Propaganda in the employ of democracy: Fighting the Cold War with words (Dwight D. Eisenhower, C. D. Jackson)

When Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House in January 1953, among his first tasks was to develop a new dialogue with the Soviet Union in order to lessen the risk of nuclear war. In April of that year, the President reached out to the communist world in a speech entitled “Chance for Peace,” crafted by one of his top political advisers, C. D. Jackson. In his address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Eisenhower lashed out at the current state of affairs between East and West which was fraught with danger and, in the President's words, “was not a way of life at all…It is humanity hanging from a cross of iron…” But, Ike did not abandon America's commitment to stopping the spread of communism throughout the world. An important distinction, though, between the Eisenhower White House and the prior Truman Administration was in the methods that were employed in fighting the Cold War.; Dwight Eisenhower met C. D. Jackson during World War II when Jackson was flown into North Africa to take full charge of the Office of War Information operations. On loan from Time-Life Inc. where he served as vice-president, Jackson was one of Henry Luce's leading apostles of the “American Century.” It was the effectiveness of the psychological warfare program directed at the Axis Powers that led both men to believe the key to the successful prosecution of the Cold War lay in propaganda—democratic propaganda.; Jackson and Eisenhower understood the art of propaganda, and were convinced that psychological warfare was “just about the only way to win World War III without having to fight it.” C. D. Jackson, the businessman, was a master of promoting ideas. With Ike in the Oval Office, C. D. J. would be appointed the first political warrior and would sell his most important idea to the world: that the United States possessed the best way of life, and that democratic capitalism delivered more to the largest amount of people. Jackson created the concepts and Eisenhower was the salesman. Together for a brief period in the 1950s, Jackson and Eisenhower played major roles in constructing a strategy of warfare that is with us even today.