The son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower was among 186 former American ambassadors who declared support for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on 4 October 2004.
John Eisenhower, 82, said he had voted Republican for five decades but registered as an independent after the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. He faulted the Bush administration for arrogance and disdain for allied opinion, contrasting it with his father's diligent effort to keep Bonn, Paris, and London aligned during the Cold War.
The elder Eisenhower, supreme allied commander for the Normandy landings and president from 1953 to 1961, had treated European consensus as a core obligation. The younger Eisenhower made his position public in an open letter published by New Hampshire's Union Leader on 28 September, writing that today's Republican Party had grown unfamiliar and had shed its sense of foreign-policy responsibility.
Most of the 186 signatories were Democrats, career diplomats, or former political appointees, though the group noted that all had served administrations of both parties. Walter Mondale, vice president under Jimmy Carter, and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, once ambassador to India, were also on the list. Organizers said four times as many former diplomats were openly backing Kerry as had supported Al Gore in 2000.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.