5fish
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I first saw this quote and dug a little and found that Old Ike tried to strong arm Errol Warren about Brown vs Board of Education at a White House event...
The quote:
“I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]”
The article is a good read about Warren and Ike's relation through the 1950's once political rivals before Ike put Warren on the Supreme court ...
Snip... LINK: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/commander-v-chief/554045/
At a white house stag dinner in February 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower shocked the new chief justice of the United States. Earl Warren was Eisenhower’s first appointment to the Supreme Court and had been sworn in just four months earlier.
Snip...
Yet Eisenhower seated Warren near one of the attorneys who had argued the case for the southern states, John W. Davis, and went out of his way to praise Davis as a great man.
Over coffee, Eisenhower took Warren by the arm and asked him to consider the perspective of white parents in the Deep South. “These are not bad people,” the president said. “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks.”
It was an appalling moment. Here was the president leaning on the chief justice about a pending case while using the racist terms of an overseer.
Snip... After the ruling...
Instead he(IKE) delivered this bafflingly terse answer to a reporter’s question: “The Supreme Court has spoken, and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional process in the country. And I will obey.” There endeth the statement. Eisenhower offered no comment in support of racial equality, no expression of solidarity with African Americans, and no sign of agreement with the Court’s opinion.
Snip... here is a part about Warren...
Warren had been a politician, not a judge, and didn’t boast a dazzling intellect to match Felix Frankfurter’s or Hugo Black’s. But “he was not in awe of his colleagues,” Jim Newton writes in his biography. He was “a man at ease with power, confident and capable, a centrist by temperament but an activist too.” Warren was the first to speak at the justices’ postargument conference, forcefully making the case to strike down segregation. He had requested an open discussion rather than a casting of votes, which left time to work over wavering colleagues, notably the Kentuckian Stanley Reed. Warren adjourned the conference with a solid majority. What he wanted was unanimity. He drafted a short, direct majority opinion and, Simon writes, “probed tirelessly for common ground.” Warren invited Reed to a series of lunches and “played the gracious host, always an attentive listener who exuded good will.” At the moment of decision, he won Reed over with a plainspoken appeal to his colleague’s patriotism: “Stan, you’re all by yourself in this now. You’ve got to decide whether it’s really the best thing for the country.” The result was a unanimous ruling that put the full authority of the Supreme Court behind integration.
Snip... we will leave on Ike's thought... article a good read...
Appointments he later regretted: Eisenhower famously said that his biggest mistake had been selecting “that dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.” Or so one of his early biographers claims; the remark has come into question. Warren himself wrote that the president was known to have described his appointment as “the biggest damn fool thing I ever did.” Another version has it that when asked whether he had ever made any mistakes, Eisenhower replied, “Yes: two. And they are both sitting on the Supreme Court.” Eisenhower’s other appointees, especially John Marshall Harlan II and Potter Stewart, were more-conservative proponents of judicial restraint, although both supported the Court’s desegregation rulings.
The quote:
“I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]”
The article is a good read about Warren and Ike's relation through the 1950's once political rivals before Ike put Warren on the Supreme court ...
Snip... LINK: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/commander-v-chief/554045/
At a white house stag dinner in February 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower shocked the new chief justice of the United States. Earl Warren was Eisenhower’s first appointment to the Supreme Court and had been sworn in just four months earlier.
Snip...
Yet Eisenhower seated Warren near one of the attorneys who had argued the case for the southern states, John W. Davis, and went out of his way to praise Davis as a great man.
Over coffee, Eisenhower took Warren by the arm and asked him to consider the perspective of white parents in the Deep South. “These are not bad people,” the president said. “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks.”
It was an appalling moment. Here was the president leaning on the chief justice about a pending case while using the racist terms of an overseer.
Snip... After the ruling...
Instead he(IKE) delivered this bafflingly terse answer to a reporter’s question: “The Supreme Court has spoken, and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional process in the country. And I will obey.” There endeth the statement. Eisenhower offered no comment in support of racial equality, no expression of solidarity with African Americans, and no sign of agreement with the Court’s opinion.
Snip... here is a part about Warren...
Warren had been a politician, not a judge, and didn’t boast a dazzling intellect to match Felix Frankfurter’s or Hugo Black’s. But “he was not in awe of his colleagues,” Jim Newton writes in his biography. He was “a man at ease with power, confident and capable, a centrist by temperament but an activist too.” Warren was the first to speak at the justices’ postargument conference, forcefully making the case to strike down segregation. He had requested an open discussion rather than a casting of votes, which left time to work over wavering colleagues, notably the Kentuckian Stanley Reed. Warren adjourned the conference with a solid majority. What he wanted was unanimity. He drafted a short, direct majority opinion and, Simon writes, “probed tirelessly for common ground.” Warren invited Reed to a series of lunches and “played the gracious host, always an attentive listener who exuded good will.” At the moment of decision, he won Reed over with a plainspoken appeal to his colleague’s patriotism: “Stan, you’re all by yourself in this now. You’ve got to decide whether it’s really the best thing for the country.” The result was a unanimous ruling that put the full authority of the Supreme Court behind integration.
Snip... we will leave on Ike's thought... article a good read...
Appointments he later regretted: Eisenhower famously said that his biggest mistake had been selecting “that dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.” Or so one of his early biographers claims; the remark has come into question. Warren himself wrote that the president was known to have described his appointment as “the biggest damn fool thing I ever did.” Another version has it that when asked whether he had ever made any mistakes, Eisenhower replied, “Yes: two. And they are both sitting on the Supreme Court.” Eisenhower’s other appointees, especially John Marshall Harlan II and Potter Stewart, were more-conservative proponents of judicial restraint, although both supported the Court’s desegregation rulings.
