"If Europeans hungered for recovery, Americans longed for stability. For more than twenty years, US voters had faced one emergency after another: the Great Depression, the New Deal, wars in Europe and Asia, and the Cold War. In 1952 they voted for stability and normality under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first professional military man to head the US government since Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s and the first Republican president since the onset of the national crises. Eisenhower was an internationalist and a Cold Warrior who believed that the United States needed to confront the USSR and Communism worldwide. In his campaign, he had argued for the need to win in Korea and for “rolling back” Communism in Europe and Asia. But his main rhetoric was intended to assure Americans that they were safe under his leadership, and that the United States would defeat its enemies if it put its own house in order through national unity, fiscal discipline, a strong defense, and clear international priorities."