Eisenhower’s domestic policy is often obscured to students of history by the struggles of the era (the Red Scare and McCarthyismMcCarthyism Full Description The wave of anti-communist suspicion, accusation, and persecution that swept the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. McCarthy claimed — without evidence — that the US government and army were riddled with communist agents. The period saw the blacklisting of suspected communists from Hollywood and academia, loyalty investigations of federal employees, and the destruction of careers through innuendo. McCarthy was finally discredited during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Critical Perspective McCarthyism has been so thoroughly discredited that it is easy to forget it enjoyed genuine popular support. The fear of Soviet espionage was not entirely irrational — the Rosenbergs had passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets, and Soviet intelligence had penetrated the US government. McCarthy exploited a real anxiety for political purposes, but the mechanisms he used — guilt by association, demands for loyalty oaths, the destruction of careers without due process — were symptoms of a democratic culture that had partially suspended its own principles in the face of perceived existential threat. and the civil rights struggle), making the president’s own policy agenda and his political inclinations less easy to explore. This podcast looks at the conservative tendencies of Eisenhower, his opposition to the growing role of the state in the lives of Americans was born of his belief in the spirit of ‘rugged individualism’ and the idea that state intervention was a