Books: The Sublime Commander

EISENHOWER: SOLDIER, GENERAL OF THE ARMY, PRESIDENT-ELECT

by Stephen E. Ambrose; Simon & Schuster; 637 pages; $22.95

In the minds of some scholars, he was a mediocre President, indifferent to the civil rights movement, spineless in the face of McCarthyism, slow of wit and out of touch with the currents of upheaval swirling beneath the calm surface of the 1950s. To more and more students of the era, however, Dwight David Eisenhower was a canny leader who brilliantly outmaneuvered subordinates and statesmen. Author and Biographer Stephen E. Ambrose can claim a seat in each camp.

A professor of history at the University of New Orleans and an editor of Eisenhower's papers, Ambrose is a careful, thorough critic of Ike as citizen, soldier and President. But he is also something of a fan, beguiled by a figure who was "decisive, well disciplined, courageous, dedicated ... intensely curious about people and places, often refreshingly naive, fun-loving—in short a wonderful man to know or be around."

There is indeed much to admire in a man who overcame such an obvious lack of promise. As a boy in Abilene, Kans., Ike excelled at little beyond football. At West Point, from which he graduated in 1915 an unimpressive 61st in a class of 164, he excelled at little beyond football. As a young Army officer, he excelled at little beyond coaching the unit football team. World War I ended before Eisenhower could get to Europe, and in the shrunken interwar Army, he was stuck at the rank of major for 16 years. His career going nowhere, Eisenhower almost left the Army to become military-affairs editor of a newspaper chain.

A few of his superiors, however, saw in the young officer qualities that did not leap from his 201 file. He had a grin that could melt the coldest commanding officer. He could write a mean memo, a talent then, as now, in short supply in the Army. He could take an abandoned field at Gettysburg, Pa., and turn it into a tank corps training camp with impressive speed and imagination, and without benefit of tanks. Douglas MacArthur picked Eisenhower in 1935 to help him build an army for the soon-to-be-independent Philippines. At the outbreak of World War II, General George Marshall, newly appointed Army Chief of Staff, tapped the 51-year-old colonel to be one of his top aides.