Clinton likes Ike, Ike's kin likes Obama

by Don Frederick

Before our fixation with all things Pennsylvania completely transforms into an obsession with Indiana and North Carolina, we wanted to take note of some insight Hillary Clinton provided on her views of past presidents (excluding her husband) to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

David Shribman, the paper's executive editor, took advantage of the access Pennsylvania media enjoyed with Clinton and Barack Obama over the last month and a half to ask each, as they dropped by his offices, about the predecessor portraits each would choose for the White House should one of them be in position to redecorate its interior come next winter.

Each opted for the obvious choice -- Abe Lincoln (especially obvious for Obama, who noted that the 16th president was the last who came from Illinois and went into office "not very experienced").

But Clinton named several others whose visages she would like to gaze upon as a White House occupant. Wrote Shribman:

"Besides Lincoln, Mrs. Clinton cited George Washington ('for navigating this new nation through some very challenging times'), Theodore Roosevelt (who 'understood the challenge of moving from an agrarian to an industrial society') and Dwight D. Eisenhower (who had a 'real, almost visionary aspect that we often don't think of')."

The Roosevelt pick is noteworthy because he's way up there on John McCain's hero list, as well. But most intriguing is the Eisenhower selection, and Clinton's words of praise for him.

Eisenhower does get credit these days for warning, in his last official address as president, of the growing sway of a "military-industrial complex," which perhaps is what Clinton is referring to.

Few historians we've read, though, use the term "visionary" in dissecting his administration, so it would be worth hearing Clinton expand on this point. We also recall that at least one Democratic icon, Harry Truman, made little effort to hide his disdain for his presidential successor.

Indeed, Truman and his crew would have taken the type of umbrage to Clinton's evaluation of Eisenhower that she and Bill Clinton expressed about the nod Obama gave, earlier this year, to Ronald Reagan as a "transformative" president.

Eisenhower was the fatherly presence in the Oval Office throughout Clinton's elementary school days in suburban Chicago, so perhaps that influenced her opinion.

Shribman's piece, by the way, came out shortly before it was learned that Julie Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter-in-law (she's married to David Eisenhower) and the daughter of Richard Nixon, has given the maximum amount -- $2,300 -- to Obama during this primary season. Back in early February, the Obama camp trumpeted his backing by one of the former president's biological grandchildren, Susan Eisenhower.

Don Frederick is a Washington political editor for the Los Angeles Times and wrote this for Top of the Ticket, the L.A. Times' political blog.