of members of the SPD, the German Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the German People's Party. However, the coalition was plagued by internal divisions right from the beginning, with each party more concerned with their own interests than the interests of the government. As a result, Müller asked German President Paul von Hindenburg for emergency powers, but when Hindenburg refused, he resigned, marking the end of the "last genuinely democratic government of the Weimar Republic" on 27 March 1930.


title: 1928 German federal election

text: The recently reformed Nazi Party contested the elections after the ban on the party had been lifted in 1925. However, the party received less than 3% of the vote and won only 12 seats in the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler, who had been incarcerated in Landsberg prison for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch until Christmas 1924, had concentrated on re-establishing himself as the leader of the Nazi Party after his release rather than on his party's electability.


title: Palio di Siena

text: plural form: Palii, is a horse race that is held twice each year, on 2 July and 16 August, in Siena, Italy. Ten horses and riders, bareback and dressed in the appropriate colours, represent ten of the seventeen "contrade", or city wards. The Palio held on 2 July is named Palio di Provenzano, in honour of the Madonna of Provenzano, a Marian devotion particular to Siena which developed around an icon from the area of the city. The Palio held on 16 August is named Palio dell'Assunta, in honour of the Assumption of Mary.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Sometimes, in case of exceptional events or local or national anniversaries deemed relevant and pertinent ones, the city community may decide for an extraordinary Palio, run between May and September. The last two were on 9 September 2000, to celebrate the city entering the new millennium and on 20 October 1918, in commemoration of the end of the Great War.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The Corteo Storico, a pageant to the sound of the March of the Palio, precedes the race, which attracts visitors and spectators from around the world.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The race itself, in which the jockeys ride bareback, circles the Piazza del Campo, on which a thick layer of earth has been laid. The race is run for three laps of the piazza and usually lasts no more than 90 seconds. It is common for a few of the jockeys to be thrown off their horses while making the treacherous turns in the piazza, and indeed, it is not unusual to see riderless horses finishing the race.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The earliest known antecedents of the race are medieval. The town's central "piazza" was the site of public games, largely combative: "pugna", a sort of many-sided boxing match or brawl; jousting; and in the 16th century, bullfights. Public races organized by the "contrade" were popular from the 14th century onwards; called "", they were run across the whole city.


title: Palio di Siena

text: When the Grand Duke of Tuscany outlawed bullfighting in 1590, the "contrade" took to organizing races in the Piazza del Campo. The first such races were on buffalo-back and called "bufalate"; "asinate", races on donkey-back, later took their place, while horse racing continued elsewhere. The first modern Palio (called "palio alla tonda" to distinguish it from the earlier "palio alla lunga") took place in 1633.


title: Palio di Siena

text: At first, one race was held each year, on 2 July. A second, on 16 August, was added from 1701, though initially, the August race was run intermittently rather than every year. The August race "(il palio dell'Assunta)", which coincided with the Feast of the Assumption, was probably introduced "spontaneously" as part of the feasting and celebration associated with this important festival. The date 16 August was presumably chosen because the other days of the mid-August canonical festival, the 14th and 15th of the month, were already taken up respectively by the Corteo dei Ceri (Procession of the Ceri) and by the census.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The August Palio started out as an extension of the celebrations of the July Palio and was organized and funded by July's winning contrada, though only if the contrada in question could afford it. After 1802, however, organisation and funding the August race became a central responsibility of the city, which removed annual uncertainty over whether or not an August Palio would run. It has been held at least since 15 August 1581 when 15-year-old jockey Virginia Tacci was the first female to ride a steed in the race.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In 1729, the city's Munich-born governor, Violante of Bavaria, defined formal boundaries for the contrade, at the same time imposing several mergers so that the number of Sienese contrade was reduced to seventeen. This was also the year of the decree restricting to ten the number of contrade that could participate in a Palio; the restriction, which remains in force, resulted from the number and extent of accidents experienced in the preceding races.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In each race, only ten of the seventeen "contrade" participate: the seven which did not participate in the previous year's Palio and three others chosen by drawing lots.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The first race (Palio di Provenzano) is held on 2 July, which is both the Feast of the Visitation and the date of a local festival in honour of the Madonna of Provenzano (a painting once owned by the Sienese leader Provenzano Salvani, which was supposed to have miraculous curative power). The second race is held on 16 August (Palio dell'Assunta), the day after the Feast of the Assumption, and is likewise dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After exceptional events (e.g., the Apollo 11 moon landing) and on important anniversaries (e.g., the centennial of the Unification of Italy), the Sienese community may decide to hold a third Palio between May and September. The most recent was in 2018 to celebrate the anniversary of the end of WWI.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The field consists of ten horses, so not all seventeen contrade can take part in the Palio on any occasion. The seven contrade that did not take part in that month of the previous year are automatically included; three more are chosen by draw (twice a year, in the last days of May and at the beginning of July). Private owners (among them, some jockeys) offer the pick of their stables, selected during the year after trial races, other Palio races in Italy and veterinary examination, from which main representatives of the participating "contrade", the "Capitani", choose ten of approximately equal quality, three days before the race. A lottery then determines which horse will run for each "contrada". Six trial races are run, the first on the evening of the horse selection and the last on the morning before the Palio. Corruption (bribery) is commonplace, prompting the residents of each "contrada", known as "contradaioli", to keep a close watch on their stable and their rider. The horses are of mixed breed; no purebred horses are allowed.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The race is preceded by a spectacular pageant to the sound of the March of the Palio, the Corteo Storico, which includes (among many others) "Alfieri", flag wavers, in medieval costumes. Just before the pageant, a squad of "carabinieri" on horseback, wielding swords, demonstrate a mounted charge around the track. They take one lap at a walk, in formation, and a second at a gallop that foreshadows the excitement of the race to come, before exiting down one of the streets that leads out of Piazza del Campo. Spectators arrive early in the morning, eventually filling the centre of the town square, inside the track, to capacity; the local police seal the entrances once the festivities begin in earnest. Seats ranging from simple bleachers to elaborate box seats may be had for a price, but sell out long before the day of the race.


title: Palio di Siena

text: At 7:30 p.m. for the July race, and 7 p.m. for the August race, the detonation of an explosive charge echoes across the piazza, signaling to the thousands of onlookers that the race is about to begin. The race itself runs for three laps of the "Piazza del Campo", the perimeter of which is covered with several inches of dirt (imported and laid for the occasion at great expense to the city) and the corners of which are protected with padded crash barriers for the occasion. The jockeys ride the horses bareback from the starting line, an area between two ropes. Nine horses, in an order only decided by lot immediately before the race starts, enter the space. The tenth, the "rincorsa", waits outside. When the "rincorsa" finally enters the space between the ropes the starter ("mossiere") activates a mechanism that instantly drops the "canapo" (the front rope). This process (the "mossa") can take a very long time, as deals have usually been made between various "contrade" and jockeys that affect when the "rincorsa" moves - he may be waiting for a particular other horse to be well- or badly-placed, for example.


title: Palio di Siena

text: On the dangerous, steeply canted track, the riders are allowed to use their whips (in Italian, "nerbi", stretched, dried bulls' hide) not only for their own horse, but also for disturbing other horses and riders. The Palio in fact is won by the horse who represents his "contrada", and not by the jockeys. The winner is the first horse to cross the finish line—a horse can win without its rider (a condition known as "cavallo scosso"). A horse can also win without its decorative headgear ("spennacchiera"), although the opposite belief is widely held even among the Sienese. The loser in the race is considered to be the "contrada" whose horse came second, not last.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The winner is awarded a banner of painted silk, or "palio", which is hand-painted by a different artist for each race. The enthusiasm after the victory, however, is so extreme that the ceremony of attribution of the "palio" is quite instantaneous, being the first moment of a months-long celebration for the winning ward. There are occasional outbreaks of violence between partisans of rival "contrade".


title: Palio di Siena

text: There may be some danger to spectators from the sheer number of people in attendance. There have also been complaints about mistreatment of horses, injuries and even deaths, especially from animal-rights associations and even from some veterinarians. In the Palio held on 16 August 2004, the horse for the "contrada" of Bruco (the Caterpillar) fell and was badly trampled, as the race was not stopped despite possible additional safety risks for other horses. The horse died of its injuries, raising further complaints from animal-rights organizations.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The Palio differs from "normal" horse races in that part of the game is for the wards to prevent rival "contrade" from winning. When a "contrada" fails to win, its historical enemy will celebrate that fact nearly as merrily as a victory of its own, regardless of whether adversarial interference was a deciding factor. Few things are forbidden to the jockeys during the race; for instance, they can pull or shove their fellows, hit the horses and each other, or try to hamper other horses at the start.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The most successful ward is Oca, the Goose, which has won 63 races (at least according to their records, which start from 1644), followed by Chiocciola, the Snail, with 51, and Tartuca, the Tortoise, with 46. Oca is also the "contrada" with the most wins in recent history (from 1900 to 2010) with 21 victories, followed by Selva, the Forest, with 18, and Drago, the Dragon, with 17.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Among jockeys, the most victorious of all time is Andrea Degortes, nicknamed "Aceto" ('Vinegar'), with 14 wins (from 1964 to 1996). Angelo Meloni, nicknamed "Picino" (active from 1897 to 1933) has the second in the number of wins with 13 successes, and Luigi Bruschelli, nicknamed "Trecciolino" (still active), has the third most of 12 wins (although he claims 13 victories, his horse won without him one year).


title: Palio di Siena

text: The most successful horses were Folco and Panezio with eight wins each, followed by Topolone with seven.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In recent history (from 1900 to the present), only three wards have succeeded in winning both the July and the August races in a single year (the term in Italian is "fare cappotto") with the same jockey. Tartuca (the Tortoise) accomplished the feat in 1933 with jockey Fernando Leoni (nicknamed "Ganascia") on Folco. In 1997, Giraffa (the Giraffe) won both races, with jockey Giuseppe Pes, nicknamed "Il Pesse". In 2016, jockey Jonatan Bartoletti, on the mount "Preziosa Penelope", won both the July and August races for Lupa (the She-wolf).


title: Palio di Siena

text: The "Palio di Siena" is more than a simple horse race. It is the culmination of ongoing rivalry and competition between the "contrade". The lead-up and the day of the race are invested with passion and pride. Formal and informal rituals take place as the day proceeds, with each "contrada" navigating a strategy of horsemanship, alliances and animosities. There are the final clandestine meetings among the heads of the "contrade" and then between them and the jockeys. There is the two-hour pageant of the "Corteo Storico", and then all this is crowned by the race, which takes only about 75 seconds to complete. Although there is great public spectacle, the passions displayed are still very real.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The "contrada" that has been the longest without a victory is nicknamed "nonna" ('grandmother'). Civetta (the Owlet) had the title from 1979 until 2009, when it won 16 August race. Torre (the Tower) had this title for being without victory for 44 years (from 1961 to 2005), and Bruco (the Caterpillar) held the title for not winning over 41 years (from 1955 to 1996). Last "nonna" was Lupa (the She-Wolf), which has not had a victory since 2 July 1989, a period of years, until July 2016, when it finally won, leaving now the "nonna" title to Aquila (the Eagle).


title: Palio di Siena

text: The "drappellone" ("banner"), or "palio", known affectionately as "cencio" ("the rag") in Siena, is the trophy that is to be delivered to the "contrada" that wins the Palio.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The "palio" is an elongated rectangular piece of silk, hand-painted by an artist for the occasion. It is held vertically on a black-and-white shaft halberd and topped by a silver plate, with two white and black plumes draped down the sides.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The "palio", along with the plumes, remains the property of the "contrada". The plate is returned to the city of Siena before the two Palii of the following year, after the date and the name of the victorious "contrada" are inscribed on its back. There is one silver platter for the Palio in July and another for the August Palio. The plates are replaced approximately every ten years.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The value of the banner is unique, because it represents a particular historical period of the city of Siena. The "palii" often reflect the symbols of the various governments that have presided at various times, including the crest of the grand duchy of Lorraine, the crest of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the crest of the Kingdom of Savoy of Italy, symbols from Fascist Italy, and most recently, imagery of the Republic.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The process that an artist should follow in designing the "palio" is rigid: it must follow a precise iconography that includes some sacred symbols, as the July Palio is dedicated to the Madonna of Provenzano, and that of August to the Madonna of the Assumption. It must present the insignia of the city, those of the third part of the city, and the symbols or colors of the ten "contrade" participating in the race. There are, however, no limits regarding the style of the art. The "palio" is first presented at a press conference in the courtyard of the Podestà of the City Hall about a week before the race.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Although many activities take place within each "contrada", the organization of the Palio is still the largest, since it is not just in two races each year. Each time, the festival itself runs for four days of events, the preparation for which lasts all year.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Beginning in early winter, the contrada leaders talk and develop strategies, making contacts with the jockeys and horse owners. These leaders prepare those who will race in the Piazza del Campo or take part in minor Palios elsewhere in nearby towns ("la cosiddetta provincia") and bring them to training courses organized by the city in the spring.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The full activities of the Palio start to grow in momentum towards the end of May, with the drawing of lots of the three remaining "contrade" that will join the seven that have won the right to race. With districts and teams outlined, "contrade" begin to talk about "deals" (engagement of jockeys) and "parties" (secret pacts for the win), despite not knowing which horse they will draw in the lot.


title: Palio di Siena

text: About a week before the race, the "palio" ("drappellone") itself is presented to the city, which has commissioned a local artist (in the case of the Palio of July) or internationally recognized artist (in the case of the Palio of August or a special Palio) to create the prize. Also at this time, visits occur to the horses which will be presented for the lottery.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In the first of the four days of the festival, the lottery is held to select which "barbero" (the term for "racehorse" in the city of Siena and Tuscany) will go to which contrada. The stone race track around the square is covered with a layer of dirt composed of a mixture of tuff, clay and sand. Six trials are run, during which the riders have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with their horse and with the track itself, its sounds and rhythms of the race. The trials, "Prova", are held the evening of the horse lottery and twice daily for the next two days. Attended by many tourists and "contrada" members in square, barriers are mounted on the outside of the track so no people may move in and out during the race. The children of the "contrade" are assembled in bleachers to sing closest to the city hall during the trials, but adults will sit there on the race day. Children are no longer allowed to stand in the middle of the piazza during the race, and can only view from a bleacher or window.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Among the events that mark the approach of the Palio are the rehearsal dinner, the "mass" of the jockeys and the blessing of the horse and jockey.


title: Palio di Siena

text: An extraordinary Palio is a third Palio which may take place during the period between May and September and is associated with events or anniversaries of major importance for the community of Siena. The most recent extraordinary Palio was held in 2018. An extraordinary Palio on 9 September 2000 coincided with the advent of the new millennium and was won by Selva (Forest), by jockey Giuseppe Pes riding on the horse Urban II. Prior to this, the last extraordinary Palio was held on 13 September 1986 to celebrate the centenary of the abolition of the Balia and Biccherna governments.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In earlier times, the third Palio was a way to honor distinguished guests passing through or visiting Siena. Examples are the extraordinary Palio of 7 June 1676, during the visit to Siena of the wife of Prince Don Agostino Chigi, and that of 15 June 1673 (not considered official), honouring the visit to Siena of Cardinal Flavio Chigi. Even the Grand Duke of Tuscany requested another round of Palio, perhaps closer to the ordinary.


title: Palio di Siena

text: From the second half of the 19th century, extraordinary Palios began to be organized for celebration of special events, rather than illustrious visits. This was the case of a meeting of the Society of Sciences or the inauguration of important monuments (such as the inauguration of the monument to the fallen in the Battle of Curtatone and Montanara, on 29 May 1893). In 1896, they even ran four Palios, both ordinary and two extraordinary. The first extraordinary race was on 16 August, which is considered extraordinary because it was requested by the citizens as the original race was moved to 25 August due to transfer from Siena's VIII Corps, and the second was on 23 September for the inauguration of the monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi.


title: Palio di Siena

text: A third Palio, the "Palio of Peace", was held in 1945 by popular acclaim to celebrate the end of World War II and was won by Gioacchino Calabro riding Rubacuori su Folco, for the "contrada" of Drago (Dragon). An extraordinary Palio was held in 1969 to commemorate the landing on the moon by the Apollo 11 mission.


title: Palio di Siena

text: After 1945 the habit of running extraordinary palios to mark important centenaries emerged. A palio was held on 28 May 1950 to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the canonization of Saint Bernardine of Siena. On 5 June 1961 an extraordinary palio marked the centenary of unification. The most recent centenary palio, held on 20 October 2018, commemorated the ending of the First World War in 1918.


title: Palio di Siena

text: For several years, the Palio has been the focus of numerous protests by animal-rights organizations, including the Anti-Vivisection League. Concerns include primarily race incidents causing falls, which in some cases have led to horses' deaths.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In 2011, these concerns resulted in Italy's tourism minister blocking the Palio from being nominated for listing in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.


title: Palio di Siena

text: The results of calculations on the percentage of accidents caused by the Palio vary depending on who makes them. According to the Anti-Vivisection League, a total of 48 horses have died from 1970 to 2007, an average of one dead horse per year. However, the calculations carried out by supporters of the Palio for the same period, which include all the tests held before the real race, give a rate of 2.05% of fatal accidents per ride.


title: Palio di Siena

text: Many rules governing the protection of animals have been developed and implemented only since the 1990s; supporters of the Palio stress that injuries have been drastically reduced since then.


title: Palio di Siena

text: In recent decades, the city of Siena has adopted a series of measures to ensure the protection of horses (and riders) before, during and after the race, but these measures are still judged insufficient by some animal welfare groups, who continue to seek abolition of the race. Among the measures taken include:


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election. John F. Kennedy succeeded him after winning the 1960 presidential election.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower held office during the Cold War, a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Eisenhower's New Look policy stressed the importance of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to military threats, and the United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems during Eisenhower's presidency. Soon after taking office, Eisenhower negotiated an end to the Korean War, resulting in the partition of Korea. Following the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower promulgated the Eisenhower Doctrine, strengthening U.S. commitments in the Middle East. In response to the Cuban Revolution, the Eisenhower administration broke ties with Cuba and began preparations for an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, eventually resulting in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Eisenhower also allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in covert actions, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In domestic affairs, Eisenhower supported a policy of "modern Republicanism" that occupied a middle ground between liberal Democrats and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Eisenhower continued New Deal programs, expanded Social Security, and prioritized a balanced budget over tax cuts. He played a major role in establishing the Interstate Highway System, a massive infrastructure project consisting of tens of thousands of miles of divided highways. After the launch of Sputnik 1, Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act and presided over the creation of NASA. Though he did not embrace the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling in the 1954 case of "Brown v. Board of Education", Eisenhower enforced the Court's holding and signed the first significant civil rights bill since the end of Reconstruction.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower won the 1956 presidential election in a landslide and maintained positive approval ratings throughout his tenure, but the launch of Sputnik 1 and a poor economy contributed to Republican losses in the 1958 elections. In the 1960 presidential election, Vice President Richard Nixon lost by a narrow margin to Kennedy. Eisenhower left office popular with the public but viewed by many commentators as a "do-nothing" president. His reputation improved after the release of his private papers in the 1970s. Polls of historians and political scientists rank Eisenhower in the top quartile of presidents.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: William P. Rogers was the last surviving member of Eisenhower's cabinet, having died on January 2, 2001.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Going into the 1952 Republican presidential primaries, the two major contenders for the Republican presidential nomination were General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Governor Earl Warren of California and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota also sought the nomination. Taft led the conservative wing of the party, which rejected many of the New Deal social welfare programs created in the 1930s and supported a noninterventionist foreign policy. Taft had been a candidate for the Republican nomination twice before but had been defeated both times by moderate Republicans from New York: Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Dewey, the party's presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948, led the moderate wing of the party, centered in the Eastern states. These moderates supported most of the New Deal and tended to be interventionists in the Cold War. Dewey himself declined to run for president a third time, but he and other moderates sought to use his influence to ensure that 1952 Republican ticket hewed closer to their wing of the party. To this end, they assembled a Draft Eisenhower movement in September 1951. Two weeks later, at the National Governors' Conference meeting, seven Republican governors endorsed his candidacy. Eisenhower, then serving as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, had long been mentioned as a possible presidential contender, but he was reluctant to become involved in partisan politics. Nonetheless, he was troubled by Taft's non-interventionist views, especially his opposition to NATO, which Eisenhower considered to be an important deterrence against Soviet aggression. He was also motivated by the corruption that he believed had crept into the federal government during the later years of the Truman administration.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower suggested in late 1951 that he would not oppose any effort to nominate him for president, although he still refused to seek the nomination actively. In January 1952, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. announced that Eisenhower's name would be entered in the March New Hampshire primary, even though he had not yet officially entered the race. The result in New Hampshire was a solid Eisenhower victory with 46,661 votes to 35,838 for Taft and 6,574 for Stassen. In April, Eisenhower resigned from his NATO command and returned to the United States. The Taft forces put up a strong fight in the remaining primaries, and, by the time of the July 1952 Republican National Convention, it was still unclear whether Taft or Eisenhower would win the presidential nomination.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, Eisenhower's managers accused Taft of "stealing" delegate votes in Southern states, claiming that Taft's allies had unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters and put Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the pro-Taft delegates in these states and replace them with pro-Eisenhower delegates; they called this proposal "Fair Play." Although Taft and his supporters angrily denied this charge, the convention voted to support Fair Play 658 to 548, and Taft lost many Southern delegates. Eisenhower also received two more boosts: first when several uncommitted state delegations, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, decided to support him; and second, when Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower. The removal of many pro-Taft Southern delegates and the support of the uncommitted states decided the nomination in Eisenhower's favor, which he won on the first ballot. Afterward, Senator Richard Nixon of California was nominated by acclamation as his vice-presidential running mate. Nixon, whose name came to the forefront early and often in preconvention conversations among Eisenhower's campaign managers, was selected because of his youth (39 years old) and solid anti-communist record.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Incumbent President Harry S. Truman fared poorly in the polls and decided to not run in 1952. There was no clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Delegates to the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, nominated Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson for president on the third ballot. Senator John Sparkman of Alabama was selected as his running mate. The convention ended with widespread confidence that the party had selected a powerful presidential contender who would field a competitive campaign. Stevenson concentrated on giving a series of thoughtful speeches around the nation. Although his style thrilled intellectuals and academics, some political experts wondered if he were speaking "over the heads" of most of his listeners, and they dubbed him an "egghead," based on his baldness and intellectual demeanor. His biggest liability however, was Truman's unpopularity. Even though Stevenson had not been a part of the Truman administration, voters largely ignored his record and burdened him with Truman's. Historian Herbert Parmet says that Stevenson:


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Republican strategy during the fall campaign focused on Eisenhower's unrivaled popularity. Ike traveled to 45 of the 48 states; his heroic image and plain talk excited the large crowds who heard him speak from the campaign train's rear platform. In his speeches, Eisenhower never mentioned Stevenson by name, instead relentlessly attacking the alleged failures of the Truman administration: "Korea, Communism, and corruption." In addition to the speeches, he got his message out to voters through 30-second television advertisements; this was the first presidential election in which television played a major role. In domestic policy, Eisenhower attacked the growing influence of the federal government in the economy, while in foreign affairs, he supported a strong American role in stemming the expansion of Communism. Eisenhower adopted much of the rhetoric and positions of the contemporary GOP, and many of his public statements were designed to win over conservative supporters of Taft.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: A potentially devastating allegation hit when Nixon was accused by several newspapers of receiving $18,000 in undeclared "gifts" from wealthy California donors. Eisenhower and his aides considered dropping Nixon from the ticket and picking another running mate. Nixon responded to the allegations in a nationally televised speech, the "Checkers speech," on September 23. In this speech, Nixon denied the charges against him, gave a detailed account of his modest financial assets, and offered a glowing assessment of Eisenhower's candidacy. The highlight of the speech came when Nixon stated that a supporter had given his daughters a gift—a dog named "Checkers"—and that he would not return it, because his daughters loved it. The public responded to the speech with an outpouring of support, and Eisenhower retained him on the ticket.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Ultimately, the burden of the ongoing Korean War, Communist threat, and Truman administration scandals, as well as the popularity of Eisenhower, were too much for Stevenson to overcome. Eisenhower won a landslide victory, taking 55.2 percent of the popular vote and 442 electoral votes. Stevenson received 44.5 percent of the popular vote and 89 electoral votes. Eisenhower won every state outside of the South, as well as Virginia, Florida, and Texas, each of which voted Republican for just the second time since the end of Reconstruction. In the concurrent congressional elections,


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower entered the White House with a strong background in organizing complex operations (such as the invasion of Europe in 1944). More than any previous president he paid attention to improving staff performance and defining duties. He paid special attention to having a powerful Chief of Staff in Sherman Adams, a former governor.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower delegated the selection of his cabinet to two close associates, Lucius D. Clay and Herbert Brownell Jr. Brownell, a legal aide to Dewey, became attorney general. The office of Secretary of State went to John Foster Dulles, a long-time Republican spokesman on foreign policy who had helped design the United Nations Charter and the Treaty of San Francisco. Dulles would travel nearly during his six years in office. Outside of the cabinet, Eisenhower selected Sherman Adams as White House Chief of Staff, and Milton S. Eisenhower, the president's brother and a prominent college administrator, emerged as an important adviser. Eisenhower also elevated the role of the National Security Council, and designated Robert Cutler to serve as the first National Security Advisor.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower sought out leaders of big business for many of his other cabinet appointments. Charles Erwin Wilson, the CEO of General Motors, was Eisenhower's first secretary of defense. In 1957, he was replaced by president of Procter & Gamble, Neil H. McElroy. For the position of secretary of the treasury, Ike selected George M. Humphrey, the CEO of several steel and coal companies. His postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield, and first secretary of the interior, Douglas McKay, were both automobile distributors. Former senator Sinclair Weeks became Secretary of Commerce. Eisenhower appointed Joseph Dodge, a longtime bank president who also had extensive government experience, as the director of the Bureau of the Budget. He became the first budget director to be given cabinet-level status.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Other Eisenhower cabinet selections provided patronage to political bases. Ezra Taft Benson, a high-ranking member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was chosen as secretary of agriculture; he was the only person appointed from the Taft wing of the party. As the first secretary of the new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), Eisenhower named the wartime head of the Army's Women's Army Corps, Oveta Culp Hobby. She was the second woman to ever be a cabinet member. Martin Patrick Durkin, a Democrat and president of the plumbers and steamfitters union, was selected as secretary of labor. As a result, it became a standing joke that Eisenhower's inaugural Cabinet was composed of "nine millionaires and a plumber." Dissatisfied with Eisenhower's labor policies, Durkin resigned after less than a year in office, and was replaced by James P. Mitchell.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower suffered a major political defeat when his nomination of Lewis Strauss as a later Secretary of Commerce was defeated in the U.S. Senate in 1959, in part due to Strauss's role in the Oppenheimer security hearing.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower, who disliked partisan politics and politicians, left much of the building and sustaining of the Republican Party to Vice President Nixon. Eisenhower knew how ill-prepared Vice President Truman had been on major issues such as the atomic bomb when he suddenly became president in 1945, and therefore made sure to keep Nixon fully involved in the administration. He gave Nixon multiple diplomatic, domestic, and political assignments so that he "evolved into one of Ike's most valuable subordinates." The office of vice president was thereby fundamentally upgraded from a minor ceremonial post to a major role in the presidential team. Nixon went well beyond the assignment, "[throwing] himself into state and local politics, making hundreds of speeches across the land. With Eisenhower uninvolved in party building, Nixon became the "de facto" national GOP leader."


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In his two terms he delivered about 750 speeches and conducted 193 news conferences. On January 19, 1955, Eisenhower became the first president to conduct a televised news conference.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Reporters found performance at press conferences as awkward. Some concluded mistakenly that he was ill-informed or merely a figurehead. At times, he was able to use his reputation to deliberately obfuscate his position on difficult subjects. <br>


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: His press secretary, James Hagerty, was known for providing much more detail on the lifestyle of the president than previous press secretaries; for example, he covered in great detail Eisenhower's medical condition. Most of the time, he handled routine affairs such as daily reports on presidential activities, defending presidential policies, and assisting diplomatic visitors. He handled embarrassing episodes, such as those related to the Soviet downing of an American spy plane, the U-2 in 1960. He handled press relations on Eisenhower's international trips, sometimes taking the blame from a hostile foreign press. Eisenhower often relied upon him for advice about public opinion, and how to phrase complex issues. Hagerty had a reputation for supporting civil rights initiatives. Historian Robert Hugh Ferrell considered him to be the best press secretary in presidential history, because he "organized the presidency for the single innovation in press relations that has itself almost changed the nature of the nation's highest office in recent decades."


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: A group of three federal government officials and six private U.S. citizens was secretly tasked by the president in 1958 to serve as federal administrators in the event of a national emergency, such as a nuclear attack. Eisenhower discussed the issues with each appointee and then personally sent letters of confirmation. The selection and appointment of these administrator-designates was classified Top Secret. In an emergency, each administrator was to take charge of a specifically activated agency to maintain the continuity of government. Named to the group were:


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower appointed five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1953, Eisenhower nominated Governor Earl Warren to succeed Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson. Many conservative Republicans opposed Warren's nomination, but they were unable to block the appointment, and Warren's nomination was approved by the Senate in January 1954. Warren presided over a court that generated numerous liberal rulings on various topics, beginning in 1954 with the desegregation case of "Brown v. Board of Education". Eisenhower approved of the "Brown" decision. Robert H. Jackson's death in late 1954 generated another vacancy on the Supreme Court, and Eisenhower successfully nominated federal appellate judge John Marshall Harlan II to succeed Jackson. Harlan joined the conservative bloc on the bench, often supporting the position of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: After Sherman Minton resigned in 1956, Eisenhower nominated state supreme court justice William J. Brennan to the Supreme Court. Eisenhower hoped that the appointment of Brennan, a liberal-leaning Catholic, would boost his own re-election campaign. Opposition from Senator Joseph McCarthy and others delayed Brennan's confirmation, so Eisenhower placed Brennan on the court via a recess appointment in 1956; the Senate confirmed Brennan's nomination in early 1957. Brennan joined Warren as a leader of the court's liberal bloc. Stanley Reed's retirement in 1957 created another vacancy, and Eisenhower nominated federal appellate judge Charles Evans Whittaker, who would serve on the Supreme Court for just five years before resigning. The fifth and final Supreme Court vacancy of Eisenhower's tenure arose in 1958 due to the retirement of Harold Burton. Eisenhower successfully nominated federal appellate judge Potter Stewart to succeed Burton, and Stewart became a centrist on the court.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower paid attention to Supreme Court appointments. Other judicial nominees were selected by the Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, usually in consultation with the state's senators. The administration appointed 45 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 129 judges to the United States district courts. Since nearly all were appointed to serve specific geographical area, their regional origins matched the national population. All were white men. Most judges had an upper-middle-class background. One in five attended an Ivy League undergraduate college; half attended an Ivy League law school. Party affiliation was decisive: 93% of the men were Republicans, 7% Democrats; relatively few had been conspicuous in elective politics. Nearly 80% of the men were Protestants, 15% Catholic, and 6% Jewish.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The Cold War dominated international politics in the 1950s. As both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, any conflict presented the risk of escalation into nuclear warfare. The isolationist element led by Senator Taft would avoid war by staying out of European affairs. Eisenhower's 1952 candidacy was motivated by his opposition to Taft's isolationist views in opposition to NATO and American reliance on collective security with Western Europe. Eisenhower continued the basic Truman administration policy of containment of Soviet expansion but added a concern with propaganda suggesting eventual liberation of Eastern Europe.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower's overall Cold War policy was codified in NSC174, which held that the rollback of Soviet influence was a long-term goal, but that NATO would not provoke war with the Soviet Union. Peace would be maintained by being so much stronger in terms of atomic weapons than the USSR that it would never risk using its much larger land-based army to attack Western Europe. He planned for to mobilize psychological insights, CIA intelligence and American scientific technological superiority counter conventional Soviet forces.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: After Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, Georgy Malenkov took leadership of the Soviet Union. Malenkov proposed a "peaceful coexistence" with the West, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed a summit of the world leaders. Fearing that the summit would delay the rearmament of West Germany, and skeptical of Malenkov's intentions, Eisenhower rejected the summit idea. In April, Eisenhower delivered his "Chance for Peace speech," in which he called for an armistice in Korea, free elections to re-unify Germany, the "full independence" of Eastern European nations, and United Nations control of atomic energy. Though well received in the West, the Soviet leadership viewed Eisenhower's speech as little more than propaganda. In 1954, a more confrontational leader, Nikita Khrushchev, took charge in the Soviet Union. Eisenhower became increasingly skeptical of the possibility of cooperation with the Soviet Union after it refused to support his Atoms for Peace proposal, which called for the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the creation of peaceful nuclear power plants.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower unveiled the "New Look", his first national security policy, on October 30, 1953. It reflected his concern for balancing the Cold War military commitments of the United States with the risk of overwhelming the nation's financial resources. The new policy emphasized reliance on strategic nuclear weapons, rather than conventional military power, to deter both conventional and nuclear military threats. The U.S. military developed a strategy of nuclear deterrence based upon the triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), strategic bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower insisted on having plans to retaliate, fight, and win a nuclear war against the Soviets, although he hoped he would never feel forced to use such weapons.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: As the fighting in Korea ended, Eisenhower sharply reduced the reliance on expensive Army divisions. Historian Saki Dockrill argues that his long-term strategy was to promote the collective security of NATO and other American allies, strengthen the Third World against Soviet pressures, avoid another Korean stalemate, and produce a momentum that would steadily weaken Soviet power and influence. Dockrill points to Eisenhower's use of multiple assets against the Soviet Union:


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower held office during a period in which both the United States and the Soviet Union developed nuclear stockpiles theoretically capable of destroying not just each other, but all life on Earth. The United States had tested the first atomic bomb in 1945, and both the superpowers had tested thermonuclear weapons by the end of 1953. Strategic bombers had been the delivery method of previous nuclear weapons, but Eisenhower sought to create a nuclear triad consisting of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines, and strategic aircraft. Throughout the 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) and intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBMs) capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Eisenhower also presided over the development of the UGM-27 Polaris missile, which was capable of being launched from submarines, and continued funding for long-range bombers like the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In January 1956 the United States Air Force began developing the Thor, a Intermediate-range ballistic missile. The program proceeded quickly, and beginning in 1958 the first of 20 Royal Air Force Thor squadrons became operational in the United Kingdom. This was the first experiment at sharing strategic nuclear weapons in NATO and led to other placements abroad of American nuclear weapons. Critics at the time, led by Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy levied charges to the effect that there was a "missile gap", that is, the U.S. had fallen militarily behind the Soviets because of their lead in space. Historians now discount those allegations, although they agree that Eisenhower did not effectively respond to his critics. In fact, the Soviet Union did not deploy ICBMs until after Eisenhower left office, and the U.S. retained an overall advantage in nuclear weaponry. Eisenhower was aware of the American advantage in ICBM development because of intelligence gathered by U-2 planes, which had begun flying over the Soviet Union in 1956.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The administration decided the best way to minimize the proliferation of nuclear weapons was to tightly control knowledge of gas-centrifuge technology, which was essential to turn ordinary uranium into weapons-grade uranium. American diplomats by 1960 reached agreement with the German, Dutch, and British governments to limit access to the technology. The four-power understanding on gas-centrifuge secrecy would last until 1975, when scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan took the Dutch centrifuge technology to Pakistan. France sought American help in developing its own nuclear program, but Eisenhower rejected these overtures due to France's instability and his distrust of French leader Charles de Gaulle.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: During his campaign, Eisenhower said he would go to Korea to end the Korean War, which had begun on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. The U.S. had joined the war to prevent the fall of South Korea, later expanding the mission to include victory over the Communist regime in North Korea. The intervention of Chinese forces in late 1950 led to a protracted stalemate around the 38th parallel north.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Truman had begun peace talks in mid-1951, but the issue of North Korean and Chinese prisoners remained a sticking point. Over 40,000 prisoners from the two countries refused repatriation, but North Korea and China nonetheless demanded their return. Upon taking office, Eisenhower demanded a solution, warning China that he would use nuclear weapons if the war continued. South Korean leader Syngman Rhee attempted to derail peace negotiations by releasing North Korean prisoners who refused repatriation, but Rhee agreed to accept an armistice after Eisenhower threatened to withdraw all U.S. forces from Korea. On July 27, 1953, the United States, North Korea, and China agreed to the Korean Armistice Agreement, ending the Korean War. Historian Edward C. Keefer says that in accepting the American demands that POWs could refuse to return to their home country, "China and North Korea still swallowed the bitter pill, probably forced down in part by the atomic ultimatum." Historian William I. Hitchcock writes that the key factors in reaching the armistice were the exhaustion of North Korean forces and the desire of the Soviet leaders (who exerted pressure on China) to avoid nuclear war.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The armistice led to decades of uneasy peace between North Korea and South Korea. The United States and South Korea signed a defensive treaty in October 1953, and the U.S. would continue to station thousands of soldiers in South Korea long after the end of the Korean War.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower, while accepting the doctrine of containment, sought to counter the Soviet Union through more active means as detailed in the State-Defense report NSC 68. The Eisenhower administration and the Central Intelligence Agency used covert action to interfere with suspected communist governments abroad. An early use of covert action was against the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq, resulting in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état. The CIA also instigated the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état by the local military that overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, whom U.S. officials viewed as too friendly toward the Soviet Union. Critics have produced conspiracy theories about the causal factors, but according to historian Stephen M. Streeter, CIA documents show the United Fruit Company (UFCO) played no major role in Eisenhower's decision, that the Eisenhower administration did not need to be forced into the action by any lobby groups, and that Soviet influence in Guatemala was minimal.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In January 1953, Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio re-introduced the Bricker Amendment, which would limit the president's treaty making power and ability to enter into executive agreements with foreign nations. Fears that the steady stream of post-World War II-era international treaties and executive agreements entered into by the U.S. were undermining the nation's sovereignty united isolationists, conservative Democrats, most Republicans, and numerous professional groups and civic organizations behind the amendment. Believing that the amendment would weaken the president to such a degree that it would be impossible for the U.S. to exercise leadership on the global stage, Eisenhower worked with Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson to defeat Bricker's proposal. Although the amendment started out with 56 co-sponsors, it went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate in 1954 on 42–50 vote. Later in 1954, a watered-down version of the amendment missed the required two-thirds majority in the Senate by one vote. This episode proved to be the last hurrah for the isolationist Republicans, as younger conservatives increasingly turned to an internationalism based on aggressive anti-communism, typified by Senator Barry Goldwater.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower sought troop reductions in Europe by sharing of defense responsibilities with NATO allies. Europeans, however, never quite trusted the idea of nuclear deterrence and were reluctant to shift away from NATO into a proposed European Defence Community (EDC). Like Truman, Eisenhower believed that the rearmament of West Germany was vital to NATO's strategic interests. The administration backed an arrangement, devised by Churchill and British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, in which West Germany was rearmed and became a fully sovereign member of NATO in return for promises not establish atomic, biological, or chemical weapons programs. European leaders also created the Western European Union to coordinate European defense. In response to the integration of West Germany into NATO, Eastern bloc leaders established the Warsaw Pact. Austria, which had been jointly-occupied by the Soviet Union and the Western powers, regained its sovereignty with the 1955 Austrian State Treaty. As part of the arrangement that ended the occupation, Austria declared its neutrality after gaining independence.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The Eisenhower administration placed a high priority on undermining Soviet influence on Eastern Europe, and escalated a propaganda war under the leadership of Charles Douglas Jackson. The United States dropped over 300,000 propaganda leaflets in Eastern Europe between 1951 and 1956, and Radio Free Europe sent broadcasts throughout the region. A 1953 uprising in East Germany briefly stoked the administration's hopes of a decline in Soviet influence, but the USSR quickly crushed the insurrection. In 1956, a major uprising broke out in Hungary. After Hungarian leader Imre Nagy promised the establishment of a multiparty democracy and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dispatched 60,000 soldiers into Hungary to crush the rebellion. The United States strongly condemned the military response but did not take direct action, disappointing many Hungarian revolutionaries. After the revolution, the United States shifted from encouraging revolt to seeking cultural and economic ties as a means of undermining Communist regimes. Among the administration's cultural diplomacy initiatives were continuous goodwill tours by the "soldier-musician ambassadors" of the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In 1953, Eisenhower opened relations with Spain under dictator Francisco Franco. Despite its undemocratic nature, Spain's strategic position in light of the Cold War and anti-communist position led Eisenhower to build a trade and military alliance with the Spanish through the Pact of Madrid. These relations brought an end to Spain's isolation after World War II, which in turn led to a Spanish economic boom known as the Spanish miracle.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: After the end of World War II, the Communist Việt Minh launched an insurrection against the French-supported State of Vietnam. Seeking to bolster France and prevent the fall of Vietnam to Communism, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations played a major role in financing French military operations in Vietnam. In 1954, the French requested the United States to intervene in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which would prove to be the climactic battle of the First Indochina War. Seeking to rally public support for the intervention, Eisenhower articulated the domino theory, which held that the fall of Vietnam could lead to the fall of other countries. As France refused to commit to granting independence to Vietnam, Congress refused to approve of an intervention in Vietnam, and the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. At the contemporaneous Geneva Conference, Dulles convinced Chinese and Soviet leaders to pressure Viet Minh leaders to accept the temporary partition of Vietnam; the country was divided into a Communist northern half (under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh) and a non-Communist southern half (under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem). Despite some doubts about the strength of Diem's government, the Eisenhower administration directed aid to South Vietnam in hopes of creating a bulwark against further Communist expansion. With Eisenhower's approval, Diem refused to hold elections to re-unify Vietnam; those elections had been scheduled for 1956 as part of the agreement at the Geneva Conference.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower's commitment in South Vietnam was part of a broader program to contain China and the Soviet Union in East Asia. In 1954, the United States and seven other countries created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a defensive alliance dedicated to preventing the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. In 1954, China began shelling tiny islands off the coast of Mainland China which were controlled by the Republic of China (ROC). The shelling nearly escalated to nuclear war as Eisenhower considered using nuclear weapons to prevent the invasion of Taiwan, the main island controlled by the ROC. The crisis ended when China ended the shelling and both sides agreed to diplomatic talks; a second crisis in 1958 would end in a similar fashion. During the first crisis, the United States and the ROC signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which committed the United States to the defense of Taiwan. The CIA also supported dissidents in the 1959 Tibetan uprising, but China crushed the uprising.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In Indonesia in February 1958 rebels in Sumatra and Sulawesi declared the PRRI-Permesta Movement aimed at overthrowing the government of Sukarno. Due to their anti-communist rhetoric, the rebels received money, weapons, and manpower from the CIA. This support ended when Allen Lawrence Pope, an American pilot, was shot down after a bombing raid on government-held Ambon in April 1958. In April 1958, the central government responded by launching airborne and seaborne military invasions on Padang and Manado, the rebel capitals. By the end of 1958, the rebels had been militarily defeated, and the last remaining rebel guerrilla bands surrendered in August 1961.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The Middle East became increasingly important to U.S. foreign policy during the 1950s. After the 1953 Iranian coup, the U.S. supplanted Britain as the most influential ally of Iran. Eisenhower encouraged the creation of the Baghdad Pact, a military alliance consisting of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. As it did in several other regions, the Eisenhower administration sought to establish stable, friendly, anti-Communist regimes in the Arab World. The U.S. attempted to mediate the Arab–Israeli conflict, but Israel's unwillingness to give up its gains from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and Arab hostility towards Israel prevented any agreement.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In 1952, a revolution led by Gamal Abdel Nasser had overthrown the pro-British Egyptian government. After taking power as Prime Minister of Egypt in 1954, Nasser played the Soviet Union and the United States against each other, seeking aid from both sides. Eisenhower sought to bring Nasser into the American sphere of influence through economic aid, but Nasser's Arab nationalism and opposition to Israel served as a source of friction between the United States and Egypt. One of Nasser's main goals was the construction of the Aswan Dam, which would provide immense hydroelectric power and help irrigate much of Egypt. Eisenhower attempted to use American aid for the financing of the construction of the dam as leverage for other areas of foreign policy, but aid negotiations collapsed. In July 1956, just a week after the collapse of the aid negotiations, Nasser nationalized the British-run Suez Canal, sparking the Suez Crisis.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The British strongly protested the nationalization, and formed a plan with France and Israel to capture the canal. Eisenhower opposed military intervention, and he repeatedly told British Prime Minister Anthony Eden that the U.S. would not tolerate an invasion. Though opposed to the nationalization of the canal, Eisenhower feared that a military intervention would disrupt global trade and alienate Middle Eastern countries from the West. Israel attacked Egypt in October 1956, quickly seizing control of the Sinai Peninsula. France and Britain launched air and naval attacks after Nasser refused to renounce Egypt's nationalization of the canal. Nasser responded by sinking dozens of ships, preventing operation of the canal. Angered by the attacks, which risked sending Arab states into the arms of the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower administration proposed a cease fire and used economic pressure to force France and Britain to withdraw. The incident marked the end of British and French dominance in the Middle East and opened the way for greater American involvement in the region. In early 1958, Eisenhower used the threat of economic sanctions to coerce Israel into withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula, and the Suez Canal resumed operations under the control of Egypt.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: In response to the power vacuum in the Middle East following the Suez Crisis, the Eisenhower administration developed a new policy designed to stabilize the region against Soviet threats or internal turmoil. Given the collapse of British prestige and the rise of Soviet interest in the region, the president informed Congress on January 5, 1957, that it was essential for the U.S. to accept new responsibilities for the security of the Middle East. Under the policy, known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, any Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression. Eisenhower found it difficult to convince leading Arab states or Israel to endorse the doctrine, but he applied the new doctrine by dispensing economic aid to shore up the Kingdom of Jordan, encouraging Syria's neighbors to consider military operations against it, and sending U.S. troops into Lebanon to prevent a radical revolution from sweeping over that country. The troops sent to Lebanon never saw any fighting, but the deployment marked the only time during Eisenhower's presidency when U.S. troops were sent abroad into a potential combat situation.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Douglas Little argues that Washington's decision to use the military resulted from a determination to support a beleaguered, conservative pro-Western regime in Lebanon, repel Nasser's pan-Arabism, and limit Soviet influence in the oil-rich region. However, Little concludes that the unnecessary American action brought negative long-term consequences, notably the undermining of Lebanon's fragile, multi-ethnic political coalition and the alienation of Arab nationalism throughout the region. To keep the pro-American King Hussein of Jordan in power, the CIA sent millions of dollars a year of subsidies. In the mid-1950s the U.S. supported allies in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Saudi Arabia and sent fleets to be near Syria. However, 1958 was to become a difficult year in U.S. foreign policy; in 1958 Syria and Egypt were merged into the "United Arab Republic", anti-American and anti-government revolts started occurring in Lebanon, causing the Lebanese president Chamoun to ask America for help, and the very pro-American King Feisal the 2nd of Iraq was overthrown by a group of nationalistic military officers. It was quite "commonly believed that [Nasser] ... stirred up the unrest in Lebanon and, perhaps, had helped to plan the Iraqi revolution."


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Though U.S. aid helped Lebanon and Jordan avoid revolution, the Eisenhower doctrine enhanced Nasser's prestige as the preeminent Arab nationalist. Partly as a result of the bungled U.S. intervention in Syria, Nasser established the short-lived United Arab Republic, a political union between Egypt and Syria. The U.S. also lost a sympathetic Middle Eastern government due to the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état, which saw King Faisal II replaced by General Abd al-Karim Qasim as the leader of Iraq.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The 1947 partition of British India created two new independent states, India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru pursued a non-aligned policy in the Cold War, and frequently criticized U.S. policies. Largely out of a desire to build up military strength against the more populous India, Pakistan sought close relations with the United States, joining both the Baghdad Pact and SEATO. This U.S.–Pakistan alliance alienated India from the United States, causing India to move towards the Soviet Union. In the late 1950s, the Eisenhower administration sought closer relations with India, sending aid to stem the 1957 Indian economic crisis. By the end of his administration, relations between the United States and India had moderately improved, but Pakistan remained the main U.S. ally in South Asia.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: For much of his administration, Eisenhower largely continued the policy of his predecessors in Latin America, supporting U.S.-friendly governments regardless of whether they held power through authoritarian means. The Eisenhower administration expanded military aid to Latin America, and used Pan-Americanism as a tool to prevent the spread of Soviet influence. In the late 1950s, several Latin American governments fell, partly due to a recession in the United States.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Cuba was particularly close to the United States, and 300,000 American tourists visited Cuba each year in the late 1950s. Cuban president Fulgencio Batista sought close ties with both the U.S. government and major U.S. companies, and American organized crime also had a strong presence in Cuba. In January 1959, the Cuban Revolution ousted Batista. The new regime, led by Fidel Castro, quickly legalized the Communist Party of Cuba, sparking U.S. fears that Castro would align with the Soviet Union. When Castro visited the United States in April 1959, Eisenhower refused to meet with him, delegating the task to Nixon. In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the Eisenhower administration began to encourage democratic government in Latin America and increased economic aid to the region. As Castro drew closer to the Soviet Union, the U.S. broke diplomatic relations, launched a near-total embargo, and began preparations for an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: U.S. and Soviet leaders met at the 1955 Geneva Summit, the first such summit since the 1945 Potsdam Conference. No progress was made on major issues; the two sides had major differences on German policy, and the Soviets dismissed Eisenhower's "Open Skies" proposal. Despite the lack of agreement on substantive issues, the conference marked the start of a minor thaw in Cold War relations. Kruschev toured the United States in 1959, and he and Eisenhower conducted high-level talks regarding nuclear disarmament and the status of Berlin. Eisenhower wanted limits on nuclear weapons testing and on-site inspections of nuclear weapons, while Kruschev initially sought the total elimination of nuclear arsenals. Both wanted to limit total military spending and prevent nuclear proliferation, but Cold War tensions made negotiations difficult. Towards the end of his second term, Eisenhower was determined to reach a nuclear test ban treaty as part of an overall move towards détente with the Soviet Union. Khrushchev had also become increasingly interested in reaching an accord, partly due to the growing Sino-Soviet split. By 1960, the major unresolved issue was on-site inspections, as both sides sought nuclear test bans. Hopes for reaching a nuclear agreement at a May 1960 summit in Paris were derailed by the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: The Eisenhower administration, initially thinking the pilot had died in the crash, authorized the release of a cover story claiming that the plane was a "weather research aircraft" which had unintentionally strayed into Soviet airspace after the pilot had radioed "difficulties with his oxygen equipment" while flying over Turkey. Further, Eisenhower said that his administration had not been spying on the Soviet Union; when the Soviets produced the pilot, Captain Francis Gary Powers, the Americans were caught misleading the public, and the incident resulted in international embarrassment for the United States. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a lengthy inquiry into the U-2 incident. During the Paris Summit, Eisenhower accused Khrushchev "of sabotaging this meeting, on which so much of the hopes of the world have rested", Later, Eisenhower stated the summit had been ruined because of that "stupid U-2 business".


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower made one international trip while president-elect, to South Korea, December 2–5, 1952; he visited Seoul and the Korean combat zone. He also made 16 international trips to 26 nations during his presidency. Between August 1959 and June 1960, he undertook five major tours, travelling to Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Southern Asia. On his "Flight to Peace" Goodwill tour, in December 1959, the president visited 11 nations including five in Asia, flying 22,000 miles in 19 days.


title: Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

text: Eisenhower's approach to politics was described by contemporaries as "modern Republicanism," which occupied a middle ground between the liberalism of the New Deal and the conservatism of the Old Guard of the Republican Party. A strong performance in the 1952 elections gave Republicans narrow majorities in both chambers of the 83rd United States Congress. Led by Taft, the conservative faction introduced numerous bills to reduce the federal government's role in American life. Although Eisenhower favored some reduction of the federal government's functions and had strongly opposed President Truman's Fair Deal, he supported the continuation of Social Security and other New Deal programs that he saw as beneficial for the common good. Eisenhower presided over a reduction in domestic spending and reduced the government's role in subsidizing agriculture through passage of the Agricultural Act of 1954, but he did not advocate for the abolition of major New Deal programs such as Social Security or the Tennessee Valley Authority, and these programs remained in place throughout his tenure as president.