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"  He met the world as a man. He spoke his mind. He took action. He trounced what can legitimately be described as an evil army, won the presidency on the strength of his likeability, survived a heart attack, managed the cold war, inducted two new states, built the interstate highways and opened the Space Age. He was beholden to none, a lifelong Army man who exited the stage 42 years ago with a warning: &amp;quot;We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.&amp;quot; But as the anniversary of his most manly speech passed this month, Dwight D. Eisenhower was treated like a boy, relegated to another man&amp;#039;s house. After fourteen years of squabbling, the commission charged with building a memorial in his honor announced nothing more than an exhibit about the proposed memorial, on display in a transit passage of the Ronald Reagan Building &amp;amp;amp; International Trade Center. It was a weak move, but not the first. One design for the memorial, put forward by the architect Frank Gehry, would have depicted Ike as a barefoot child at home in Abilene, Kansas, looking out in awe at bas-reliefs representing his adult life. &amp;quot;A shrinky-dink tikey Ikey,&amp;quot; wrote one prominent critic, Justin Shubow, in a report to the commission last year. &amp;quot;It is a travesty that cuts a great man down to size. Giving Eisenhower the boy treatment would be unthinkable were Eisenhower around to defend himself.&amp;quot; Since then, the proposed $142 million park has drawn no end of opposition from critics including the honoree&amp;#039;s son, who wrote a letter calling the design &amp;quot;too elaborate.&amp;quot; The project stalled well before the vice chairman of the commission, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, died last month. Of course, these things take time. Franklin D. Roosevelt&amp;#039;s memorial gestated for twenty-eight years. The statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man with very few detractors, spent fifteen years in the planning stages before finally opening, only to face criticism for the inscription of paraphrased quotations. Even World War II - a conflict we&amp;#039;re relatively proud of - ended nearly sixty years before its memorial opened. But as the fifty-second anniversary of Ike&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;message of leave-taking and farewell&amp;quot; passed last week without any new progress, the stalemate seemed to reflect something deeper than aesthetic differences. Sam Roche, an architecture lecturer at the University of Miami who has been arguing for a new start to the project through a group called &amp;quot;Right by Ike,&amp;quot; says these conflicts over design reflect underlying conflicts about legacy. &amp;quot;The basic argument comes down to: &amp;#039;Should it look like other monuments?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Roche told me on the phone between classes. &amp;quot;That argument translates to something like, &amp;#039;Are values constant, or are there new values for a new time?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; In some ways, he said, the dispute over whether to emphasize Ike&amp;#039;s midwestern roots or his global stature reflects an enduring divide in American mythologizing. A century ago, for example, one proposal called for a simple log cabin to honor Abraham Lincoln (his memorial commission ended up going a different direction with the project). Roche sees some direct parallels in the controversy around the Eisenhower Memorial. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not necessarily a stylistic argument, that is an argument about how we tell that story,&amp;quot; he said. In the end, resolving the design conflicts may show &amp;quot;there still is a way to find consensus, even when you have a divided culture.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a18362/dwight-eisenhower-memorial-15016132/?click=esq_more>