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Eisenhower has always been the number one, the best president during my lifetime. There were times I wondered if I was if that just wasn't youth speaking. But the more I read about him, the more IKE was ingrained as the best. The there has been the releases from his presidential library lately that none of us knew about. All the stuff he accomplished behind the scenes with no fanfare.
I agree too, the political parties of today are nothing like the one I knew in my younger days, JFK would be laughed out of the Democratic Party. Can you imagine him stating today, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Today most people in America expect they country to do for them while doing nothing for her in return. Can you imagine what the democrats would say about his tax cuts for the filthy rich. About him sending 16,000 troops/advisers to Vietnam and being a very hard cold warrior. He was not one to shy away from using the CIA and other covert organizations to accomplish what he wanted.
To me both IKE and Goldwater reflect the Republican Party of old. IKE also used the covert agencies to keep track of what the Russians were doing and what they were capable. He also held down defense spending to the minimum, to him national defense was the priority, not the toy makers or what he called the military industrial complex. Goldwater told LBJ to either win that damn war or bring the boys home, now! He firmly believed in keeping government out of social issues like abortion, leave it to the woman and as far as gay rights, he is quoted as saying, "You do not have to be straight to shoot straight." A reference to gays in the military, gay marriage wasn't even an idea born yet.
Both were fiscal conservatives, IKE even has a surplus in two of his eight years which brought down the national debt. We had FDR, Truman, IKE, JFK in succession, how lucky of a nation we were. Now we get Obama and Bush the second, what a comedown. Two at best below average presidents if not very poor presidents.