This article is a part of our series From Lighthouses to Electric Chargers: A Presidential Series on Transportation Innovations

Dwight D. Eisenhower won more than 80 percent of the electoral votes in the 1952 election, mostly due to the reputation he had earned as Supreme Allied Commander in the Western European theater of World War II. His success in the war was not due to battlefield bravery or innovative tactics, or even clever strategy, but rather largely to Eisenhower’s superb organizational skills, which made him acutely aware of the importance of good transportation. His two terms as president resulted in transformative achievements across most modes of transportation.

In the military, as in the White House, Eisenhower believed in getting organized first, and then studying an issue, and only then taking action.

Eisenhower organized his White House in a new way, most of which is still in use today. He created a Staff Secretary, to organize and control the flow of paper to and from the Oval Office; a Cabinet Secretary, to organize the agenda and paper flow for Friday Cabinet meetings; a beefed-up, eight-man Legislative Liaison office, to organize Presidential meetings with Congressional leaders; and a powerful chief of staff to control access to the Oval Office and make sure that no one did end-runs around the staffing structure.

Eisenhower’s first transportation achievement did not fit Eisenhower’s Organize-Study-Act method, which is why we begin this discussion with the St. Lawrence Seaway.

St. Lawrence Seaway

A series of locks and/or dams to close the 243-foot vertical drop between Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean had been under general discussion since the 1890s and under serious study since the Woodrow Wilson administration. However, the U.S. government had never committed to the project. There was bipartisan skepticism about the cost, and a broad coalition of railroad and port interests (along the Gulf and East coasts) were inalterably opposed to a project that would enable oceangoing vessels to travel directly between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes.

A year before Eisenhower’s inauguration, the Canadian government passed a law declaring that it would build the St. Lawrence Seaway (more than 2,000 miles long) without U.S. participation if the U.S. would not move forward. This would allow Canada to charge higher tolls on U.S. vessels than on other vessels, and also raised the possibility of Canada denying Seaway use to U.S. vessels in time of war if Canada was not a belligerent party.

The Seaway became the Administration’s top transportation priority in the 1954 Congressional session, and Eisenhower obtained Congressional support to fund the project (what he called the ‘legislative culmination of an effort that has taken 30 years to reach this point,”) connecting the heartland of the U.S. and Canada with the world’s longest inland navigation system.

Creating the Interstate Highway System

The infrastructure achievement for which Eisenhower is best known had been on his mind for a long time.

In 1919, Lt. Col. Eisenhower was attached as an observer on the first experimental Army cross-country truck convoy, which took 62 miserable days to travel 3,251 miles of mostly unimproved dirt roads from Washington DC to San Francisco. This left a lasting impression on Eisenhower, which was amplified when he got to Germany in 1945 and observed the vast efficiencies of their autobahn network.

Numerous studies of creating an Interstate Highway system had been undertaken by previous administrations, but little progress had been made. After some preliminary internal studies went nowhere, President Eisenhower decided to do something very out of character – he decided to stir the pot, in a very public way.

In July 1954, Vice President Richard Nixon announced — in a speech written by Eisenhower — that the President wanted to spend $5 billion per year on roads for the next 10 years, and that would only be a “good start.”

$50 billion was a jaw-dropping amount of money at the time. Naturally, this “$50 billion plan” made front-page headlines around the country. One problem… there was no plan. At his regular press conference two days later, the President admitted “I have no definite plan” though the Administration had been studying options for a year.

The President then appointed two more study committees, one outside government and one inside. The chair of the outside committee was first offered to former Deputy Defense Secretary Roger Kyes, then of General Motors (the man in charge of persuading states to tear up their streetcar systems and replace them with buses). When Kyes declined on conflict of interest grounds, Eisenhower chose his close confidant and former Army subordinate, Gen. Lucius Clay.

The Clay Committee updated the 1944 plan for a 40,000-mile Interstate system and its 1955 report recommended establishing a federal corporation to issue $20 billion in bonds, to be supplemented by $5 billion in appropriations. Eisenhower endorsed the Clay plan, with a few small tweaks, and made it his proposal to Congress in February. It was not received well. The Democratic Senate, led by debt-hating Finance Committee chair, Harry Byrd, killed the President’s plan, and then passed a competing Public Works bill, funded by tax increases.

In the House, Speaker Rayburn made the unusual decision to bypass the Ways and Means Committee and allow the Public Works panel to write its own tax legislation. They recommended a series of new taxes on motorists and truckers, enough to fund $24 billion in federal funding for Interstates over 13 years. But after voting down the President’s plan, 193 to 221, the House killed the Public Works bill as well. No one was happy, and Congress adjourned for the year.

In fall 1955, Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack and was on limited duty until December. The Cabinet came up with a new plan, with some elements of the House bill – no corporation, no bonds, $25 billion for Interstates over 12 years, paid for by a new blend of motorist and trucker taxes – but to be constructed on a pay-as-you-build, deficit-proof basis.

The new plan was never released to the public because Congressional GOP leaders convinced Eisenhower to use what historian Fred Greenstein later called “the hidden hand.” The President would not put forward a specific proposal, or endorse specific taxes, only call for “adequate funding provisions.” The Treasury Secretary then negotiated with Congressional leaders on establishing a Highway Trust Fund and avoid any deficit spending, reassuring legislators that the new tax revenue could only be spent on highway improvements. A final bill passed the House by voice and passed the Senate 89 to 1, providing $24.8 billion (5.7 percent of the FY 1956 GDP) in up-front funding for Interstate construction, to be doled out in tranches over 13 years.

Creating the FAA

The jet age dawned under the Eisenhower Administration. Boeing’s 707 jet and the Douglas DC-8 would transform the airline industry and require much more sophisticated air traffic control.

Federal jurisdiction of airlines was fragmented at the time. Economic and safety regulations for civil (non-military) aviation were set by the Civil Aeronautics Board. The Civil Aeronautics Authority, under the Department of Commerce, provided civil air traffic control services, enforced safety regulations, and provided airport development grants. The Air Force, Army, and Navy each operated extensive military aviation systems. An Air Coordinating Committee established by executive order under President Truman tried to keep track of them all, but was beset by infighting. (One participant, future FAA head Pete Quesada, called it “the most unsuccessful, abortive conglomerate of conflicting interest you would possibly imagine.”

Eisenhower, through his brother Milton (who was on a reorganizing government panel advising the President), had a small study of the air traffic control problem conducted, which recommended a much larger study headed by a figure in whom the public had confidence. Eisenhower then recruited Major General Ted Curtis, a World War I flying ace who had served under Eisenhower as Chief of Staff of Strategic Air Forces in Europe during WWII, to serve temporarily on the White House staff and conduct the study.

While Curtis was working, the worst civil aviation disaster in U.S. history to that point took place – a mid-air collision of two passenger airliners over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 persons on both planes on June 30, 1956. The investigation revealed that better air traffic control would almost certainly have prevented the accident. Accordingly, before his full investigation was finished, Curtis issued an interim report in April 1957 which recommended the immediate creation of an independent and temporary Airways Modernization Board to mediate between the Commerce and Defense Departments and conduct initial research and development of an eventual air traffic control system for the U.S. that would handle both kinds of traffic. Congress passed a law doing this just four months after Curtis issued his interim report.

Curtis’s final report predicted massive increases in demand for airspace use, at much greater altitudes and speeds, which was incompatible with the existing air traffic control system.

Curtis recommended the construction of the modern, radar-based air traffic control system. To operate the system, he said “An independent Federal Aviation Agency [FAA] should be established into which are consolidated all of the essential management functions necessary to support the common needs of the military and civil aviation of the United States.” The head of the new FAA would be in charge of U.S. aviation policy, airspace policy, and long-range planning, as well as writing aviation safety regulations and investigating accidents (incorporating functions of the Civil Aeronautics Board).

Assuaging the behind-the-scenes concerns of the Pentagon was going to take time. But fate intervened, with two large-scale and fatal mid-air collisions in the spring of 1958 killing a total of 61 people. In both cases, the cause was lack of coordination between military air traffic control and civilian air traffic control.

Congress threatened to force the issue by scheduling committee markups of their own bills to create an independent FAA. Behind the scenes, Eisenhower got the Pentagon and the Commerce Department on board with the principle of establishing an FAA, and a long June 6 Cabinet meeting approved a detailed plan that the President would transmit to Congress two days later while his staff worked directly on the Hill with the committees on amending their bills to the President’s liking. Both chambers agreed to final changes quickly (by voice vote) and President Eisenhower signed the FAA bill into law in August 1958.

The central federal role in transportation

Ironically, creation of an independent FAA helped prevent the Eisenhower Administration from completing another of its internal goals – the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Transportation (DOT). As far back as November 1956, Milton Eisenhower was asking his advisory panel (chaired by the future vice president, Nelson Rockefeller) to consider the creation of a DOT.

By May of 1957, Milton Eisenhower and Rockefeller were discussing the issue with Sherman Adams (Eisenhower’s chief of staff), who recommended that they create a Department of Transportation and Communication, instead. Studies were made, and on April 29, 1958, Rockefeller met with the President and suggested the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level DOT via the Reorganization Act, a law then on the books that allowed the President to move many (but not all) government components back and forth, subject to “legislative veto.” Eisenhower said he would prefer a more detailed plan to be implemented by law later on, as part of the next year’s budget proposals, and suggested further study.

The Rockefeller panel subsequently reported that “we feel strongly that the chaotic status of the transportation industry and the need to put the Administration in the best possible posture to deal with the critical problems of transportation, require dynamic remedial action as soon as possible.” They recommended either a new DOT or reorganizing Commerce into a Department of Commerce and Transportation, and actually viewed the latter as “the more practical solution.”

By September, the consensus was for a DOT, not a DOCT. The plan would have denuded Commerce – the new DOT would have 54,786 employees versus just 11,503 for Commerce. But in mid-October 1959, Eisenhower put on the brakes, deciding that the political difficulties weren’t worth fighting “at this time.” Those difficulties related to taking away the autonomy of the newly independent FAA and because the new Commerce Secretary, Frederick Mueller (who had only been confirmed two months earlier) was insistent on keeping the Weather Bureau, which transportation experts assumed would be an integral part of a DOT (since the Bureau started off as an aid to mariners and, later, to aviation).

Eisenhower wound up including a token and generic endorsement of a DOT in his outgoing FY 1961 budget, but it would take until Lyndon Johnson in 1966 to put forward a successful proposal for a DOT (with the FAA but without the Weather Bureau).

Conclusion

During his lifetime, Dwight Eisenhower was regarded as a second-rate President, who didn’t perform well during press conferences and who played an awful lot of golf. His ego, reinforced by all the success and accolades he earned during and after World War II, was secure enough not to let this eat away at him, in part because he knew that the long-term historical record would show how carefully he took his job and how he had preferred to work behind the scenes, allowing others to get credit in good times and some blame in bad. (Eisenhower was the first president to employ a full-time history professor, Arthur Minnich, in the staff secretary’s office to ensure that a complete record was kept for the archives of all meetings, memos, and conversations, so his library is perhaps the best-organized of any Presidential library.)

His interest in transportation, from his opening days in office until the end of his term, was thorough and far-reaching. In addition to the transformative legacy of the Interstate Highway System, he finally connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic via water, and opened the airways up to jet travel.

For more information by this author:

• Federal Highway Policy Under President Eisenhower, 1953-1954 (September 9, 2020)
• Federal Highway Policy Under President Eisenhower, 1955-1956 (September 9, 2020)
• Federal Highway Policy Under President Eisenhower, 1957-1961 (September 14, 2020)
• Federal Aviation Policy Under President Eisenhower (September 8, 2020)
• The St. Lawrence Seaway and Federal Maritime Policy Under President Eisenhower (September 3, 2020)
• Federal Railroad Policy Under President Eisenhower (September 9, 2020)
• Federal Urban Mass Transit Policy Under President Eisenhower (September 12, 2020)
• Along with this 2019 article going deeper into the 1959 Highway Trust Fund insolvency crisis.