Reconsidering Ike

Sometimes you just get a sense that everything that you've done in your research is leading to one day; to one event; to one moment. On Thursday, I reached that moment. The morning was tough. The Ike Reconsidered Conference didn't start until 2pm and I wasn't needed there until 1.30 (I was on the first panel). As has been the habit of the week, I was awake really early and watched the sleet drift between the high rises of Lexington Avenue. I walked to find where I needed to be later in the day, catching myself thinking of the slight unreality of being on Park Avenue when my research life resides in Uxbridge. I breakfasted at a diner, smirking wryly at its name : 'Heaven' and taking note that the hard-working New Yorkers whisking coffee, pancakes, eggs, toast and the rest between, around and to the tables had their roots in South Asia, not in the waves of original immigrants that have made NYC so unique. It was good to see: this city evolves.

The rest of the morning is spent pacing my room. Checking and rechecking my notes. Everything about me is nervous. All I can do properly is pace.  

Finally, suited and booted, I headed for The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. Roosevelt House - yes, where FDR and Eleanor lived along with his mother Sara, a matching pair of townhouses now owned by Hunter College and restored as a teaching and conference venue. The great and the good trooped in: academics; a few students; a lot of grey hair and the odd Eisenhower, a Brownell and even a guru or two. As I took my place in the front row, a small man moving slowly with a wheeled frame and a carer arrived and sat behind me: Fred Greenstein: guru.

So, that first panel. Faced by more Eisenhower talent in one room than I've encountered in the past four years (that's not true: it's more Ike interest and knowledge than I've encountered in my life). Faced by more undistilled Eisenhower expertise than I'm ever likely to see again. Faced by TV cameras, a stills man and a see of expectant faces. I wasn't too worried. Ben Greene was going first. I could sit back for a little while, gather my thoughts and learn. So Mike Desch, chair of Political Science at Notre Dame, takes the podium and introduces us...and switches the order. Now I'm first. The Conference's first speaker. The token Brit. The warm up act before the serious business takes over.

I grab my notes and bottle of water and head for the podium. There's a little added tension as the organisers fail at first to load my slides. Then I'm off. 12 minutes. I'll be counted down at five and two. Once I'm running, I'm fine. Professional habits take over. There are a couple of half-jokes, well received. It's boo Kennedy and hurrah Ike. I conclude. There's applause and smiling faces in the front row. I sit down. Have I passed the test? Am I now in the Eisenhower club?

My next moments of fear: the discussants stand to forensically chew over our papers. I've been the first of three and the first discussant is Yanek Mieczkowski who has just published a book seemingly at the heart of my area. He's going to slaughter me. He'll expose my thin veneer of knowledge; my charlatan status as interloper in the academic world. But he's kind. He's insightful. He's generous - he 'gets' what I'm trying to do. And then Mike Desch. He has criticisms and they're justified, but he picks out lines of the writing for comment. After years of being warned to curb my 'purple prose' (and God knows, I tell my students the same), here's a political scientist rolling a phrase in his mouth like a fine wine. And it's my phrase and it's deepest ruby red.

The questions come - and they come to me. And I know the answers. This is working. I'm actually in my element and I can deal with this. I'm not out on a limb. My paper dovetails with those of Ben and Zuoyue. Clever organisers. I'm less good in the sum-up, undercutting my own point. But I still leave the stage on a high. Was it any good? I haven't checked back yet. Apparently it'll be preserved for posterity here.

At the break, people come up to me and say how much they enjoyed the paper. Even guru Fred. I can't help grinning. The event continues and the calibre of speaker and quality of presentation keeps on climbing. This is my great opportunity to sit at the feet of real Eisenhower knowledge and absorb.

We're well fed with the great and the good of Hunter and the - it has to be said - dwindling Eisenhower community. The night is about straight backed men and women who fought Washington's good fight - alongside or opposed to the General. There aren't too many left. I cherish their experience.

Yesterday was more of the same - but this time I could just sit back and enjoy. David Eisenhower is both genial and wise (and looks scarily like his grandfather). Ann Brownell adds colour and context. I record a short video piece at lunchtime - I hope the editing is kind.

Dave Nichols, perhaps the foremost Eisenhower scholar currently in the field introduces me to people as his protégée. I could not have a wiser, kinder mentor.

We finish with a reception. More handshakes, more fantastic contacts, more kind words. The pub is mooted, but I collapse onto the bed as soon as I get back to the hotel. 12 hours on, I'm still buzzing.           

USA diary day 3 - post-Sequestration Washington

Another early start - more due to my body clock than anything else. I headed into town breakfasting at Pret - one of the few reverse-trade invasions I've seen in the US. While MaccyDees, Gap, and just about every major US brand seem to have made it on to the UK's high streets, it's rare to see the phenomenon happening the other way round. But, at leas in DC and NYC, Pret a Manger seems to definitely be a growing brand.

On the stroke of 9am I was admitted into the National Archives - my first visit to this Pennsylvania Avenue monolith - though I was nearly mown down in the crush as a cottage industry of archive researchers scuttled for prime position in the reading room. The reading room's not all that bit, but was very busy - and on just the second day of post-sequestration DC, that was causing a problem.

I had just one box of materials to interrogate. I had very limited time, and had pinned down my search through pre-contact with the fabulous Ron Ross to the Congressional Records I really needed to see. I thought I was losing time going through the bureaucracy of getting a researcher's card and then having to meet up with a Congressional Records archivist to relay my request. However, by the time I was allowed into the reading room (after a false start when I was ejected for the sin of carrying a small camera case) my box of papers was ready - much to the evident surprise of the desk staff.

I'd somehow bypassed the file pulling system and was able to settle down and work my way through the record of the 85th Congress' Senate sub committee on astronautics and space. To be honest, I found the most useful materials in the first 30 minutes - but ploughed on for a further three hours.

More and more researchers arrived, and the desk spaces were soon full. I'm not sure why they weren't allowed to work in the adjacent rooms, but suspect it came down to supervisory staffing. While sequestration won't kick in at the National Archive for another six weeks, posts had been held unfilled in anticipation of the Capitol Hill stand-off. Coupled with a number of illnesses, there were just too few staff on the floor to cope with the voracious demand for files. Researchers are generally quite sanguine folk, but there were raised voices and exasperated sighs and files remained unpulled, and the queue to return materials stretched to the door.

It was quite a noisy room and I didn't find it conducive to good research - and was quite glad to leave before lunch. By 3pm I was on an Amtrak heading north east. Four and a half hours later, after passing through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, I was met from my train at Stamford, Connecticut and whisked to my concretely-functional hotel. I spent yesterday earning my keep to pay or this trip by delivering comms training at Diageo - a long day, but also very good fun.

My best memory of the last couple of days is an odd one. The train failed just before arriving at Stamford, leaving us in the dark without power. The driver came on the PA and said: "I don't really know what's wrong, but I'm going to turn everything off and on again and try and reboot the engine." It worked: it nearly always does...IT, trains...who knows what else.      

USA Diary - Day 2 - A great day in 'the bubble'

Today was one of those research days that I wish happened far more often. I knew what I wanted; had some fantastic help in finding it - and picked up a few bonuses along the way too.

Still being largely on UK time, I was wide awake at 5am this morning. In fact, I hadn't really slept well at all last night. The room was really cold, infused with orange light from the street - and there were lights on in the house too, shining through the glass pane above my door. Anyway I was up and out by 6.40am and breakfasting in town by 7am. It all meant I arrived at NASA as soon as the doors opened, and was able to get through three thick public affairs files before lunch. As on my previous visits, Liz Suckow and Colin Fries were fantastic. They just know so much - and what they don't know, they know how to find - and quickly.

I spent lunch in the National Air and Space Museum - my irregular homage to the ballistic engineering and frontier technology that I still find so fascinating.

The afternoon was spent sifting through Bob Sherrod's files on the astronaut's Life magazine contract. Depending on which source you prefer, it was either the best or worst thing NASA did in the early days of the manned space programme. Even after eight hours of reading it up, down and sideways, I'm still not sure. I'll need to re-read and reflect to get my thoughts in order.

I had a final half hour in the library where the team had pulled a really helpful list of secondary source material for me including a couple of theses I'd never even heard of. I wish I had more time, but a bit of frantic photocopying definitely helped - and the new sources are a real bonus.

It has been a beautiful day here. Really cold, but wonderfully clear and blue. As is my wont, I walked everywhere, so even though it's just gone 7pm, I'm totally cream crackered now.

Anyway, National Archives in the morning, before the train journey to Connecticut.

USA diary - day 1

It feels as if it should be really late. But looking at my watch, it's just past 8.20pm I'm writing this while fighting tiredness. I've spent much of the day travelling, and don't really want to fall asleep now and then be wide awake at 4am.

I'm back in Washington DC, with a day at NASA and a few hours at the National Archives researching ahead of me before I head north. I'm staying in a guest house north of Logan Circus; comfortable, quiet and not too expensive.

The flight out from London was blissfully uneventful - a half empty plane meant I managed to get a double seat to myself, and passed the time watching Argo (very good) and The Silver Linings Playbook (which had its moments).

All was plain sailing at Dulles and I was in a van ready to head to the city only 30 minutes after landing. Then it all went a little wrong - with a very surreal couple of hours ensuing. The van driver laboriously loaded all our zip codes into his sat nav and headed out of Dulles - only to stop on the hard shoulder a few minutes later to do it all over again. It was clear he didn't have a whole lot of English (it turned out he was from Cameroon) and became ever clearer that a) he had no idea where he was going and b) didn't know how to use the sat nav.

He came off the freeway very early and seemed to be heading on an aimless tour of the suburbs before pulling up at a bank way out west on Massachusetts Avenue....nowhere near where anyone was heading. My van-mates were an English woman, and guys from France, Spain and Israel respectively. Over the next hour and a half our  driver, who had been in the US for a month and had been given his sat nav (and job?) only the day before, managed to run several red lights, nearly run down at least one pedestrian and incur the ire of just about every other driver in DC. After a while he completely gave up on the sat nav and I directed him through the city (not hard, it's a grid) helped by two van mates whose French was better than mine. I was the last drop-off - and there were a lot of  á droite and á gauche before we finally reached the right(ish) road.

I'm flabbergasted this guy was let out on the road - seemingly untrained and definitely quite panicky as the journey started to go wrong. I don't blame him, but his employer - Supreme - are doing themselves no favours at all while putting travellers at real risk.

So my drive was an experience - but not one I care to repeat.

Reading around (and away from) the subject

One of my passions is reading. Another is 20th century history. So when the two come together, I'm hooked.

I've just finished reading HHhH, Laurent Binet's really rather excellent recounting of the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the convener of the Wannsee Conference and a key player in the devising of the Final Solution. Last year I'd read Robert Gerwarth's scholarly account of the Acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia - Hitler's Hangman. It was a good solid read: lively for a scholarly work and strong on historical detail. But it had neither the edge not the cheek of Binet's work.

Binet gives us an historical narrative wrapped round with an intrusive first-person narrator (ostensibly the author) who tells the story of the plot while equally telling the story of how he is crafting his 'novel'. The energy is immense. His ability to pull the reader into the story shows a deft skill. And the fact that the work feels spontaneous is a testament to fine craftsmanship in what must have been a drawn-out and laboured process. HHhH is just very different from both historical accounts and novels covering well known events.

I really got on Binet's side in the book when he had a pop at Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. A few years ago this had been hailed as one of the most important first novels in the last 50 years. But, while it's clearly forensically researched, I never believed in Max Aue the novel's chief protagonist. There was something too modern; too clinical and too knowing about him. The accounts of the Einsatzgruppen activities of the first 200 pages are remorseless - and frankly, having got through four or five bedtimes with industrial killing perpetrated by a character I couldn't believe in, I laid the book to one side. Two years on, I still haven't picked it up again.

I'm a sucker for historical fiction that feels real but his an air of humanity. I grew up on John Le Carré. I still rush out and buy his new books as soon as they hit the shops - always in person, always hardback - but doubt anything will ever surpass the The Karla Trilogy: quite simply the British spy novel at its best. Le Carré surpasses the kind of genre fiction of the likes of David Downing with his Berlin Stations series, Tom Robb Smith's Child 44 books or even the early Arkady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith (which rather lost its way in its latest manifestation). But in terms of both historic police procedurals and pre-war spies, I most definitely have my favourites.

Alan Furst's spy novels that revolve around Paris' fictional Brasserie Heininger Capture the spirit of the time: the menace just around the corner and the belief that things can't surely be as bad as they seem. He has woven a three dimensional map of European intrigue where characters cross each other's paths and interact with real events in a way that seems natural and unforced. Meanwhile, Philip Kerr's doing a pretty good job to humanise the Kripo with his Bernie Gunther police and gumshoe procedurals set across the Nazi era. Some work better than others - but he's never better than when he's dealing with the complex relationship between his 'anto hero' and Gunther's boss: one Reinhard Heydrich. And isn't that where I came in?

Goodbye 2012 and all that

This is something of a displacement activity - I've set myself a target of adding 3,000 words to the PhD by the end of the kids' Christmas Holidays - and have so far managed to read one and a half relevant books instead.

Actually, such displacement has been indicative of 2012 as far as my PhD has gone - this has been the year it got hard.

In terms of displacement activities, most have been excellent - I've taught for most of the year at Brunel, City Lit and latterly at Reading University - all of which has been good for the academic CV. But research has been tough with most of my focus being on earning enough income to keep my head above water. That income comes not from academia but from corporate communications related work. I've had to spend much more time on that this year just to keep up a reasonably similar earning stream.

I managed an excellent research trip to Boston and Abilene in April - but this time it all came out of my pocket - I didn't land a single £ of grant funding this year, despite half a dozen solid applications (certainly no worse than the ones that unlocked £2,000 of funding in 2010). While the documents I unearthed and assessed made the trip absolutely worthwhile, I feel like I've been playing catch-up ever since.

In terms of positives on the year, I now have a structure for the PhD and have significant progress on two chapters - I probably have 10,000+ usable words, with a target of doubling that by April, and adding a further 20,000 by August. Beyond the thesis, I made a great contact in Dave Nichols, a truly nice man and a pleasure to work alongside in Abilene back in the Spring. Dave was immensely generous with his time and encouraged me greatly in my writing - to the extent that he recommended me for the Ike Reconsidered conference that Hunter College is hosting in New York in March. I've had a paper accepted, and now find myself due to present alongside the great and the good in the Eisenhower scholarship field. Am I up to it? Time will tell and I suspect a couple of hours alongside one of my heroes, Fred Greenstein, as well as Eisenhower's most recent biographer Jim Newton and Yanek Mieczkowski who's about to publish a book right bang smack in the middle of my research field and, of course, Dave himself. I suspect that over a couple of days I'll be made very aware whether or not my thesis holds water.

At the moment, as well as the challenge of pulling a paper together (and it will be based strongly on an updated and expanded version of last year's 240,000 mile cul de sac piece), there's the simple challenge of getting to the US to present. Hunter College are covering my costs while on US soil (and many thanks to them for that), but flights and a few days associated research before the conference will leave me with a bill close to £1,000 on top of this year's fees and all the usual costs - the application writing starts here!

My year's negative is the new bureaucracy imposed by my School within the University which I've finding hinders my progress rather than aiding it. My tactic at the moment is ignoring it as much as possible. However, being disgruntled by a process that is beginning to feel like a sausage machine focused on Brunel's REF rather than the individual needs of each research student.

Anyway, I can't afford to dwell on that - not when there's 3,000 PhD words to be corralled from notes and documents; a presentation to be built and scripted and at least two grant applications to be written.

2013 will be a big year....it has to be.

End of term quiz - answers

As promised, here are the answers to my end of term quiz.

1. What was Harry Truman’s middle name?

he didn't have one - but added 'S' to his signature as he felt it added gravity to his name.

2 What role did George W Bush hold prior to his election as President?

Governor of Texas

3. What happened on October 4 1957?

• Launch of Sputnik

4. In what year did the French withdraw from Indo China?

1954

5. The Tet Offensive occurred on the Vietnamese equivalent of:

c) New Year

6. Peter Davis’ 1974 Oscar Winning Film is called:

b) Hearts and Minds                      

7. Who was the last man on the moon?

a) Gene Cernan                                  

8. Who was Jimmy Carter’s Foreign policy nemesis

b) Ayatollah Khomenei  

9. The tall guy's LBJ

10. What did Truman describe his entry into the Korean War as?

A Police Action

11. Who shot JFK?

Lee Harvey Oswald

12. In Presidential terms, who’s the odd one out?

a) Gerald Ford  - never elected to Executive Office

13. Complete this sentence: “I shall go to......”

Korea

14. Name three military interventions carried out by the Clinton administration.

Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia - there are others.

15. The CIA was mandated to overthrow the Government of Guatemala by President...

c) Eisenhower



 

1  16. This is George Kennan (though he looks like Morrissey)


17. Who was George W Bush’s Secretary of Defence?
c) Donald Rumpsfeld

18. What position did Bess, Mamie and Rosalynn all hold?

First Lady

19. What was SDI more commonly know as?

Strategic Defence Initiative - or Star Wars

20. Which was the only foreign state invaded under Reagan’s presidency?

Grenada

21. Who was President when man first walked on the moon?

Nixon

22. 1968 was famous for the summer of:

b) love  

23. These two fine fellows are Douglas MacArthur and John Foster Dulles



24. What is the key principle of the Nixon Doctrine?

Vietnamization

25. Who is the most famous peanut farmer in US history?

Jimmy Carter