Unearthing the Eisenhower-Reagan Connection

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have paid little attention and Reagan himself never counted as his first bid for the White House.

The author of the footnote was Kiron Skinner, a Reagan scholar at the Hoover Institution. It pointed to a connection between Reagan and former president Dwight D. Eisenhower during the 1960s when Reagan was running for governor of California and, later, having won the election, was considering a presidential race. Kopelson was intrigued. He lives in Seattle and spends half the year in medicine, half pursuing his interest in history. He had planned a trip east along I-70. It would take him to three places in Missouri—the Truman Library in Independence, the scene of Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, and Mark Twain's hometown in Hannibal—and to the Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Prompted by the footnote, Kopelson added an I-70 stop at the Eisenhower Museum, Library and Boyhood Home in Abilene. "I thought this would be a good thing to look at," he says. It was a history-making decision in the sense that Kopelson discovered the breadth of a little-known but historically significant episode in Reagan's path to the presidency.

When Dwight Eisenhower left the White House in 1961, he didn't divorce himself from politics. He worried about the future of the Republican party, and this led him to Reagan. From 1965 to 1968, he advised Reagan—and not just on foreign affairs and national security policy. His guidance also focused on the practical politics of running for office. Ike was the teacher, Reagan his pupil. They met in person four times, once at Ike's farm in Gettysburg and twice at the former president's winter home in Palm Desert, California. The fourth location is unknown—at least, Kopelson hasn't nailed it down. And they communicated by telephone and by mail.

Kopelson was amazed at what he found at the Eisenhower Library. "My gosh! What a treasure trove of new information," he says. "None of Reagan's advisers knew that Ike was there all along." There was so much compelling material about what Kopelson calls "the hidden mentor-protégé relationship" that it gets equal footing in his book with Reagan's actual (though secretive) 1968 campaign. A publisher advised Kopelson to separate the topics—Ike and 1968—into two books. But he said no, and it was a wise decision. Many of the themes of Reagan's speeches as an unannounced candidate for president in 1967-68 (he was governor of California at the time) grew out of lessons from Eisenhower. And these themes have proved to be indelible. Reagan emphasized the same ideas—such as the use of strongly worded language in dealing with adversaries—in the 1970s and '80s as well. Kopelson's account is copiously researched to the last small detail and an important addition to the library of Reagan studies.