[lbo-talk] What's the Matter With Kansas This Week

[Paul]

Michael H. writes:
>...  The most famous Kansan Republican is Ike, who today is most people's 
>model of a reasonable centrist.  His brothers, all Republicans, stretched 
>from liberal Milton who was almost a Democrat, heading up FDR's education 
>department, to reactionary Edmund who was to the right of Patton.  Back 
>then Milton and Ike were famous and nobody heard of Edmund.  Now the 
>Edmunds seem to be all you hear about.
>
>But to be fair, even back then, Ike was parachuted in on his party which 
>was mainly made out of reactionary Edmunds -- people who not only oppposed 
>the UN, they opposed NATO.  The reason an Edmund couldn't win back then 
>was because the South was so solidly Democratic that it was like spotting 
>them points.

AFIK, Milton Eisenhower, with a journalism background, was brought into 
government by Coolidge as head of the press section of the Agriculture 
Department and stayed there well into Roosevelt (different times).  But I 
write this because Milton must NEVER be forgotten as the person who took 
the job to set up the "relocation" camps for the Japanese-Americans (the 
one job Roosevelt did give him).  He then went on to be President of 
different Universities (qualified by his success with "camps"?) ending as 
head of Johns Hopkins.

BTW, the family does have a perhaps atypical background so I don't know how 
much they illustrate Kansas.  I believe they were Mennonites from Texas 
(not Kansas) where Ike was born.  After they moved to Kansas they became 
Jehovah's Witnesses.

I have never heard of Edmund Eisenhower (and find no reference to him 
through Google, although there seems to be a high school in Oklahoma named 
after someone with a similar name).  Perhaps you can fill us in?

Paul