While nothing may seem scarier to my fellow conservatives than four more years on the rutted road to socialism under the Obama Administration, we still must be aware that a majority of American voters are centrists who want nothing more from government than certainty, stability and a greater distance from government control in their daily lives. They vote their family finances, their hopes and their fears. They are weary of being afraid, and wary of rigid ideologues from any extreme.

The Republican nomination campaign has so far been a fruitless quest for a candidate in the mold of President Ronald Reagan and a replay of the trouncing he delivered to the failed administration of President Jimmy Carter. But absent a Reagan-like presence, we need to reach back farther in history to identify a candidate who closely embodies the style and qualities of one of America’s most effective presidents, Dwight David Eisenhower.

Although the Eisenhower White House has long been dismissed by the political left as a do-nothing administration, and criticized by some conservatives for sometimes doing too much, the Eisenhower Administration brought America eight years of peace, prosperity, stability and social advancement.  A skilled and gifted administrator and a political centrist who followed what he called “the middle way,” Eisenhower’s years might seem in retrospect to illustrate the point of a Texas politician who said the middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.

But all of the left and right Monday morning quarterbacking , and inevitable comparison of Eisenhower’s modest style to the elegance of the Kennedy Administration, does not erase the fact that America did “Like Ike.”  His approval ratings of 70 percent spoke volumes about his businesslike, low key national leadership. The general who commanded the liberation of Europe in World War II used the same skills and abilities to lead America to build the Interstate Highway System and the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. There was one brief and relatively mild recession during his two terms in office, and he defied Democrat Southern segregationists in sending troops from the 101^st Airborne Division to protect students integrating a high school in Littlerock, Ark.

President Eisenhower also appointed the first woman ever to serve in the Presidential Cabinet and signed the nation’s first Civil Rights Act in the face of congressional opposition on both sides of the aisle.

Interestingly, Eisenhower’s role in advancing civil rights was downplayed by Democrats who later lavished full credit for civil rights on the former Texas congressman who opposed the bill in 1952 – Lyndon Johnson.

Yet it was in world affairs that Eisenhower’s lower volume middle way worked best in protecting Americans.  As one of only a handful of American presidents who had the experience to earn the title of commander-in-chief,  Eisenhower skillfully guided national defense and diplomacy during the perilous early years of the global Cold War against Communist aggression.  Amazingly, the U.S. military death toll from enemy action during the Eisenhower Administration was 1.

Eisenhower crafted an end to the bloody Korean War, sent U.S. troops to save Lebanon’s legitimate government from a radical overthrow, prevented all out war over control of the Suez Canal, and averted a shooting war in protecting the island nation of Taiwan against a Chinese Communist military invasion.

All of this came during the era when school children learned to dive under the desks when air raid sirens wailed, and the backyard bomb shelter was the latest trend in home improvement projects. Eisenhower walked the perilous line between those who argued for a first strike nuclear attack on Russia and China, and those who believed in unilateral disarmament. Ike picked his battles to win, without blood and devastation.

The middle way agenda wasn’t crafted to curry favor with any one point on the partisan political compass. On any given issue Eisenhower could find himself under criticism from left or right or both. Although liberals disdain Ike’s record on civil rights, they conveniently forget that he appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Conservatives still suffering the effects of judicial activism spawned by the Warren Court do not consider the appointment one of Ike’s better decisions.

Eisenhower’s decision to give statehood to Alaska and Hawaii was proven to be a winner for all of America, although political partisans were surprised when Alaska eventually went Republican and Hawaii fell into the Democrat sphere.

Until reading EISENHOWER – The White House Years, by Jim Newton, much of my understanding about the Eisenhower Administration was limited to childhood memories and snippets of history. Ike’s eight years in the White House coincided with my time in elementary and junior high schools. Newton’s book filed many of the gaps and refreshed my early impressions of Ike as a grandfatherly figure who came to define my image of what it means for a candidate to be “presidential.”

Measured against the standards of style, conduct, leadership and effectiveness set by Eisenhower, President Obama doesn’t come close.  Eisenhower trusted the American people to set the agenda from the grass roots, as opposed to imposing public policy from the top. The country liked Ike because he pursued an agenda to move the nation where the citizens wanted to go. In sharp contrast, Obama divides the nation by incessantly trying to drive the country by command and control on all fronts at once.

Had community organizer Obama been trained as a military commander, a state governor or even as the chief executive officer of a business enterprise, he would know what Dwight Eisenhower learned from experience: Pick your battles prudently; Don’t try to do everything at once; Make sure available resources meet your objectives, and that your lines of supply are long enough. And most importantly, assure the well-being, safety and morale of those you lead.

Effective leadership doesn’t come from physical attributes, manner of speaking, personal likeability or doctrinaire adherence to ideological purity. Leadership comes from the solid, common-sense insights and instincts born not from academic exercise and theory but from day-to-day experience in the real worlds of commerce, industry, defense and diplomacy.      

Among the current crop of potential Republican presidential nominees, one candidate stands out as most consistently meeting Eisenhower’s standard for what many voters perceive as  presidential .

Gov. Mitt Romney, as Eisenhower before him, isn’t easily labeled by ideological purists, in part because the records of both men show a common ability to lead pragmatically and strategically, even in the absence of a legislative majority. Both figures share the strength of convictions to put the national interest ahead of political expediency.

As a conservative, my heart wants to elect Speaker Newt Gingrich. But my head and history tell me that the assured defeat of President Obama demands the nomination and election of a Republican candidate who will attract tens of millions of American voters who have come to fear and distrust their government, and who care little for political ideologies.

I learned about the importance of the American centrist voter in my first brush with politics in 1964. Still too young to vote, I walked into the local Republican Party headquarters and volunteered to work for the election of Barry Goldwater. I was put to work as a precinct captain in an older neighborhood, populated by a high percentage of Republican senior citizens who would seemingly be ready to elect Goldwater.  I was shocked to find it wasn’t an easy sell on the doorsteps and in the living rooms of those voters.  Their conservative beliefs were succumbing to their fears of what Goldwater might do to their Social Security checks.

We can’t afford to repeat that experience in 2012. It will take a strong coalition of conservatives, moderates and independents to defeat Obama’s billion-dollar campaign machine and his lock on the hearts of major media. In my view, the only candidate on the horizon capable of bringing together these diverse voters is Mitt Romney, a man in mold of Ike who is most likely to restore a federal government we can believe in once again.