The Republican Party is living a big lie, namely, believing that former president Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election. Worse, it has every intention of backing his candidacy again. No matter that Trump is charged with serious felonies that will likely drag on in courts for years. In the interim, the GOP has disdained committing to a legislative program except to attack and stymie Democratic proposals. This nightmarish scenario brings to mind another era, when the Republican Party experienced the same kind of insanity — but was rescued by a single president, blossomed and became truly modern.

Credit that transformation to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who occupied the White House from 1953-1961. Ike, as he was better and warmly known, was a household name for his leadership in helping the Allies win World War II. But he had never even voted in his life when he announced in January, 1952 — just 10 months before the election — that he would be a Republican Party candidate.

At the time Ike was commander of NATO forces in Europe. And earlier, he had served as president of Columbia University — an appointment that drew the wrath of the institution’s faculty who thought that he was beneath their intellectual credentials.

No matter, both GOP and Democratic Party leaders courted Ike, an independent, as their 1952 candidate, with the Republicans the most eager because their last White House occupant, Herbert Hoover, had left office in 1933, with his legacy being the Great Depression. And they were eager to bring an end to two decades of Democrats’ reform legislation and what they believed was meddlesome and ineffective foreign policy.

The leader of the bring-back-the-old days policy was Sen. Robert A. Taft from Ohio, the elder son of former President William Howard Taft. He was dubbed “Mr. Republican” because of his years of commitment to traditional GOP policies, such as Hoover’s “rugged Individualism.” Taft opposed direct relief to needy families, American entry into World War II before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was against NATO and social welfare laws. He was a powerful force for years in campaigning for the presidency, losing to Ike in the GOP nominating convention by a narrow margin.

Ike was elected by a landslide over Democrat Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, politically reformist but unexciting in personality. But the post-election dilemma for both parties was discerning what the popular new president would do with respect to actual policies. What emerged was what Ike called “Modern Republicanism,” that is, the reform policies of the Democrats would not be overturned but cautiously improved, as, for instance, expanding Social Security and initiating the federal interstate highway legislation that transformed America’s roads.

Conservative measures to pay down the federal debt would also be given legitimacy, such as high tax rates for the super-rich, reaching a high of 90%, and the estate tax was increased to 70%, leading to a balanced federal budget by 1960.

And when Republican Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy began a campaign of accusing the administration of being plagued by Communist loyalists — an outright lie that many in the GOP supported — Ike used subtle pressures to move senators to censure McCarthy and thereby ultimately eradicate his movement.

Still, Ike, the former general, was widely criticized by both parties for doing too little in domestic, and especially foreign, policy. To be sure, he kept his campaign promise to visit Korea and eventually put at end to the war there through negotiation, not expansion of military efforts. The Cold War with the Soviet Union remained cool, not heated by major confrontations at a time when nuclear arms were the alarming military initiative, causing some Americans to build bomb shelters.

But more citizens bought cars and homes, found new and better jobs, and produced half of the world’s goods, with inflation from 1953 to 1961 averaging only about 1.5% per year, even though gross national product increased 138% from 1945 to 1960.

Modern Republicanism resulted in another landslide victory for Ike in 1956. But four years later, as Ike left office, historians rated him as little more than an average chief executive. History, however, isn’t analyzed in a vacuum or only at the moment. It is analyzed on what has come before and what comes after. And that broader view saw that Ike’s Modern Republicanism brought the Republican Party into the modern age. No GOP presidential candidate after Ike’s departure could go back to the outlandish extremism of the 1930s and achieve a full-fledged White House victory. Witness Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat in 1964 (with his slogan, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”) and Donald Trump’s popular vote shortfall in 2016 and re-election defeat in 2020. As for Ike’s ranking by presidential historians today, he stands tall — rated No. 5 behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University in Washington, D. C. His email is tvmzdb6063@cs.com.