undertook an analysis of the mail the General received from the public urging him to become a candidate in the 1948 presidential election. 1 These scholars were not in a position to present the full story of how the study came to be done, nor to explain why such a potentially interesting piece of research was never published.
As a staff member of the Bureau at that time, and the person who set the research project in motion, I can provide a first-hand account of the project's genesis.
The question of why the study was never published is more complex. There can be no definitive answer. Many of the major players are no longer alive. Records were lost, destroyed, or never made. Memories are fallible. Nevertheless the archives contain enough material to suggest that a clash of subcultures or, more accurately, a subculture parallax, resulted in suppression of the research.
Although the mismatch between the General and academia has been documented by Eisenhower's biographers, 2 this episode provides additional material on that mismatch and some of its consequences.
GENESIS AND HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
In 1948, Eisenhower was the quintessential war hero. As happened with Generals Sherman and Grant at the close of the Civil War, the war hero was pressed to become a presidential candidate. The very first overtures came in 1943, 3 and the momentum picked up in 1945. 4 By 1947, public sentiment for Eisenhower had grown to the point that Gallup polls showed him to be the favored candidate among independent voters. 5 During this time, Eisenhower maintained both publicly and privately that he was opposed to the idea of a military man as president of the United States and that he himself had no interest in becoming a candidate. 6 In January 1948, Leonard V. Finder, publisher of the Manchester, New Hampshire Evening Leader, wrote asking Eisenhower to reconsider his position. Eisenhower's reply reiterated his decision and concluded with the statement: " . . . my decision to remove