Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 1961 official Farewell Address to the nation is fixed in historical memory as his "military-industrial complex" speech. But once Eisenhower left the White House, historians quickly consigned him to the dustbin of history, as their hero, the young charismatic liberal Democrat, John F. Kennedy, assumed power.
But Eisenhower, who most polls continued to show as the most admired man in America, did not just play golf during the 1960s, become ill, and pass away.
In fact, Eisenhower kept his "hidden hand" — a term which Princeton University historian Fred Greenstein later would use in the early 1980s in his groundbreaking reassessment of Ike's presidency — intimately involved in Republican Party politics and national affairs for the rest of his life.
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