I'm with Grandpa there.
If it weren't for Eisenhower, a road trip from coast to coast would still take a month.
The interstate highway system is brilliant for commerce and all, but take a closer look at it. It's basically a military transport system. Early in his career, Eisenhower was charged with driving a convoy of trucks from the east coast to Fort Ord, California. It took almost
two months. Of course, America had a massive rail system that could move men and materiel around the country fairly quickly, but rail systems are fragile. Without a network of highways, you could effectively cut America in half in a strategic sense with a squadron of WWII bombers by hitting railheads and bridges. Eisenhower knew that and immediately set about diversifying America's transport modes. This was not popular with the then-powerful railroad industry. In fact, it spelled their eventual downfall.
Would that happen now? Fuck no. No elected official in America would dare dropkick an industry like that. And even if he wanted to, his party wouldn't allow him to for fear of losing campaign contributions. You could argue that at some point about a month into sweating a cursing his way across the dirt and mud of Flyoverland, Eienhower thought to himself: "If I am ever elected President, I'm going to drop a million miles of cement all over this fucker.", but what he did was pretty outstanding.
Also, telling the military that they couldn't have every toy they wanted right in the middle of the Red Scare was incredibly ballsy. The only reason Eisenhower got away with it was because he was fucking worshipped, but still, it took guts. That's the thing about Eisenhower that most people don't get. They equate him with the true birth of a nuclear-based military, but Eisenhower shitcanned a fuckload of projects.
It helped immensely that he had the credibility of running WWII. That's what gave him the cache to do what he did. But to step back a bit, he managed the greatest military campaign in modern history then helped shepherd one of the greatest economic boom periods in history. He was basically a social progressive, an economic pragmatist, and he came from pacifist roots to boot. Basically, he knew his shit and no one could question him on it. Going over the YouToobs last month, I found this exchange of Kennedy asking his advice during the Cuban Missible Crisis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkzjodKAQhA