ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the use of affective or fast thinking presidential rhetoric to construct the Truman Doctrine and cast the Cold War as an anticommunist crusade. It explores the unintended consequences of this construction in spurring demagogic competition between the Democratic and Republican parties. The chapter also explores the Dwight Eisenhower administration's slow-thinking restraint as it reacted to the budgetary and military costs of an open-ended containment by extricating the United States (US) from the Korean War and pursuing a more balanced approach to Cold War struggles. This stance intensified in his second term as he limited calls for increased military spending or involvement in regional conflicts, despite the construction by Democrats and intellectuals, on the Gaither Committee, of crises over missile gaps and Sputnik. Yet, even as his own personal standing enabled him to resist the pressures, the crises set the stage for revived John F. Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson crusading over the next decade.
