Other
Personalities of the Time Period
Herb Brown’s play includes either references
to or characters who interacted with the other
historical characters listed below.
Robert Taft
Herb Brown’s play focuses in part on the man who
stood in the way of Robert Taft achieving control of the Republican
Party—Thomas Dewey. In that sense, Taft
is an “off-stage” character that motivates Dewey’s handling of Eisenhower and
Nixon. His son and grandson, as noted
below, continued the family political presence, although not necessarily
reflecting all of his values.
Robert Alphonso Taft was born on
Not having to
struggle financially, Taft attended the best of schools. He attended school in
In addition to
his law practice, Taft became the assistant counsel with the United States Food
Administration in 1917 and 1918. It was there that he became friends with Herbert Hoover. He assisted
His endeavors
made an impression on the public, as he achieved a variety of moderate reforms
and worked to enhance economic efficiency throughout his state. By the early
1930s, Taft gained recognition as a politician who struggled to improve
Taft lost his
father in 1930. Losses continued with the onset of the Great Depression. His
law practice survived along with his personal fortune; however, devastation hit
his political circle. He had been elected to the state senate in 1930, but
failed to be reelected in 1932. His friend, President Hoover, and other friends
in the
By 1935 Taft recognized the need to help
the underprivileged. He then began to endorse federal relief programs,
unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. He also supported government
regulation of the banking and securities industries. Still relatively liberal
on those issues as well as government-regulated collective bargaining, he hoped
to win the approval and backing of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
However, Taft
did not approve of the lengths to which President Roosevelt was going to
alleviate the depression. While he acknowledged that
With his new
goal and direction, he began a crusade by reorganizing the Cincinnati
Republican organization. Confident of his ideals, he ran for the U.S. Senate in
1937 and won an easy victory over the incumbent, Robert Bulkley.
Regarding
foreign affairs, Taft stood squarely in the American tradition of Washington, Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. His
quest ultimately set the stage to seek a national role as president. He was
reelected to the U.S. Senate in 1944 and again in 1950. During that time, Taft
continued to be devoted to American institutions, yet expressed strong antiwar
convictions. Due to his hard work, personal integrity and strong influence in
policy making, Taft became known as a true conservative who was, nevertheless,
receptive to new ideas. Taft continued to attack the initiatives of Roosevelt,
then Truman.
His focus lay on such domestic matters as federal aid, housing, medical care
and education, which he felt were more important than foreign policy. The
Taft-Hartley Act (co-sponsored by Taft), which set up controls over labor
unions, was passed over President Harry S. Truman's veto in
June 1947. Truman denounced it as a "slave-labor bill."
Taft's failure
to win the 1948
Republican nomination may be attributable to his reputation as an isolationist.
He was notorious for condemning other politicians who supported wars, while he
continually opposed
Before World War II, Taft was a
leading isolationist, but the experience of that war led him to support
establishment of the United Nations afterward. Wavering between two opposing
views, such as isolationism and internationalism, did not gain credibility for
Taft. Therefore, if he had any hopes at all to return as a candidate for
election, he would have to prove otherwise. His slightly modified views came to
life with the publication of his book, A Foreign Policy for Americans
(1951), at which time he became the ranking Republican member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
The media
jumped in to label Taft as "unelectable" as president, averring that
he was too dull and seemed to change his mind almost on a daily basis. In 1952 Taft was considered to
be a frontrunner, but he was eclipsed by war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Robert Taft
stood for the GOP presidential nomination three times, but never received the
nomination. He served in the U.S. Senate for 14 years and became Senate
majority leader just before his death in
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1640.html
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
While clearly a pointed column, the following
nonetheless sums up clearly where Robert Taft stood within the political arena
of the 1940s and 1950s. Given the more
internationalist stance of the Eisenhower-Nixon team, and its re-election in
1956, Taft’s cause and beliefs represented a minority of Americans. And it clearly clashes with today’s dominant
leadership in the Republican party.
Joseph R. Stromberg, column: The Old Cause,
. . .
ROBERT TAFT
AND REPUBLICAN MEMORY
This brings me back to
Robert A. Taft, Senator for
Taft came into
the Senate in 1938 and rose to be a major spokesmen
for the Republican Old Right. He was a constant critic of the New Deal's
centralization, bureaucracy, administrative "law," and interference
with markets. In foreign affairs, he stood squarely in the American
non-interventionist tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.
This led him to condemn
Taft's views
survived World War II and shaped his response to the emerging Cold War. He
tried to cut funding for the Marshall Plan and voted against the NATO pact in
1949. He asserted that NATO made war more likely, although he could never have
imagined that NATO would begin a career of aggression after its alleged reason
for existence had disappeared.
When President
Truman unilaterally and post-constitutionally took us into war in
Taft was not
perfect, but he towers above most of his Republican successors. (He waffled far
too much with regard to Asian policy.) His views can be found in the Congressional
Record and in published speeches and articles. They are most accessible in
his little book, A Foreign Policy for Americans (1951). There Taft
underscored his deeply held belief that a nation's foreign and domestic
policies are inextricably entangled and that foreign policy does not exist in a
separate box unconnected with American life.
This sense of
the unity of American policy led Taft to any number of conclusions which
today's Republicans would find odd or irrelevant. After all, he began his book
with the statement that "the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must
be to protect the liberty of the people of the
He continued:
"Only second to liberty is the maintenance of peace." Taft was deeply
aware of the costs of war – in lives, in economic hardship, and in promoting
the growth of an all-powerful state inimical to republican liberty. He pointed
out that permanent military conscription – instituted by the Truman
administration – is "the greatest limitation on individual freedom in
peacetime the people have ever had imposed on them." Permanent
mobilization would lead to bureaucratic inroads on American liberty that might
prove irreversible. At the same time, the strain on the economy would bring
about inflation and other distortions.
Behind the
world-saving program of the Democratic party and the
"internationalist" Republicans, Taft saw a particular philosophy of
life. As he put it: "There are good many Americans who talk about an
American century in which
Taft's little
book is long out of print. One sees it occasionally in used book stores. If
anyone has a copy to spare, I suggest sending it to George Dubbya,
Dan Quayle, and others who may be needing a refresher course in what an
American foreign policy might look like.
Joseph R.
Stromberg has been writing for libertarian publications since 1973, including The
Individualist, Reason,
the Journal of
Libertarian Studies, Libertarian Review, and the Agorist Quarterly,
and is completing a set of essays on
From: http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s071399.html
|
TAFT, Robert, Jr., (1917 - 1993) |
Senate
Years of Service: 1971-1976
Party: Republican
|
|
TAFT, Robert, Jr., (son of Robert Alphonso Taft, grandson of President William Howard Taft, and grandnephew of Charles Phelps Taft), a Representative and a Senator from Ohio; born in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, February 26, 1917; attended Cincinnati public and private schools; graduated from Yale University in 1939 and from Harvard University Law School in 1942; during the Second World War served as an officer in the United States Navy 1942-1946; admitted to the bar in 1946 and commenced the practice of law in Cincinnati, Ohio; elected to Ohio house of representatives in 1955, 1957, 1959 and 1961, and was majority floor leader 1961-1962; elected as a Republican to the Eighty-eighth Congress (January 3, 1963-January 3, 1965); was not a candidate for renomination to the Eighty-ninth Congress in 1964, but was an unsuccessful Candidate for election to the United States Senate; elected to the Ninetieth Congress; reelected to the Ninety-first Congress (January 3, 1967-January 3, 1971); was not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives but was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1970; served from January 3, 1971, until his resignation December 28, 1976; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1976; practiced law in Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.; lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, until his death on December 7, 1993; interment in Indian Hill Episcopal Church Cemetery.
Bibliography
Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives; Ross, Ishbel. An American Family: The Tafts.
Robert Alphonso Taft II (born January 8, 1942) is the Republican
Governor of Ohio
(since 1999). He
was born in Boston,
Massachusetts.
He attended Yale University,
graduating in 1963, just a year ahead of Sen. Joseph Lieberman;
after Yale he received an M.A. from Princeton University
in 1967 and then a law degree
from the University of
Cincinnati in 1976.
He was elected
governor in 1998,
defeating Democrat Lee Fisher 50%-45% and
reelected in 2002,
defeating Democrat Tim Hagan
58%-38%. He has been Governor since January 1999.
Prior to his
election as Governor, Taft served as Ohio's Secretary of State (1991-1998), Hamilton County
Commissioner (1981-1990), and in the State
House of Representatives (1976 - 1981). In 1990, Taft was
elected secretary of state, defeating incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.
In the 1994 election for
Taft's family
has been involved in United States Republican politics for over a century. His
great-great-grandfather Alphonso Taft was
Secretary of War,
Attorney General,
and an ambassador; his great-grandfather William Howard Taft
was President of the
United States and Chief Justice of the
United States; and his grandfather (Robert Alphonso
Taft I) and his father (Robert Taft Jr.)
were both U.S. Senators.
His first cousin, William Howard Taft
IV was a high official in the
Bob Taft is also related to current president George Walker Bush
at least three different ways, ranging from 8th-cousin-once-removed to
11th-cousin-once-removed, as well as being a 9th cousin of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Earl Warren
In contrast to Robert A. Taft, Earl
Warren fell within the more liberal wing of the Republican Party. While it is clear that he had a special
relationship with Dewey, it is unclear how much of Dewey’s boy
http://www.ca-ra.org/history3.htm
http://www.mnc.net/norway/warren.htm
from Great Norwegians web site:
http://www.mnc.net/norway/
Earl
Warren was born in
The young lawyer became a deputy district attorney in
Prior to gaining the governorship,
Sparking
enmity within some circles to this day was
A trivia question nowadays is: "Who was Republican Thomas Dewey's vice
presidential running mate 1948?" The answer is Earl Warren — whose keen
ambition was to become president of the
As Knight (the lieutenant governor under
A
week after he became chief justice,
The year after he became chief justice,
As
a result of the
In
public statements, politicians opposed to the chief justice were brutal.
Alabama Gov. George Wallace snorted that
While
the far-right was most vocal in assailing
In
1963, the "Warren Commission" was formed by President Lyndon Johnson.
A
"High on the facade of the majestic Supreme Court building in
At
a 1989 dinner in
Legal commentators generally give him high ratings for his juridical
achievements. However, there is probably no chief justice of the
— Roger M. Grace
Wendell Lewis Willkie
In the 1920s, Willkie
was a Democrat. He shifted to the
Republicans in the 1930s, but his disagreements with the Democrats were fewer
than with many of his fellow Republicans, especially Robert Taft and especially
in international affairs. Still, he
garnered more Republican votes than other Republicans. Given the media support for his campaign
(Henry and Clare Booth Luce of TIME and LIFE, and
http://www.usfamily.net/web/timwalker/sitedocs/home.html
[Content provided by the Encyclopedia Americana] [bold-faced editing added]
Willkie, Wendell (Lewis) (1892-1944), American
lawyer, utility executive, and political leader. Willkie
was born in
While
in Akron Willkie attracted the attention of Bernard
C. Cobb who, in 1929, formed the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, a
utility holding company operating in 11 states. That same year, Willkie was invited to join the
Willkie's economic associations,
frequent speeches, and appealing personality subsequently made him attractive
to business leaders within the Republican party, and
ultimately led to his serious consideration by that party as a possible
presidential nominee. Across the country his amateur supporters began
conducting an enthusiastic grass-roots campaign; in June 1940, at the
Republican Convention in
Throughout the
autumn of 1940, Willkie waged a vigorous, though
uncoordinated, campaign against
After the
election Willkie advocated a policy of "loyal
opposition"![[em_dash]](Otherpersonalities_files/image012.gif){kind=small}
support
for the president in program areas crucial to national defense, with partisan
criticism of him in other fields. He attempted to maintain his Republican party
leadership while supporting the administration's program of assistance to the
Allies. But his vociferous opposition to all isolationists lost him the support
of the conservative forces within the Republican party. After America's
entrance into World War II, Willkie became the
Republicans' leading advocate of postwar international cooperation. He made a
trip around the world as the president's personal envoy and later wrote a
best-selling book, One World
(1943), a ringing declaration of the need for understanding and cooperation
among the people and leaders of all nations. Eventually, Willkie led the Republican party to take a public stand supporting
membership in a postwar organization. As a result of his activities, however,
so many party leaders were alienated that Willkie
found he no longer had control of the GOP organization. When he again ran for
the presidential nomination in 1944, he was defeated in the Wisconsin primary
election and promptly withdrew from the race. Thereafter, his influence within
the Republican party declined rapidly. Willkie
suffered a heart attack in August 1944 and died in New York City on October 8.
Willkie, as a corporation
president and a one-time Democrat who became the Republican presidential
candidate, is unique in American political history. Although he never held public office, he made the Republican party more
receptive to international cooperation and was a valuable force for national
unity in the realm of foreign policy during World War II.
Donald
Bruce Johnson
University of
From http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0419920-00&templatename=/article/article.html
See also: http://www.usfamily.net/web/timwalker/
Helen Gahagan Douglas
Those who have a visceral dislike of Richard Nixon often point
to his defeat of Helen Gahagan Douglas in the
senatorial election in California in 1950 as an example of how unscrupulous and
devious Nixon could be. In fact, Nixon
did little more than other Democrats had done to Douglas in the primary. “Negative campaigning” and “red-baiting”
actually antedated the 1950 election, stretching back at least to the 1930s
when business groups coordinated a successful attack on California candidate
Upton Sinclair in 1934. (See: http://www.socalhistory.org/Biographies/upton_sinclair.htm)
[bold-faced editing added]
Born on November 25,
1900, in Boonton, New Jersey, Helen Gahagan was a
natural performer. Her professional life began on the stage, where she became a
Broadway star at age twenty-two and also (by one critic's estimate) "ten
of the twelve most beautiful women in America." After appearing in a quick
succession of plays, she left the dramatic theater for opera, returning only
for special occasions. On one such occasion she met her future husband, Melvyn
Douglas. With Douglas, she moved to California in the 1930s. Once there she
made her only film, a science fiction picture called She.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
It was also in
California, surrounded by the misery of displaced "Okies,"
that she became interested in politics. She worked with the Farm Security
Administration, becoming friends with John Steinbeck and Eleanor Roosevelt in
the process. Thus initiated into politics, she ran for and was elected
Democratic National Committeewoman from California. In 1944 she ran for the
United States House of Representatives and won. Her district was the Fourteenth
and consisted of much of Los Angeles.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
In the House, Douglas
was a thoughtful and consistent New Deal
Democrat, who worked tirelessly for liberal programs. A member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee and an alternate delegate to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, she was heavily involved with postwar foreign relations.
She was also a strong proponent of domestic programs such as price
stabilization and rent control. For California she was a forceful advocate for
federally controlled oil drilling and protecting the water rights of small
farms. She served in the House for three terms until 1950, when she sought the
Senate seat held by Sheridan Downey.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
After a particularly
nasty primary she faced Republican Congressman Richard Nixon in the general
election. The campaign was destined to be one of the nation's most famous--and
infamous. Nixon, waging an inspiring red-baiting campaign, was unrelenting in
his charges. If he never actually called her a communist, saying she was "pink right down to her underwear"
was not a fashion critique. His legions were yet less restrained. Murray Chotiner,
Nixon's campaign manager, printed an infamous flyer that was handed out at
rallies. Printed on pink paper (and, thus, forever known as the "pink
sheet"), it more than implied a connection between Douglas and communism.
Other Nixon campaign
workers called Douglas a communist when they approached strangers on the
street. They called her a communist when they telephoned thousands of homes the
night before the election. In an era
when the nation's fear was palpable, the strategy was a great success. On
election day Nixon won handily. Douglas never again ran for public office. She
did not, however, leave the spotlight. A tireless public speaker and activist,
Douglas lobbied for liberal causes until her death on June 28, 1980, in New
York.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Additional information on Douglas can be found in her autobiography A Full Life: Helen Gahagan Douglas (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982) and the biography by Ingrid Winther Scobie, Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas, A Life (New York: Oxford, 1992). Her papers as well as photographs are held by the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives.
Photo Captions
|
Left |
|
Right |
Top: Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, just after voting in the 1950 election.
Top: Studio portrait of Douglas taken during her acting career, 1930s.
Middle: Eleanor Roosevelt, Melvyn Douglas, and Helen Gahagan Douglas visiting a California migrant labor camp, 1941.
Bottom: Douglas, as an delegate to the United Nations, meeting with war orphans, 1946.
Middle: Outraged by rapid inflation occuring just after World War II, Douglas led congressional efforts for price controls.
Bottom: Douglas, campaigning for a seat in the U. S. Senate, 1950.
Description of papers of Helen Gahagan Douglas
Description of photographs of Helen Gahagan Douglas Collection
From: http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/exhibit/hgdbio.htm
Alger Hiss
By most accounts—including Richard Nixon’s—it was Richard Nixon’s dogged attack on Alger
Hiss that raised the California politician’s profile.
Scholars still debate
whether Hiss was guilty of spying; recently released documents in
Russia(1995) have not clarified the case
all that much. (See below)
Note: The following is from a very solid web site, Famous Trials by Douglas O.
Linder (2005); the home page is at: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
For the Hiss Trial, see:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hiss.html
HUAC member (Nixon,
Investigator Robert Stripling, and Chairman Thomas) with Hiss files
Alger Hiss at first hearing,
For other images, see: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissimages.html
On the occasion of Hiss’ death: http://www.salon.com/media/media961119.html
What
if they gave a funeral for a cold-war icon — and no one came?
By
DAN KENNEDY
by
the time Alger Hiss died, on Friday at the age of 92, just about everyone
conceded that he was guilty; that the brilliant, suave, well-educated,
well-connected lawyer-diplomat had indeed been a Communist and a spy for the
Soviet Union during the 1930s and '40s. Allen Weinstein's massive 1978 book,
"Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case," had convinced even pro-Hiss
liberals of that.
Hiss,
whose misfortunes had once evoked such passions, and whose innocence was at one
time an article of faith in left-wing circles, not only died without the
vindication he had long sought, but also without much hope of a posthumous
reconsideration. Indeed, just last spring the National Security Agency released
old KGB files that showed Hiss was almost certainly a Soviet agent who supplied
the Kremlin with crucial details of the U.S. negotiating position at the Yalta
conference of 1945. Hiss' defenders have dwindled to a small handful of true
believers; their arguments have taken on the strident tones of the conspiracy
theorist.
Indeed,
the front-page obits that appeared on Saturday in such supposed bastions of the
liberal establishment as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the
Boston Globe were striking in their dispassionate acceptance of Hiss' guilt (a
"near-certainty," wrote Mark Feeney in the Globe). Even more striking
is that not a single editorialist has yet seen fit to weigh in on the case in
any of the three papers. (The Times today did offer an op-ed by Sam Tanenhaus, who's writing a sympathetic biography of Hiss'
persecutor, Whittaker Chambers.) And on the ultraconservative editorial pages
of the Wall Street Journal, no one has bothered to offer so much as a pro forma
"we told you so." Time magazine, Chambers's
former employer, ran a brief piece alongside a thumb-sucker by columnist Lance
Morrow; Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom Watch" awarded Hiss the big
cosmic down arrow.
Too
bad, in a way. Because the mid-century showdown between Hiss and
fellow-traveler-turned-accuser Whittaker Chambers — and, more to the point,
between Hiss and a young congressman named Richard Nixon — was a supremely
important episode in a centuries-old culture war that even today shows no signs
of being settled any time soon. The truth, though, has robbed the Hiss-Nixon
confrontation of its controversy, and thus of much of its mythic power.
Chambers
was a shambling wreck of a man, an ex-Communist who'd become a writer for Henry
Luce's rabidly anti-Communist Time magazine, when, in 1948, he leveled a
spectacular charge: that he and Hiss had served together as party members in
the 1930s, and that Hiss had supplied him with numerous secret documents. The
patrician Hiss, a former top State Department official, a protégé of Supreme
Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, was an unlikely villain. He denied the
charges, and so did most liberals. "Suspecting Alger Hiss was somehow, on
the face of it, indecent," the journalist-historian Garry Wills wrote in
the New York Review of Books in 1978.
But
Chambers eventually triumphed, and in the bizarrest
way. He led investigators to his Maryland pumpkin patch, where he'd hidden film
of the documents Hiss had given him, produced on a typewriter traced to Hiss.
The statute of limitations for espionage had expired, but Hiss was tried for
perjury. Following a first trial that ended in a hung jury, he was convicted at
a second trial in 1950. He served nearly four years in prison.
The
driving force behind the investigation was Nixon, then a first-term Republican
on the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Imagine the
impression Hiss, who moved in the highest circles with ease and grace, must
have made on Nixon, even then a bitter man who nursed the poverty of his youth
like an infected sore, and who despised those he perceived as his social
superiors.
Tom
Wicker, in his biography of Nixon, "One of Us" (1991), relates a flip
remark Hiss reportedly made to Nixon that must have cut to the bone: "I
graduated from Harvard. I heard your school was Whittier." If Hiss had
intended to ensure Nixon's undying hatred, he couldn't have done better — and
Nixon's own writings on Hiss betray not just his belief in Hiss' guilt, but his
overwhelming sense of resentment. Hiss "was rather insolent toward
me," an angry Nixon wrote in a memo, "and from that time my suspicion
concerning him continued to grow."
Nixon
was perfectly clear in understanding the real significance of the Hiss
investigation. Even putting aside the serious crimes Hiss almost surely
committed, his case stood as a classic example of the populist rabble rising up
against the cultural elite, whom they suspect — sometimes rightly, sometimes
not — of having secret plans in store for them that will not be to their
liking.
"Alger
Hiss was just the perfect symbol," Columbia University history professor
Alan Brinkley was quoted as saying in the New York Times' Hiss obit. "He
epitomized everything that the reigning Democratic, liberal, elitist
establishment seemed to be. Bringing him down was a way of bringing the whole
thing down."
It's
a theme that goes back to the late 1700s, when the agrarian Jeffersonians
wrested power from those effete Federalists; to the 1830s, when Andrew Jackson
and his supporters dismantled the Bank of the United States; to the 1890s, when
William Jennings Bryan ran against the Eastern establishment banking interests
that were emblematic of the modernity he loathed. And this populist resentment
continues to have considerable power, erupting in strange ways in the
presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, on Rush Limbaugh's radio
show (which regularly lampoons "elitists" in the Clinton administration),
and in the paranoid delusions of the far right about the Trilateral Commission,
black helicopters, and secret "Zionist" plots.
Allen
Weinstein once attributed Hiss' remarkable staying power to the putrescence of
his enemies. "For Hiss, generations come and go, and since his accusers
were [J. Edgar] Hoover, Chambers and Nixon, he can always revive his own
myth," he told The New Yorker's David Remnick in
1986. Well, Hoover, Chambers, and Nixon are gone; and now so is Hiss, too.
Sort
of.
When
I did an AltaVista search for "Alger Hiss," the very first item I
turned up was the
Web site of a band by that name. "Alger Hiss grafts arty
harshness onto modernist progressive rock. Or maybe modernist progressive rock
onto arty harshness," the promotional copy effuses. No explanation for the
name, but clearly the mythic power of the Hiss case, though diminished, still
lingers — albeit in strangely mutated forms.
Dan
Kennedy is the media reporter for the Boston Phoenix.
Bookmark: http://www.salon1999.com/media/mediacircus.html
See http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navasky.html for a critical review of a book concluding Hiss was guilty of perjury.
See also: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/aboutus.html The
Alger Hiss Story The
Search for the Truth; http://history1900s.about.com/library/prm/blalgerhiss1.htm?terms=Alger+Hiss Alger
Hiss: Spy?
Senator Joe McCarthy
Born in a small, close-knit Irish farming community in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on November 14, 1909, Joseph McCarthy dropped out of school at age 14. Six years later, he crammed a four-year high school program into one year and in 1930 was admitted to Marquette University. He received his law degree in 1935, and in 1939 was elected a Wisconsin circuit court judge. During World War II, McCarthy served as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. In 1944, he lost a campaign for the U.S. Senate. His next try came two years later, when he challenged Sen. Robert M. LaFollette for the Republican nomination. He won, and in the fall became the junior senator from Wisconsin.
His early years in the Senate were unimpressive, but in 1949, with several U.S. Cold War setbacks and an increasingly anti-communist political atmosphere at home, McCarthy found a cause. In February 1950, in Wheeling, West Virginia, he made the first of a series of claims that he had the names of "known communists" who were in the employ of the State Department. It was the beginning of a personal witch hunt for communists in the government that lasted for more than five years. McCarthy rarely provided any solid evidence to back up his claims, but in the political climate of the time his accusations and subsequent investigations nonetheless ended many a career and damaged a good number of lives.
After winning re-election in 1952, McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, a position he used to launch many of his investigations of government officials and agencies. He did not shy away from questioning the integrity of people such as George C. Marshall, or even President Eisenhower. The latter disliked McCarthy intensely but refused to "get in the gutter with him" and never denounced the senator publicly. However, by 1953 a seemingly out-of-control McCarthy was making many enemies. His investigation of the activities of an Army dentist, Maj. Irving Peress, eventually led to his downfall. In 1954, the Army launched its counterattack, charging that McCarthy was seeking preferential treatment for a consultant, David Schine, who in 1953 had been drafted into the Army. Eventually McCarthy's own subcommittee decided to hold hearings on the matter, the Army-McCarthy hearings. The televised hearings fully exposed McCarthy as irresponsible and dishonest. In December 1954, the Senate voted to censure him. McCarthy never repented, but he quickly descended into irrelevance and alcoholism. He died of a liver ailment in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957, at age 47.
Election postcard 1946 “McCarthy for Senator” Marine, WW II (top); circuit court judge (middle); Marine intelligence officer (bottom)
From: http://www.apl.org/history/mccarthy/photos.html
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
--a brief
excerpt from Richard H. Rovere's Senator
Joe McCarthy
The late Joseph R. McCarthy, a United States Senater from Wisconsin, was in many ways the most gifted demagogue ever bred on these shores. No bolder seditionist ever moved among us--nor any politician with a surer, swifter access to the dark places of the American mind. The major phase of McCanhy's career was mercifully short. It began in 1950, three years after he had taken his seat in the Senate, where he had seemed a dim and inconsiderable figure. It ended in 1954, when the Senate passed a resolution of censure against him. That was three years before his death at the age of fony-eight. Both his rise and his fall were accomplished with breath-taking speed. At the start of 1950, he was a jackstraw in Washington. Then he uncovered Communism--almost by inadvertence, as Columbus discovered America, as James Marshall discovered California gold. By the spring of the year, he was a towering figure, and from then on, except for a few brief weeks early in that summer, no man was closer than he to the center of American consciousness or more central to the world's consciousness of America. He filled, almost to the letter, the classic role of the corsair of democracy, described twentyfour hundred years ago by Aristophanes, who in The Knights had Demosthenes describe the future of an incredulous sausage-seller in whose very coarseness and vulgarity the great connoisseur of both irony and integrity discerned "a promise and an inward consciousness of greatness":
Now mean and urregarded; but tomorrow
The mightiest of the mighty, Lord of Athens....
The sovereign and ruler of them all,
Of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies;
You shall trample down the Senate under foot
Confound and crush the generals and commanders.
Through the
first part of the decade, McCarthy was all of these things, and then he found
the Senate and the generals and commanders rising up against him, and he
collapsed. His decline was more difficult to account for than his ascent. He
suffered defeats but not destruction. Nothing of a really fatal consequence had
happened. He was in a long and sweaty rumble before television cameras in the
spring; in the late summer, a Senate.c committee
recommended that he be censured; and in the winter he was censured--or, in the
language of the resolution, "condemned" for conduct that "tended
to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." But other Senators, less
powerful than he, had been censured and gone on to greater triumphs--among
them, an earlier Senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette,
whose son and namesake McCarthy had defeated in 1946. (In the year of
McCarthy's death, the Senate voted the elder and censured La Follette one of the five greatest men ever to grace the
chamber, the other four being Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and
Robert A. Taft.) Still he had five years on stage, and he was at stage center
almost all of that time. He walked, then, with a heavy tread over large parts
of the Constitution of the United States, and he cloaked his own gross figure
in the sovereignty it asserts and the powers it distributes. He usurped executive
and judicial authority whenever the fancy struck him. It struck him often. He
held two Presidents captive--or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the
United States have ever been held; in their conduct of the nation's affairs,
Harry S Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, from early 1950 through late 1954,
could never act without weighing the effect of their plans upon McCarthy and
the forces he led, and in consequence there were times when, because of this
man, they could not act at all. He had enormous impact on American foreign
policy at a time when that policy bore heavily on the course of world history,
and American diplomacy might bear a different aspect today if McCarthy had
never lived. In the Senate, his headquarters and his hiding place, he assumed
the functions of the Committee of the Whole; he lived in thoroughgoing contempt
of the Congress of which he was a member, of the rules it had made for itself,
and--whenever they ran contrary to his purposes--of the laws it had enacted for
the general welfare. At the start of 1950, McCarthy was an empty vessel to the
general public outside Wisconsin. There he was known as a cheap politician of
vulgar, Samboyant ways and a casual approach to the
public interest. It is unlikely that one in a hundred Americans knew of his
existence. He was a voice making no sound in the wilderness. Then, on February
9, 1950, he made a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in the course of which he
said that the Department of State was full of Communists and that he and the Secretary
of State knew their names. Later there was some dispute (there was always
dispute whenever he said anything) as to whether he had stated that there were
205, 81, 57, or "a lot" of Communists, but the number was of slight
importance alongside what he insisted was the fact that Communists "known
to the Secretary of State" were "still working and making
policy." A Senate committee was immediately appointed to look into his
startling assertions. It was the first of five investigations, held by four different
committees, to be concerned exclusively with the problem of whether Senator
McCarthy was telling the t-ruth, about others or, mutatis
mutandis, others were telling the truth about Senator McCarthy. In the
spring of 1950, only the first question was considered. Through March and April
and May, when Communist power in the Far East was being mobilized for the war
in Korea, life in Washington, political life in the United States, seemed
largely a matter of determining whether American diplomacy was in the hands of
traitors. Little of importance was learned except that McCarthy had little of
importance to say. He had been talking through his hat; if there were
Communists in the State Department, he did not know who they were.
Nevertheless, he had cued himself in. The lights played over him. Eyes were
upon him. Tho show was his. Within a matter of weeks,
his name was known and heard everywhere, and his heavy, menacing countenance
was familiar to newspaper readers, to moviegoers, to television viewers everywhere.
Henceforth it would be hard to find anyone who was unaware of him. And he
became, quickly, an eponym. Barely a month after Wheeling,
"McCarthyism" was coined by Herbert Block, the cartoonist who signs
himself "Herblock" in the Washington Post.
The word was an oath at first--a synonym for the hatefulness of baseless
defamation, or mudslinging. (In the Herblock cartoon,
"McCarthyism" was crudely lettered on a barrd
of mud, which teetered on a tower of ten buckets of the stuff.) Later it
became, for some, an affirmation. The term survives both as oath and as affirmationnot very usefully as either, one is bound to sayand has far broader applications than at first. Now it
is evocative of an almost undifferetiated evil to a
large number of Americans and of a positive good to a somewhat smaller number.
To the one, whatever is illiberal, repressive, reactionary, obscurantist,
anti-intellectual, totalitarian, or merely swinish will for some time to come
be McCarthyism, while to the other it means nothing more or less than a
militant patriotism. "To many Americans, McCarthyism is Americanism,"
Fulton Lewis, Jr., a radio commentator and the official McCarthyite
muezzin, said. Once the word caught on, McCarthy himself became intrigued with
it. "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled," he told a
Wisconsin audience in 1952, and, sure enough, there was the eponym, with his
hairy arms bare to the biceps. That year he published a book of snippets from
his speeches and his testimony before committees, and it bore the modest title
of McCarthyism: The Fight for America. There is injustice as well as
imprecision in both meanings; if patriotism can hardly be reduced to tracking
down Marxists in the pastry kitchens of the Pentagon or the bindery of the Govemment Printing Office, neither is the late Senator's sumame to be placed at the center of all the constellations
of political unrighteousness. He was not, for example, totalitarian in any
significant sense, or even reactionary. These terms apply mainly to the social
and economic order, and the social and economic order didn't interest him in
the slightest. If he was anything at all in the realm of ideas, principles,
doctrines, he was a species of nihilist; he was an essentially destructive
force, a revolutionist without any revelutionary
vision, a rebel without a cause.
From: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/mccarthy-bio.html
Edward R. Murrow on Joe McCarthy:
See the following links:
http://www.evesmag.com/murrow.htm (quotation below)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/murrow_e.html (PBS American Masters: Edward R. Murrow)
We
will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an
age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we
are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can
deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the
result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his
responsibility.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Karl E. Mundt
Karl E. Mundt chaired the
Army-McCarthy hearings. See below for
another web page on the Red Scare.
http://www.departments.dsu.edu/library/archive/index.htm
Native of
Both Karl and Mary taught in the
In the spring of 1936, he resigned his college position to devote himself full
time to business. In 1938 Karl Mundt was elected to
the House of Representatives where he served five terms, after which he served
four terms as a U.S. Senator. With his tenure, he held membership in some of
the Senate’s most influential committees.1
Mundt recognized the dangers of communism and worked
to establish controls against communist activities in this country. He was a
conservation and wildlife enthusiast, which led to his legislation establishing
the National Endangered Species List. At home, Mundt
was an effective supporter of
As a culmination of his career, the Karl E. Mundt
Library was built and dedicated
Karl E. Mundt was a progressive leader who worked to
protect the available resources of the country while utilizing them to their
full potential. Senator Mundt served in the United
States Senate longer than any other South Dakotan to date. In 1969, Senator Mundt suffered a stroke. He died
Preserving
"A Fair Chance For a Free People" - Karl E. Mundt
At the bottom of this web page on this site (http://www.departments.dsu.edu/library/archive/theredscare.htm) is an interview with Mundt in which he explains why he joined HUAC under Martin Dies in the 1930s.
John F. Kennedy
Congressman Jack Kennedy, 1946 (from: http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/)
http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Library and Museum
Early political career
After World War II, Kennedy entered
politics (partly to fill the void of his popular brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., on whom his family had pinned
many of their hopes but who was killed in the war). In 1946, Representative James
Michael Curley vacated his seat in an overwhelmingly Democratic
district to become mayor of Boston and Kennedy ran for that seat, beating his
Republican opponent by a large margin. He was reelected two times, but had a
mixed voting record, often diverging from President Harry S. Truman
and the rest of the Democratic Party.
Persistent rumors have suggested that
Kennedy married Durie
Malcolm briefly in early 1947. Their romance was mentioned in the January 20,
1947 issue of The New York World-Telegram,
but no conclusive proof of a marriage has been found. Beyond a flat denial,
Durie declined to discuss the alleged marriage. Seymour Hersh's
The Dark Side of Camelot
devotes a chapter to the alleged marriage; he interviewed several of Kennedy's
friends who reported the marriage as fact, and additionally noted that Joseph
P. Kennedy managed to cover-up the fling, fearing that his son's marriage to a
divorcee would harm his nascent political career. The marriage rumors were
little-known until 1961, when rumors began to circulate in Washington, D.C. [3] (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/jfk/durie1.html)
A young Senator Kennedy in 1953.
In 1952, Kennedy ran for the Senate
with the slogan "Kennedy will do more for Massachusetts." In an upset victory, he defeated
Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. by a margin of about
70,000 votes. Kennedy adroitly dodged criticizing fellow Senator Joseph McCarthy's
controversial campaign to root out Communists and Soviet spies in the U.S. government,
because of McCarthy's popularity in Massachusetts. McCarthy was a friend of
Kennedy, Kennedy's father, dated the Kennedy sisters, and younger brother Robert F. Kennedy
briefly worked for McCarthy. Although Kennedy was ill during the 65–22 vote to
censure McCarthy, he was criticized by McCarthy opponents such as Eleanor Roosevelt
who later said of the episode "he should have displayed less profile, and
more courage".
Kennedy married Jacqueline
Bouvier on September
12, 1953. He
underwent several spinal operations in the two following years, nearly dying
(receiving the Catholic religion's "last rites" four times during his
life), and was often absent from the Senate. During this period, he published Profiles
in Courage, highlighting eight instances in which U.S. Senators
risked their careers by standing by their personal beliefs. The book was
awarded the 1957 Pulitzer
Prize for Biography.
In 1956, Kennedy campaigned
for the Vice Presidential
nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but convention delegates
selected Tennessee
senator Estes
Kefauver instead. However, Kennedy's efforts helped bolster the
young Senator's reputation within the party.
An example of Kennedy's political suppleness, prior to
the 1960 campaign, was his handling of the Civil Rights Act of
1957. He voted for final passage, while earlier voting for the
"jury trial amendment", which rendered the Act toothless. He was able
to say to both sides that he supported them.
1960 Presidential election
Kennedy shakes Richard Nixon's hand before a televised debate.
In 1960, Kennedy declared his
intent to run for President of the United States. In the Democratic
primary election,
he faced challenges from Senator Hubert
H. Humphrey of Minnesota,
Senator Lyndon
B. Johnson of Texas,
and Adlai
Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956 who was not officially
running but was a favorite write-in candidate. Kennedy won key primaries like Wisconsin
and West Virginia
and landed the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 1960.
On July 13, 1960 the Democratic Party
nominated Kennedy as its candidate for president. Kennedy asked Johnson to be
his Vice Presidential candidate, despite clashes between the two during the
primary elections. Somewhat to Kennedy's staff's dismay, Johnson accepted. Some
theorists have speculated that Johnson had blackmailed Kennedy by threatening
to expose Kennedy's physical ailments and/or affairs, but LBJ could also
deliver votes from the South. Another possibility is that Kennedy wanted to
remove Johnson from the Senate Majority Leader position so that United States Senate Majority Whip
Mike Mansfield
would assume the leadership, as Kennedy considered Mansfield easier to work
with than Johnson.
Issues in the election included how to
deal with the nation's poor, the economy, JFK's Catholicism, Cuba, and whether
or not both the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the
USA.
In September and October, Kennedy
debated Republican candidate Vice President Richard Nixon
in the first ever televised presidential debates.
During the debates, Nixon looked tense, sweaty, and unshaven contrasted to
Kennedy's composure and handsomeness, leading many to deem Kennedy the winner,
although historians consider the two evenly matched as orators. Interestingly,
many who listened on radio thought Nixon more impressive in the debate.[4] (http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/K/htmlK/kennedy-nixon/kennedy-nixon.htm)
The debates are considered a political landmark: the point at which the medium
of television
played an important role in politics and looking presentable on camera became
one of the important considerations for presidential and other political
candidates.
In the general election on November 8,
1960, Kennedy beat Nixon in
a very close race. There were serious allegations that vote fraud in Texas and
Illinois had cost Nixon the presidency[5] (http://www.leanleft.com/archives/cat_reviews.html).
Especially troubling were the unusually huge margins in Richard Daley's
Chicago — which were announced after the rest of the vote in Illinois. The only
change after the official recount was a win for Kennedy in Hawaii.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/ Lyndon
B. Johnson Library and Museum
From: http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biographys.hom/lbj_bio.asp#1940
1948
After a
dramatic campaign in which he traveled by "newfangled" helicopter all
over the state, Johnson defeated Coke Stevenson in the Democratic primary race
to be the party's candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Senator W. Lee
"Pappy" O'Daniel. Johnson won the primary
by 87 votes and earned the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." In the
general election, November 2, he defeated the Republican, Jack Porter, and was
elected to the U. S. Senate.
January 2, elected Majority Whip of the United States Senate, the youngest man ever to hold a position of Senate leadership.
1953
January
3, elected Minority Leader of the Senate at the age of 44. Johnson won national
attention as chairman of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the
Senate Armed Services Committee during the Korean War.
1954
November 2, re-elected to the U. S. Senate for a second term by a margin of 3 to 1.
1955
Elected
Majority Leader of the Senate, the youngest man to hold this position in either
political party. During his tenure as Senate Majority Leader, he served as
Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, Democratic Steering Committee, and
Democratic Conference of the Senate.
On July 2,
while visiting George Brown's estate in Middleburg, Virginia, Johnson suffered
a severe heart attack and entered Bethesda Naval Hospital. On August 7, he was
released from Bethesda; on August 27, he returned to the LBJ Ranch to
recuperate. Johnson did not return to Washington and Capitol Hill until
December.
1956
Nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention as a favorite son candidate.
1957
Steered
through to passage the first civil rights bill in 82 years (Civil Rights Act of
1957). As Chairman of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee he
began hearings on the American space program following the launch of the
Russian satellite, Sputnik, on October 4. Johnson considered the
highlights of his Senate career to be the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1957 and the vitalization of the United States space program.
1958
Guided to passage the first space legislation (National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958). President Eisenhower designated Senator Johnson to present a United States resolution to the United Nations calling for the peaceful exploration of outer space.
July 13,
nominated for President of the United States at the Democratic National
Convention by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn; received
409 votes; nominated Vice President by acclamation on July 14.
November 6,
elected Vice President of the United States, and re-elected to his third term
in the United States Senate. The Kennedy-Johnson ticket defeated the
Nixon-Lodge ticket in one of the closest elections in American history.
1961
January
3, took the oath of office for the full six-year term in the Senate and
immediately resigned.
January 2O, was
administered the oath of office as Vice President of the United States by the
Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn. As Vice President, Johnson
was a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council, Chairman of the
National Aeronautics and Space Council, Chairman of the President's Committee
on Equal Employment Opportunity, and Chairman of the Peace Corps Advisory
Council. He was sent by President Kennedy on missions to the Middle East, the
Far East, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. May 11-13, 1961, he
visited Vietnam while on a trip to Southeast Asia as President Kennedy's
representative.
On April 20, the day Congress approved the amendment
making the Vice President Chairman of the Space Council, President Kennedy sent
Johnson a memorandum asking him to conduct an overall survey of the space
program and to study the feasibility of going to the moon and back with a man
before the Soviet Union could attain that goal. After a careful study, Johnson
replied on April 28, that a manned moon trip was possible, and "with a
strong effort the United States could conceivably be first in those
accomplishments by 1966 or 1967." On May 25, President Kennedy announced
to Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving
the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning
him safely to earth."
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (February 5,
1900 – July 14, 1965) was an American politician
and statesman,
noted for his skill in debate and oratory. He was twice an unsuccessful
candidate for President of the United States (1952 and 1956).
Childhood and education
Stevenson was born in Los Angeles into a political family; his
grandfather Adlai
E. Stevenson I had been Vice President of the United States.
He was raised in Bloomington, Illinois,
and educated at The
Choate School and at Princeton
and Northwestern University. He got his BA at Princeton
in 1922 and a law degree at Northwestern in 1926. When Stevenson was a child,
there was a tragic incident that haunted him for the rest of his life. While
showing off with his brother's hunting rifle, he accidentally shot and killed a
young playmate named Ruth Merwin. Stevenson rarely discussed the incident but
many have theorized that his dedication to causes may have been due to the
terrible burden of guilt he carried.
Law and governorship
After university he practiced law in Chicago.
He moved into federal government in 1931, working with New Deal
initiatives. During the war he worked in Washington
as assistant to the Secretary of the Navy. Post-war he was a delegate to the United Nations
in 1946 and 1947. Stevenson, who had
toyed with the idea of entering politics for several years, entered the
Illinois gubernatorial race and defeated incumbent Dwight H. Green
in a landslide. Principal among his achievements as Illinois governor were
reorganizing the state police, cracking down on illegal gambling, and improving
the state highways. In 1949 Stevenson appeared as a character witness in the
first trial of Alger
Hiss.
1952 presidential bid
Early in 1952, while Stevenson was
still governor of Illinois,
President Harry
S. Truman proposed that he seek the Democratic nomination for
president. In a fashion that was to become his trademark, Stevenson at first
hesitated, arguing that he was committed to running for a second gubernatorial
term. Despite his protestations, the delegates
drafted him, and he accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a
speech that according to contemporaries, "electrified the nation."
Stevenson's distinctive speaking style quickly earned him the reputation of an
intellectual and endeared him to many Americans, while simultaneously
alienating him from others. Stevenson's intelligence was the subject of much
ridicule among anti-intellectuals; it was during the 1952 campaign that Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. Richard M. Nixon
of California labelled Stevenson an "egghead."
In the 1952 presidential election, Stevenson secured
only nine states and lost the Electoral College vote 442 to 89.
Following his defeat, prior to
returning to law practice, Stevenson traveled throughout Asia, the Middle East
and Europe,
writing about his travels for Look
magazine. Although he was not sent as an official emissary of the U.S.
government, Stevenson's international reputation gave him entree to many
foreign officials.
1956 presidential bid
Many Democratic leaders considered
Stevenson the only natural choice for the presidential nomination in 1956, and his chances for
victory seemed greater after Eisenhower's heart attack late in 1955. Although his
candidacy was challenged by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver
and New York
Governor W.
Averell Harriman, Stevenson campaigned more aggressively to secure
the nomination, and Kefauver conceded after losing a few key primaries. To
Stevenson's dismay, former president Harry S. Truman endorsed Harriman, but the
blow was softened by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's
continued support. Stevenson again won the nomination at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago,
Illinois, aided by strong support from younger delegates, who were
said to form the core of the "New Politics"
movement. He permitted the convention delegates to choose Estes Kefauver as his
running mate, despite stiff competition from John F. Kennedy.
Following his nomination, Stevenson waged a vigorous presidential campaign,
delivering 300 speeches and traveling 55,000 miles. He called on the electorate
to join him in a march to a "new America," based on a liberal agenda
that anticipated the programs of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His
call for an end to aboveground nuclear weapons tests created a storm, but was
ultimately enshrined in the Test Ban Treaty of 1963. While President
Eisenhower suffered heart problems, the economy enjoyed robust health.
Stevenson's hopes for victory were dashed when, in October, President
Eisenhower's doctors gave him a clean bill of health and the Suez crisis
erupted. The public was not convinced that a change in leadership was needed,
and Stevenson lost his second bid for the presidency, winning only 73 electoral
votes in the 1956 presidential election.
Despite his two defeats, Stevenson
remained enormously popular with the American people. Early in 1957, Stevenson resumed law
practice with associates W.
Willard Wirtz, William McC. Blair Jr. and Newton N. Minow.
He also accepted an appointment on the new Democratic Advisory Council, with
other prominent Democrats, including Harry S. Truman,
David
L. Lawrence and John F. Kennedy.
He also served on the board of trustees of the Encyclopædia Britannica and acted as their
legal counsel.
1960 election and the United Nations
Prior to the 1960 Democratic National
Convention, Stevenson announced that he was not seeking the Democratic
nomination for president, but would accept another draft.
Because he still hoped to be a candidate, Stevenson refused to give the
nominating address for relative newcomer John F. Kennedy, a cause for future
strained relations between the two politicians. Once Kennedy won the
nomination, Stevenson, always an enormously popular public speaker, campaigned
actively for him. Due to his two presidential nominations and previous United
Nations experience, Stevenson perceived himself an elder statesman
and a natural choice for Secretary
of State, an opinion shared by many.
Following Kennedy's victory, Stevenson
was appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
where he worked hard to support U.S. foreign policy, even when he personally
disagreed with some of Kennedy's actions. His most famous moment came on October 25,
1962, during the Cuban
missile crisis, when he gave a presentation at an emergency session
of the Security Council. He forcefully asked the Soviet
representative if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with
the famous demand, "Don't wait for the translation!" in demanding an
immediate answer. In a diplomatic coup, Stevenson then showed photographs that
proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after Soviet ambassador Valerian Zorin
had said they did not exist.
Stevenson died suddenly on July 14, 1965, during a stop in London. Following memorial
services in Washington,
D.C; Springfield, Illinois; and Bloomington, Illinois, Stevenson was interred in
the family plot in Evergreen Cemetery, Bloomington, Illinois.
Stevenson's father, Lewis
G. Stevenson, was Illinois secretary of state (1914–1917).
Stevenson's eldest son, Adlai
E. Stevenson III, was a U.S.
senator from Illinois (1970–1981). His first cousin is actor McLean Stevenson.
· Adapted parts from: - ADLAI E.
STEVENSON: A VOICE OF CONSCIENCE (http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/stevenson.html)
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson
From: http://www.kennesaw.edu/pols/3380/pres/1956.html
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Ike At Work |
Stevenson Mounts Another Challenge |
1956: We Still Like Ike
In the 1956 campaign, Eisenhower did little campaigning
because the country was happy. Ike allowed the press enormous access.
Robert Montgomery, who was an actor, put on Eisenhower’s staff for that reason,
polished the presidential image. One key to success was that a public
relations person for the campaign, before release, screened all film
takes. The 1956 campaign was a repeat of the 1952 campaign with family
being a key element and religion a bulwark against communist threats. The
Republicans continued to capitalize on both of these themes. Ike and Dick
were presented as religious, God-fearing men while Adlai Stevenson was a
Unitarian, which most Americans knew nothing about.
Stevenson hoped to capitalize on the success of the
Congress by employing both state and local organizations to aid in the campaign
with the thought of a coat tails strategy. Stevenson spent much of the
campaign traveling more than 37,000 miles, visiting 32 different states often
accusing Eisenhower of being a “part-time” President. The Democrats used
Edward R. Morrow to try to aid Stevenson in his comfort and aptitude for
televised events, but he proved immune to the teaching of Morrow and continued
to do poorly on television. Stevenson promised a “New America” where
freedom is made real for all without regard to race, beliefs, or economic
condition “basically saying that the Republicans had benefits the rich and not
the average American.” In the 1956 campaign, gone was Stevenson's
advantage of having more political experience that Eisenhower.
A major factor in this campaign was the funds raised
by the parties. The Republicans had over 5 million dollars in the bank,
whereas the Democrats had a mere 100,000. The campaign of 1956 found a
vast change in political broadcasts. The once dominating half hour spots
were replaced with five minute spot ads, instead of preempting scheduled
programming as before, it was more like sponsored commercials during the
program. The major effort of the Democrats was in attacking Vice
President Nixon by asking the public, "Were they ready for him to be the
President because of the failing health of President Eisenhower?"
The Republicans countered this attack with Ike doing more public appearances,
letting the public see that he looked good and was strong enough to carry on at
his present job. Another issue the Democrats tried to use against
Eisenhower was his handling of the Suez and Hungary events internationally, but
again it backfired, only making Ike’s decision seem to be better to the voting
public. The Democrats even brought out Eleanor Roosevelt to aid the fight
against Ike hoping she could reach those females who voted Ike in four years
earlier, but again it was an unsuccessful attempt. The Republicans slogan
of “Peace, Prosperity, and Progress” defeated the Democrats “New America”
because of the current peace and prosperity there was no need for a new
America. The voting public still “Liked Ike” and was not about to vote
against the man in the White House. Again, he won by a landslide.
It was the biggest victory since FDR, with Eisenhower receiving 457 electoral
votes to Stevenson 73, but ironically, the Democrats kept control of the
Congress.
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Rockefeller
Order: 41st Vice President
Term of Office: December 19, 1974 - January 20, 1977
Followed: Gerald Ford
Succeeded by: Walter Mondale
Place of Birth: Bar Harbor, Maine
Wife: Margaretta "Happy" Rockefeller
Profession: Governor of New York
Early
years
"Rocky," as he was called,
was born in Bar
Harbor, Maine. A member of the prominent Rockefeller
family, he was the son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the grandson of oil
tycoon John
D. Rockefeller and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich
of Rhode Island,
for whom he was named. He was also the brother of Governor
Winthrop
Rockefeller of Arkansas
and the uncle of Governor and Senator John Davison
Rockefeller, IV of West Virginia.
Nelson Rockefeller was born on the same day of the year as his paternal grandfather,
and from childhood was the leader of the five Rockefeller brothers, John, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop,
and David.
He graduated from Dartmouth
College in 1930,
where he was a member of the Psi
Upsilon fraternity.
Political
career
Rockefeller worked for a time in
several family-run businesses and philanthropies before entering public
service. He became an Assistant
Secretary of State during World War II,
where he ran the propaganda operation for Central
and South America.
After the war he headed the International
Development Advisory Board, part of Truman's Point
Four Program.
The election of fellow-Republican Dwight Eisenhower
to the presidency saw Rockefeller appointed first as chair of the President's
Advisory Committee on Government Organization and later as an undersecretary
in the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare.
Gov. Rockefeller meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968
Governor of New York
Rockefeller left federal service in 1956 to concentrate on New
York state politics, where he served in various capacities before being elected
governor
(winning with a plurality of over 600,000 in a year mostly dominated by state Democrats).
He served as governor of New York from 1959 to 1973 (elected to four
terms, he served three and a half). As governor of New York, he successfully
secured the passage of extremely strict laws against the possession and/or sale
of drugs; these laws — which became known as the "Rockefeller drug laws" — took effect in 1973 and are still on the
books, and rank among the toughest in the United States:
The mere possession of four ounces or more of such drugs as heroin and cocaine —
or the sale of two ounces or more of the same substances — carries the same
penalties as those imposed for second-degree murder. Despite this, he
was still considered one of the leaders of the moderate wing of the Republican
Party of the United States, and is hailed as an example of one of the chief
figures of the "1960s and 1970s Republican" movement. Compared to
other Republicans, Rockefeller was a liberal, and Republicans who hold views
similar to his are often referred to as "Rockefeller Republicans".
Rockefeller engaged in massive building
endeavors that left a profound mark on New York State. He was the driving force
in turning the State University of New York into the largest
system of public higher education in the United States. He also created many
major highways (such as the Long Island, the Southern Tier, the Adirondack, and
Interstate 81) which vastly improved road transportation in New York State. To
create more low-income housing, Rockefeller created the
unprecedented-in-its-power New York State Urban Development
Corporation (UDC), which could override local zoning, condemn
property, and create creative financing schemes to carry out desired
development. (UDC is now called the Empire State Development Corporation, which
forms a unit, along with the formerly independent Job Development Authority, of
Empire State Development.)
Rockefeller's massive construction
programs (not just the aforementioned, but others such as the US$2 billion Albany
South Mall (later renamed the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza)
project—the most expensive project that had ever been undertaken by any US
state government), his generous pension programs for many public workers in the
state (firefighers, many police officers, sanitation workers, and corrections
officers), and highest-in-the-nation minimum wage that he was able to push
through the legislature (or carry out through some existing public-benefit authority such
as the UDC) greatly drove up costs and debt in the state. Public-benefit
authorities (some 230 of them, like UDC, were brought into existence by
Rockefeller) were often used to issue bonds in order to avoid the requirement
of a vote of the people for the issuance of a bond; such authority-issued bonds
bore higher interest than if they had been issued directly by the state. The
state budget went from US$2.04 billion in 1959-60 (Rockefeller's first year in
office) to US$8.8 billion in 1973-74 (at the end of Rockefeller's time in
office). This occurred on top of a state economy that was in significant
decline.
Rockefeller also reformed the
governance of New
York City's transportation
system. He created the New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority in 1965,
which merged the New York City subway system with the
publicly-owned Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority
and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro
North Railroad, which were purchased by the state from private
owners. In taking over control of the Triborough authority, Rockefeller
overcame Robert
Moses, who controlled several of New York state's public
infrastructure authorities. Under the New York MTA, toll revenue collected from
the bridges and tunnels, which had previously been used to build more bridges,
tunnels, and highways, were shifted to support public transport
operations.
Presidential campaigns
Rockefeller's dream was the presidency;
he spent millions in attempts in 1960,
1964, and 1968. His bid in 1960 was
ended early when then-Vice President Richard Nixon
surged ahead in the polls; after quitting the campaign Rockefeller backed Nixon
enthusiastically, and concentrated his efforts on introducing more moderate
stances into Nixon's platform.
Rockefeller was considered the
front-runner for the 1964 campaign against the more conservative Barry Goldwater
of Arizona
(Nixon had declined to run after a major defeat in the 1962 California
gubernatorial election). However, Rockefeller's divorce and quick remarriage to
a woman (who had until then been married to someone else) twenty years his
junior turned many people off. After polls predicted Rockefeller would win the California primary,
he lost by a slim margin and dropped out of the race, endorsing Goldwater (but
more hesitantly than he had previously supported Nixon). Rockefeller lost again
to Nixon in 1968.
Rockefeller left office as governor in 1973 in what was rumored at
the time to be a move toward a fourth bid for the presidency; however this
never materialized. Some analysts speculated that his appointment to the vice
presidency by Gerald Ford was calculated to forestall a Rockefeller
presidential campaign in 1976.
Vice President of the United States
Vice President Rockefeller shows his feelings towards a group of hecklers
during a speech in 1976
Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon,
successor Gerald Ford
nominated Rockefeller to serve as the 41st Vice President of the United States.
Rockefeller underwent a lengthy series
of Congressional hearings but ultimately was
confirmed, beginning his service on December 19,
1974. He became the 2nd
Vice President to be appointed to the position under the 25th Amendment
— the first being Ford himself. Less than a year later however, (on November 3,
1975), he notified
President Ford that
he would not seek election to the Vice Presidency in 1976, saying that he
"didn't come down (to Washington) to get caught up in party squabbles
which only make it more difficult for the President in a very difficult
time..."
Perhaps the most memorable moment of
Rockefeller's Vice Presidency occurred during a public speech at Broome County Airport in Binghamton,
New York. A group of hippies
started to heckle him, which obviously irritated him, causing him to retaliate
by giving the group the
finger, in a widely circulated photo.
Senator Robert Dole,
who would be the Republican nominee to succeed Rockefeller in the 1976 election, was on hand
at the speech. When questioned by an ABC reporter as to why he didn't join in with
Rockefeller, Dole replied "I have trouble with my right arm.",
reminding them of his injury in the Second World War.
Art
collector
Rockefeller was a great collector of
modern art. He continued his mother's work at the Museum
of Modern Art and turned the basement of his Kykuit mansion into a
first-class museum. While he was overseeing construction of the State University of New York system, he agreed
with his lifelong friend Roy
Neuberger to build a museum on the campus of SUNY Purchase College. The Neuberger Museum, designed by Philip Johnson,
hosted several paintings collected by Neuberger and helped popularize several
artists. His 1933 decision to purchase and then destroy Diego Rivera's
mural at Rockefeller
Center, which included a portrait of Lenin, is still
controversial.
Death
On January 26,
1979 Rockefeller suffered a
heart attack and died. It is officially recorded
that this occurred during sexual intercourse with his mistress
and staff member Megan Marshak. However there is a good deal of rumour and
speculation about all the details of what happened, see the Megan Marshak
article for a full discussion of this.
Family
wealth
The Rockefeller family is one of the
most famous blue-blooded clans in America. As of 2004, Forbes estimates that the
family fortune could be as much as $9 billion. Nelson Rockefeller was worth
approximately $1 billion at the time of his death.
John Foster Dulles
Major, United States Army
United States Senator -
Secretary of State
Born on February 25, 1888 he was a World War I veteran. He was appointed in the United States Senate from New York, serving out the term of Robert F. Wagner, who had retired due to ill-health. He was defeated for re-election.
He subsequently served as Secretary of State in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, where he was instrumental in forming the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). He resigned his office on April 15, 1959 as a result of a bout with cancer. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom (America's highest civilian award) shortly before his death on May 24, 1959.
He is buried in Section 31 of Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, Janet Avery Dulles (May 31, 1891-May 14, 1969) is buried with him.
May 25, 1959
OBITUARY
Dulles Formulated and Conducted U.S. Foreign
Policy for More Than Six Years
Tenure Aroused Mixed Appraisal
Admirers Hailed His Tactics in
Diplomacy but Critics Scored Inflexibility
Cabinet In His Heritage
His Grandfather and Uncle Had Served
the Nation as Secretaries of State
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
For six years John Foster Dulles dominated both the making and the conduct of United States foreign policy. In the realm of foreign affairs he was President Eisenhower's chief adviser, his chief representative on Capitol Hill and his chief agent and negotiator at home and abroad.
Mr. Dulles was a highly controversial Secretary of State. Those who followed his career were rarely dispassionate; they divided, usually, between ardent admirers and those who disliked or distrusted him.
Certain things, however, were incontestable. First was the extent of his role. He was undoubtedly the strongest personality of the Eisenhower Cabinet, and as such he constantly played a leading role in Washington and often in the councils of the Western alliance.
Secondly, whatever his qualities as a policy-maker, he had few peers as an advocate. No one could equal him as a persuader in the White House councils. In facing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he sometimes encountered criticism and skepticism, but he inevitably had his way.
Thirdly, he had extraordinary vitality. He maintained personal contacts and sought to exercise American leadership by constant travel in all parts of the world. As Secretary he flew a total of 479,286 miles outside the United States.
Successful Lawyer And a Moralist
Mr. Dulles was a man of complex character, full of paradoxes. A shrewd and successful corporation lawyer, he was also a moralist and political philosopher. He could marshal his ideas swiftly, fluently and extemporaneously; he coined many phrases, but he was not noted as an originator of new ideas.
He was gregarious, but he worked alone, to the despair of his State Department staff.
Gracious in private, he was often awkward in public, yet he held news conferences more regularly than any other member of President Eisenhower's Cabinet.
Handsome as a young man, Mr. Dulles in later years assumed the characteristics of a stern church elder. When in repose the corners of his mouth drooped in an expression of extreme gravity that some observers have related to his strict Presbyterian upbringing. But this expression was relieved by frequent broad smiles.
His physique, as displayed on the occasions when he took time for a swim, was impressive. He was muscular, lean, with powerful shoulders, the result of much swimming, boating and fishing during boyhood.
This physical equipment made it possible for him to put in eleven-hour working days in Washington and then go on to his evening's social obligations. It also enabled him, when traveling, to transform his airplane into an office, so that after a grueling flight he was ready for the conference table.
Cabin in Ontario Was His Retreat
Part of Mr. Dulles' secret was his ability to relax. During negotiations he would be seen slumped in his chair, doodling or sharpening pencils, seemingly without a care in the world.
Mr. Dulles also knew the virtue of "getting away," for five-day breaks at his log cabin retreat on Duck Island in Lake Ontario. In 1941 he bought this tiny island, where the only other inhabitants were a lighthouse warden and radio operator.
He and his wife Janet discovered and fell in love with it during their many summer sailing expeditions in the Great Lakes. They liked to withdraw to the privacy of their island and rough it, hauling water, chopping wood, fishing and cooking. Mr. Dulles took pride in his cooking, especially fish.
In Washington the Dulleses
lived comfortably in a spacious stone house on a wooded hillside ten minutes
from the State Department offices. This was their choice. Prosperous
years as a corporation lawyer--the best paid in the history
of New York City, according to some
accounts-- had left him financially independent.
The Dulles family never suffered particularly
for lack of money. John Watson Foster, Mr. Dulles' grandfather, saw to that.
Born in a log cabin in Indiana, he became a brigadier general in the Civil War,
United States Minister to Mexico
and Russia and Secretary of State under
President Benjamin Harrison. He amassed his fortune as a successful lawyer.
This grandfather, in whose Washington home he was born on Feb. 25, 1888, and who started him on his legal and diplomatic career, was the greatest formative influence in Mr. Dulles' life.
Grandfather Foster, however, was only a part of an active and rich family life that produced two other notable personalities--one is Mr. Dulles' younger brother, Allen W., director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The other, his younger sister, Eleanor, joined the State Department before her brother got there and is at present the officer in charge of Berlin in the Office of German Affairs.
The Dulles family says it can trace its ancestry to Charlemagne. That it does not take this too seriously, however, is indicated by the fact that Mrs. Dulles named her French poodle "Pepi" after Pepin Le Bref, Charlemagne's father.
Mr. Dulles' father was the Rev. Allen Macy Dulles, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Watertown, N. Y. A liberal clergyman, he questioned whether belief in the Virgin Birth was essential to being a Christian, and he married divorced persons. Of his children he required rigorous and intensive religious life involving attendance at church three or four times a week and memorization of long passages from the Bible.
Enjoyed Swimming, Fishing and Sailing
Much of this stayed with Mr. Dulles throughout his life. He was always ready with a quotation from two books, and kept them within reach at home and at the office: the Bible and the Federalist. They represented, respectively, the religious influence of his father and the political influence of his grandfather.
Over the dinner table the Dulles children heard talk of morality and diplomacy. Sometimes "Uncle Bert"--Robert Lansing, later Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson--was there. Grandfather Foster would argue the case for the Boers and Uncle Bert the case for the British in the Boer War.
The family was fond of boating. When Foster was 13, after a bad case of typhoid fever, his grandfather presented him a twelve-foot St. Lawrence cat boat. From then on sailing, fishing and swimming were his greatest pleasures. For the rest of his life, in all kinds of weather, he took every opportunity to cruise Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence, the coasts of Nova Scotia, Maine and Long Island.
The Rev. Mr. Dulles had a private income to supplement his pastor's stipend, so the family could afford some summers in Europe. These were spent at Left Bank hotels in Paris and bicycling through the Lowlands and Germany. John Foster Dulles learned good French, some German and passable Spanish.
After grammar school and high school at Watertown, Foster went to Princeton University. At that time he expected to follow his father into the ministry and concentrated on the study of philosophy.
But an invitation to accompany Grandfather Foster, in the summer of 1907, to the second Hague Peace Conference, began to turn his interests toward diplomacy. Foster was then 19. His grandfather, who acted as delegate for the Imperial Government of China, got him a job as a secretary to the Chinese delegation on the strength of his knowledge of French.
Foster was graduated from Princeton in 1908 as valedictorian of his class, with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a $600 scholarship for a year's study at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the end of that year he had made up his mind to study law rather than theology.
To be able to live with his grandfather, he decided to study at George Washington University in Washington. Through his grandfather he was drawn into a gay social life, but managed at the same time to absorb three years of law studies in two years with the highest grades ever achieved at the university.
Received Law Degree 25 Years Late
Because he had been in attendance only two years instead of three, the university declined to give him a degree. (It did so twenty-five years later.) But the young Mr. Dulles passed the New York State bar examinations and moved on to New York City in search of a job.
To his chagrin, he discovered that the big law firms on whose doors he knocked were not interested in graduates from George Washington University, much less one who had not even received a degree. Harvard and Columbia Law School, it seemed, were the "right" places to study law. It took a letter from Grandfather Foster to William Nelson Cromwell, senior partner of the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, to win the young man a chance to start--at $50 a month.
On June 26, 1912, he and Janet Avery, of Auburn, N.Y., were married at Auburn. He then had a salary of $100 a month, but Grandfather Foster made it possible for the newlyweds to live fairly comfortably.
The income of Foster Dulles, the young lawyer, grew steadily as he distinguished himself in assignment after assignment, usually in the international field.
Rejected for military service during World
War I because of poor eyesight, Mr. Dulles got an Army commission as captain in
the War Industries Board. This, in turn, led to his being sent to the
Versailles Peace Conference to deal
with reparations questions.
At the age of 31 Mr. Dulles made a preliminary mark as a junior diplomat by clearly and forcefully arguing against imposing crushing reparations on Germany.
President Wilson wrote a personal letter asking him to stay on in Europe after the conference to handle reparations questions. The fact that he was one of five men--another was Thomas W. Lamont, a partner in J. P. Morgan--who served as the President's economic advisers at Versailles gave John Foster Dulles' career another lift.
He became a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell with a substantially enhanced income. One international assignment followed another--to Norway, Denmark, Poland, Uruguay, Chile and other lands. Usually Mrs. Dulles accompanied him on his trips abroad.
In 1937 Mr. Dulles tried to hire as a trial lawyer for his firm a young man named Thomas E. Dewey who was winning a reputation as prosecutor of underworld characters. Mr. Dewey agreed, but changed his mind and ran instead for election as district attorney.
Thus began a long political association between Mr. Dulles and Mr. Dewey. In 1939 Mr. Dulles joined George Z. Medalie, a Republican lawyer, and Roger W. Straus, chairman of American Smelting and Refining Company, in planning Mr. Dewey's strategy in seeking the Presidential nomination. Mr. Dewy lost to Wendell L. Willkie in 1940, but in 1944 he won the nomination and John Foster Dulles stepped in as his foreign policy adviser.
In this capacity Mr. Dulles was maneuvered into a conference with Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State, on the formation of the United Nations. This led to a bipartisan approach to the United Nations issue and to the appointment of Mr. Dulles as a senior United States adviser at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations in 1945.
Mr. Dulles' stature in international affairs was established by his work at the San Francisco conference.
Mr. Dewey again sought the Presidency in 1948 and Mr. Dulles was again his advisor on foreign affairs. It was generally believed that Mr. Dulles would have been Secretary of State if Mr. Dewey had won, but Harry S. Truman was the surprise victor.
Mr. Dulles was a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in November, 1948, when Secretary of State George C. Marshall was forced to return to the United States for surgery. President Truman named Mr. Dulles acting chairman of the delegation.
He was with Secretary of State Dean Acheson at the Big Four foreign ministers' conference in Paris in 1949. On July 7 of that year Governor Dewey named him to the United States Senate in an interim appointment to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Robert F. Wagner.
Campaigning on a platform critical of the Fair Deal of President Truman, Mr. Dulles sought election to the Senate in a special election in November, 1949. His opponent was former Gov. Herbert H. Lehman. Mr. Dulles was defeated by 196,293 votes--2,573,934 to 2,377,641.
In April, 1951, when President Truman removed General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from his Far East commands during the Korean fighting, Mr. Truman sent Mr. Dulles to Tokyo to assure the Japanese Government that General MacArthur's departure signified no important change in United States policy in the Far East.
That there should be no misunderstanding on this point was of special importance to Mr. Dulles, who was engaged on his last and biggest job for President Truman--concluding a peace treaty with Japan.
This was a task that Mr. Dulles had sought. He had urged Secretary Acheson that the only way to get the long-delayed treaty was to pick one trusted man and give him a year, full-time, to work it out. Mr. Dulles got the job.
Treaty With Japan Was His Handiwork
During the next twelve months, he flew 125,000 miles between Washington and Tokyo and from capital to capital, resolving differences, lining up support for a "peace of reconciliation" with Japan.
On Sept. 8, 1951, just a year after Mr. Dulles got his assignment, the treaty was signed at San Francisco. Surveying Mr. Dulles' handiwork, State Department officials admiringly paid tribute to a "master craftsman."
During the Presidential campaign of 1952 Mr. Dulles forgot bipartisanship. The vitriolic assault on Democratic foreign policy he wrote for the Republican party platform caused critics to tax him for the first time--but not the last--with acting more like a corporation lawyer serving his client than a statesman.
After the election, Mr. Dulles was one of the first men President Eisenhower named to his Cabinet.
The job of Secretary of State was one that he apparently had been after for a long time. Certainly he had had it in mind when he involved himself in the Presidential campaigns of 1940, 1944 and 1948. But when he had it in his grasp he was said to have had doubts.
He realized that what he wanted was the foreign-policy function, and that as Secretary of State he would be burdened with many other tasks as well. He is said to have remarked that what he would really have liked was a quiet office in the White House as foreign-policy consultant, far from the cumbersome machinery of the State Department.
Yet there was never any question about Mr. Dulles' conviction that he, with experience in foreign affairs dating to the Hague Conference of 1907, with a rich family background of diplomacy, was the man best qualified to call the turns of United States foreign policy.
He had it all in his head. He did not need the ambassadorial analyses and the studies of the policy planning staff and the host of departmental experts. He had a big yellow pad at his bedside and he jotted down thoughts as they occurred to him.
Thus were born the phrases around which United States foreign policy revolved for nearly seven years.
For example, during his campaign speeches in 1952, Mr. Dulles maintained that the Democratic party's policy of "containment" must be replaced by a policy of "liberation." What United States foreign policy needed, he said, was more "heart."
President Eisenhower put these thoughts into practice by withdrawing the Seventh Fleet from the Formosa Strait, thereby "unleashing" President Chiang Kai-shek of Nationalist China for action against the mainland. For a time undercover operations in the Far East and in Eastern Europe were somewhat stimulated.
But when the tests came, in the anti-Communist Berlin riots in 1953, the French call for help at Dienbienphu in 1954, the Chinese Communist threat to Quemoy in 1954-55, the Hungarian rising against the Russians in 1956, the United States did not act. As things worked out, there was a wide margin between Mr. Dulles' bold words and the United States Government's actions.
Although Mr. Dulles never specifically confirmed it, there is good reason to believe that during the month of July, 1954, he and Admiral Arthur H. Radford twice tried to get the British to agree to a United States air strike, with planes based on carriers and in the Philippines, against the Communist forces attacking Dienbienphu, a key French stronghold in the north of Indochina.
But the British would not go along, as Mr. Dulles might have expected. The plan was abandoned, and Dienbienphu was lost.
SEATO Filled Gap In Asian Defense
In public Mr. Dulles spoke only of the need for "united action" by the Western Allies and their friends in Asia to oppose the Communists. And this in the end led to the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization at Manila on Sept. 8, 1954.
Embracing Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines in addition to the United States, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand, SEATO went far toward closing the gaps in the world-wide network of military alliances, gaps that were a constant subject of concern to Mr. Dulles.
The philosophy behind Mr. Dulles' maneuverings concerning Dienbienphu and other crises was spelled out in an article that he apparently inspired in Life magazine on Jan. 16, 1956.
It contained the definition of what some have called "brinkmanship": "The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art."
And he explained that his skill in doing just that had ended the Korean war (with an implied threat to drop atomic bombs on Manchuria), had restrained the Communist Chinese from sending their forces into Indochina (with a show of force by two aircraft carriers and an invitation to Allied nations to form a "united front") and had headed off Communist invasion of Quemoy (with the bipartisan Formosa resolution authorizing armed United States intervention).
An important part of Mr. Dulles' "brinkmanship" was "massive retaliation," the boldest of all his phrases. He said in a speech on Jan. 12, 1954, that the President and National Security Council had decided "to depend primarily upon a great capacity to retaliate instantly, by means and at places of our own choosing."
The storm aroused by these words obliged Mr. Dulles to explain later that of course the punishment must always suit the crime, that he was not talking about indiscriminate bombing of Moscow.
There were some other phrases that symbolized his tenure.
Addressing State Department employes on his first day in office, Mr. Dulles called for "positive loyalty." He also said on another occasion:
"I'm not going to be caught with another Alger Hiss on my hands."
As result of this attitude he tolerated for several years the operations of Walter Scott McLeod, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and later a member of the staff of Styles Bridges, Republican Senator from New Hampshire. Mr. Dulles' administrative Under Secretary hired Mr. McLeod as security chief.
When the cases of Jon Carter Vincent and John Paton Davies, State Department career men, came up for review, Mr. Dulles found nothing in their records showing lack of loyalty. But he retired them anyway, on the ground that they had become burdensome and that a Secretary of State could not afford to carry excess baggage.
Under this doctrine no Foreign Service officer could be sure that, if he were falsely accused of disloyalty, he would be backed up by his boss.
'Reappraisal' Talk Distressed French
Still another phrase was born on Dec. 14, 1953, when Mr. Dulles said in Paris that if the French Assembly did not approve the European Defense Community treaty "that would compel an agonizing reappraisal" of basic United States foreign policy.
The surprising thing about this statement was that after spending so many months in France Mr. Dulles did not realize that among sensitive Frenchmen his words would boomerang, and almost guaranteed the defeat of the defense community.
Mr. Dulles flew to Caracas, Venezuela on March 28, 1954, for a Pan American conference. He was largely responsible for the adoption of an anti-Communist resolution by which American Republics pledged "countermeasures" to prevent Communist control of any American state.
Getting the resolution adopted was a victory of a kind for Mr. Dulles, but many of the Latin Americans resented the pressure brought by the United States on behalf of the resolution.
The phrase "open skies"--mutual freedom to engage in aerial inspection--was not coined by Mr. Dulles. However, Mr. Dulles picked up the "open skies" proposal that President Eisenhower made to the Russians at the summit conference of 1955 and used it to underline the essentiality of mutual inspection during long and inconclusive negotiations on all aspects of disarmament. Always the talks broke down on the inspection issue.
At Iowa State College on June 9, 1955 Mr. Dulles said "neutrality has increasingly become an obsolete and except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception."
India and many other nations with neutralist tendencies in the Afro-Asian world took this as a gratuitous affront. Later Mr. Dulles conceded that neutrals of the immoral kind were "very few" in number. And toward the end of his period in office he acquired a growing appreciation of the value of genuine neutrality.
Indians were also offended by an illusion to "Portuguese provinces in the Far east," meaning Goa, a Portuguese-owned territory on the coast of India. Mr. Dulles permitted the phrase to appear in a joint statement with Portugal's Minister of Foreign Affairs on Dec. 2, 1955.
Mr. Dulles considered himself an expert on the Soviet Union. More often than on other topics he would make declarations about the Soviet without consulting his State Department aides.
Particularly striking, and particularly criticized, were his assertions of Soviet weakness. On Feb. 24, 1956, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "at this moment in Moscow they are having to revise their whole program. They have failed."
Mr. Dulles felt at home talking about Europe and the Soviet Union, but he was much less at ease when dealing with the Middle East. It is possible, nonetheless, that the concept of a "northern tier of defense" against the Soviet Union in the Middle East may have been his most original single contribution to foreign policy.
Originally intended as an association of the nations in the area, which the great powers would back but not join, the concept was radically changed by the British, who encouraged and joined the "Baghdad Pact."
Still another foreign-policy concept, the Eisenhower Doctrine, proclaimed by both houses of Congress on March 9, 1957, was really the Dulles Doctrine. Mr. Dulles conceived and defended this resolution before Congress, asserting that the President was prepared to use armed force to support any Middle Eastern country that asked for help against Communist aggression.
Conceived Doctrine For the Mideast
Mr. Dulles did not succeed in preserving the momentary goodwill of the Arabs that had been generated by United States opposition to British-French-Israeli operations against Egypt in the fall of 1956. By the spring of 1958 the United States found itself sharply opposed to President Gamal Abdel Nasser's penetration of Lebanon. Once again Mr. Dulles had a phrase for it: "indirect aggression."
When revolution flared in Iraq in 1958 Mr. Dulles countered "indirect aggression" by the United Arab Republic with landings by United States forces in Lebanon.
Mr. Dulles will be remembered for his part in leading the Republican party out of its long tradition of isolationism into a new era of internationalism. Often criticized during his tenure for seeming inflexibility in his dealings with the Soviet Union, there was growing appreciation during his last months in office that his line was basically sound.
He achieved his objectives best in Europe, in spite of the rebuff he suffered on the issue of the European Defense Community. With Mr. Dulles' encouragement West Germany regained sovereignty as a member of the North Atlantic alliance while at the same time progressively closing economic ranks with France.
In the Far East he stood inflexibly attached to alliance with Nationalist China and opposed to recognition of Communist China. With United States help, President Chiang Kai-shek was able to hold the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in spite of heavy Communist bombardment.
Chiang Reinforced Offshore Islands
Disregarding Mr. Dulles' advice, Chiang retained the heavy manpower commitment to these islands through which, in another crisis, the United States could be drawn into war.
In the Middle East he lost heavily. By not making it possible for Egypt to acquire arms in the United States he opened the way for a Soviet-Egyptian arms deal that carried Soviet influence into the heart of the Middle East.
By dramatically withdrawing United States support for the Aswan high dam in Egypt he provoked President Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal Company, which led to an abortive British-French invasion of the Canal Zone and further deterioration of Western prestige.
By sending troops into Lebanon on the heels of the Iraqi revolution, he convinced the Iraqi revolutionaries that the United States might oppose them by force. They turned to the Soviet Union for help.
Mr. Dulles' personal skill as a negotiator made him look almost indispensable. Time after time he mixed the diplomatic glue with which differences among the allies were papered over.
Mr. Dulles believed that to spend too much time in Washington would be to neglect his higher duties as leader in the Western alliance. Nevertheless his absences led to neglect of his administrative tasks and made it impossible for him to make full use of the State Department and the Foreign Service as diplomatic tools.
After the crisis on the European Defense Community the French called him brutal. After the Suez crisis the British accused him of double-dealing. After his remarks on Goa and neutrality the Indians tended to write him off.
But when Mr. Dulles had to withdraw from the international scene one word was heard over and over among the diplomats of Europe and Asia: "Indispensable."
When President Eisenhower announced Mr. Dulles' resignation he had tears in his eyes. The moment was so moving that no one could bring himself to ask a question. With mixed pity and consternation some remembered a remark attributed to the President several years ago:
"If anything happened to Foster, where could I find a man able to replace him?"
John Foster Dulles
Time Magazine's 1954 Man of the Year
In an icy conference room in West Berlin one day last February, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov sang an old, sour song. After nine years of delay and diatribe, the Soviet Union still refused to sign a peace treaty ending the occupation of Austria. As Molotov droned on, a tall man slouched low in a chair, whittling on a pencil, calmly watching the shavings drop to the floor. When the Russian had finished, John Foster Dulles blew the dust from his pocketknife, snapped it shut and shoved it into his pocket. Then the U.S. Secretary of State leaned forward.
"For about 2,000 years now," said Dulles, "there has been a figure in mythology which symbolizes tragic futility. That was Sisyphus, who, according to the Greek story, was given the task of rolling a great stone up to the top of a hill. Each time when, after great struggle and sweating, the stone was just at the brow of the hill, some evil force manifested itself and pushed the stone down. So poor Sisyphus had to start his task over again. I suspect that for the next 2,000 years the story of Sisyphus will be forgotten, when generation after generation is told the tragic story of the Austrian state treaty. We have repeatedly been almost at the point of concluding an Austrian treaty, and always some evil force manifests itself and pushes the treaty back again."
Then John Foster Dulles looked squarely at the man he had labeled the instrument of an evil force and said: "I think that the Soviet Foreign Minister will understand that it is at least excusable if we think, and if much of the world will think, that what is actually under way here is another illustration of the unwillingness of the Soviet Union actually to restore genuine freedom and independence in any area where it has once gotten its grip."
War Against Gullibility. The Berlin Conference might have marked the beginning of calamity for John Foster Dulles--and for the people and the cause he represented. Instead, it was at Berlin that Dulles started on the way to become 1954's Man of the Year. It was the first time in nearly five years that the foreign ministers of the Big Four had conferred. Much of the world was being lulled by new and gentle tones from Moscow. Did Malenkov's Russia really want peace? In trying to get an answer that all the world would understand, Secretary of State Dulles at Berlin pressed Molotov with greater skill and force than any U.S. diplomat had ever shown in dealing with the Communists. With one sharp stroke after another, he stripped the Communists naked of the pretense that they really wanted peace at anything less than their own outrageous price. If millions remained deluded by the "soft" Malenkov line, that was not the fault of Dulles, who rescued other millions from gullibility.
Everywhere, and especially in Europe, gullibility was nurtured by the fear that no power could stop the Communists, that the only alternatives were an appeasing coexistence or an atomic world war in which the dreadful best outcome would be liberation after U.S. "massive retaliation" against Red aggression. Neither at Berlin last February nor throughout the year did Dulles try to veil the free world's grim dependence on massive atomic retaliation. But he knew this to be a position of desperation, one that could not be held indefinitely unless the non-Communist world regained freedom of action, unless it found other than ultimate and apocalyptic ways to gather and use its strength.
In pursuit of such ways, Dulles spent 1954 in a ceaseless round of travel, logging 101,521 miles on journeys to Berlin, London, Paris, Caracas, Bonn, Geneva, Milan, Manila and Tokyo. In one fortnight last September, he munched mangoes with Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay in Manila, conferred with Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa, visited Premier Yoshida in Tokyo, reported to President Eisenhower in Denver, consulted with Winston Churchill in London and talked with Konrad Adenauer in Bonn. En route, he read a detective story in mid-Pacific, slept soundly across the Atlantic, and carried on U.S. State Department business as he crossed one international border after another.
On his trips to reinforce the free world outposts, Dulles sometimes merely shored up a wall that the Reds had breached, but on other sorties he served his primary mission: to develop the cohesion and strength that would make Communist aggression less likely and would, therefore, make the free world less directly dependent on massive retaliation, the defense it feared.
A Giant Stride. As the year ended, Dulles, back from his eighth transatlantic trip in twelve months, was able to report to the U.S. that plans for Europe's defense had entered a new phase. Tactical atomic weapons (e.g., atomic howitzers and small rockets) now make it possible to halt a Red army ground attack: "The aggressor would be thrown back at the threshold" of Western Europe. The 14 NATO nations that discussed this with Dulles are agreed on how this threshold defense shall be coordinated. Said Dulles: "Thus we see the means of achieving what the people of Western Europe have long sought--that is, a form of security which, while having as its first objective the preservation of peace, would also be adequate for defense and which would not put Western Europe in a position of having to be liberated."
John Foster Dulles played the key role in the NATO Council's agreement on how to coordinate this giant stride. When Dulles got to Paris for the council meeting last fortnight, he found that both Anthony Eden and Pierre Mendes-France had prepared strict plans calling for consultation by the allies before nuclear weapons could be used. After dinner with Eden, Dulles pulled out his omnipresent yellow scratch-pad, scribbled out his own resolution. Next day both Eden and Mendes-France dropped their proposals, and the council adopted the Dulles plan within 30 minutes. It provided for consultation prior to use of nuclear weapons by NATO forces, but it did not set rigid rules or tie the hand of such non-NATO forces as the U.S. Strategic Air Command.
A Year of Shadowed Joy. In Dulles' patient year of work and travel, every task and every mile was made harder by the mood of 1954, a year in which temptations to complacency and reasons for anxiety both mounted. For complacency, 1954 was superficially like the peaceful and prosperous '20s. Between Sept. 18, 1931, when the Japanese moved into Manchuria, and Aug. 10, 1954, when the Indo-China fighting stopped, there was no day of worldwide peace. Between Oct. 24, 1929, when the stock market crashed, and 1954, there had been some years of boom, but it took 1954's mild, controlled U.S. recession to bring home the solidity of the economic advance. The rest of the world had long feared the magnified effect of even a mild U.S. recession. But in 1954 business forged ahead in Britain, West Germany and many another country, despite the brief U.S. downswing. As U.S. indexes turned upward at year's end, the 25-year-old belief that the world was tied to a boom-or-bust economy began to bust.
The result, as 1954 ended, was a feeling of firm confidence in the U.S. economy and in dynamic capitalism as an economic way of life. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, a hard man with a dollar's worth of optimism, summed up this economic feeling in a financial man's superlative. Said he: "I'm a bull on the world."
The main differences between the peace and prosperity of 1954 and of the '20s were: I) 1954's peace and prosperity had, in reality, far better prospects; 2) the 1920s' feeling of confidence, which proved illusory, was much higher. Americans of 1954 knew that the technical peace was not real, that they had to keep almost 3,000,000 men under arms, maintain a peacetime conscription and spend an average of $855 a family for defense. The year that saw the hydrogen explosion at Bikini--the biggest explosion in man's explosive history--was not one to foster illusions about an indefinite peace.
Yards Gained. The U.S. needed all its strength and confidence to handle 1954's struggle with Communism, which has been the overriding issue of every year since 1945. Dulles both drew upon and nourished U.S. confidence in its national strength. Far from offending allies, the emphasis on U.S. interests had a wholesome effect of stimulating the national prides of other Western nations in a war that made them more self-reliant and more reliable partners in the struggle against the common enemy.
Dulles is the man of 1954 because, in the decisive areas of international politics he played the year's most effective role. He made mistakes, and he suffered heavy losses. But he was nimble in disentangling himself from his errors. The heavier losses of 1954 were prepared by serious mistakes made years ago; Dulles limited the damage.
Regionally, 1954's greatest area of success for American diplomacy and the man who runs it was the Middle East. There, a number of old problems were solved by new approaches. Items:
-- After decades of dispute, the status of the Suez Canal area was settled more firmly than ever before. On the surface this was an affair between the British who agreed to withdraw their troops, are Egypt's Man of the Year, Premier Gamal-Abdel Nasser. In fact, the settlement was skillfully midwifed by the U.S. State Department through Old Diplomat Jefferson Caffery, then Ambassador to Egypt.
-- After three years of shutdown and stalemate at Abadan (caused by the stubborn egotism of 1951's Man of the Year Mohammed Mossadegh), Iran agreed to let foreign firms (chiefly British) resume operating the Iranian oil industry, which the Iranians were incapable of operating. The agreement was prodded, adjusted and pushed through by Loy Henderson, the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, and Special U.S. Emissary Herbert Hoover Jr., now Under Secretary of State.
-- After long and careful negotiation by U.S. diplomats, Turkey and Pakistan signed a military collaboration treaty. This was a key step toward Dulles' goal of a "Northern Tier" defense against Soviet expansion.
In Europe and in the Americas, too there were some clear-cut gains. Items:
-- At Caracas, in March, Secretary Dulles personally pushed through an inter-American resolution calling for joint action against Communist aggression or subversion. Said Dulles: "It may serve the needs of our time as effectively as the Monroe doctrine served the needs of our nation during the last century." Only three months after Caracas, Jacobo Arbenz' Communist-dominated government of Guatemala, the only Red bastion in the western hemisphere, was overthrown by the anti-Communist forces of Castillo Armas.
-- The status of Trieste was settled after nine years of Communist-comforting tension between Italy and Yugoslavia. When U.S. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce impressed Washington with the urgency of the settlement, U.S. and British diplomacy went to work. The Italians and the Yugoslavs were persuaded to sign a settlement dividing the territory, with the Italians getting the Italian city.
Holes Plugged. Dulles' job includes defense as well as advance. He played goalkeeper in the free world's two major setbacks of 1954: the death of the European Defense Community (to which he had said there was "no alternative") and the defeat in Indo-China. Both setbacks stemmed from a single mistake made a decade ago, and never corrected in spite of mounting evidence. The mistake: that the victory of France's allies over Germany somehow meant that France had recovered from the basic political weakness that caused its collapse in 1940. The postwar phrase--the Big Four--was a misnomer; France is not a great power, but a great civilization, politically paralyzed. EDC asked France to show a self-confidence it did not posses. Indo-China asked France to show a will to win it did not possess. A new Premier, Pierre Mendes-France, made France's allies face the old fact of France's weakness.
At the end of 1953, John Foster Dulles had said, quite pointedly, that the U.S. would be forced to make an "agonizing reappraisal" of its relations with France, of its policy toward Europe if EDC failed of ratification. (That expression and Dulles' "massive retaliation" became the cold-war phrases of 1954.) A smaller man than Dulles might have insisted on a reappraisal immediately after Mendes-France presided over the French assassination of EDC. But Dulles swallowed his pride and helped the West lay the foundation for a substitute.
The substitute, to rearm and grant sovereignty to West Germany under a different set of agreements, was conceived by Britain's Foreign Minister Anthony Eden one morning in his bathtub. Last October in Paris, with the help of Dulles and of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (the Man of 1953), Eden got his alternative plan approved at the foreign-minister level. Many military men discovered that they liked Eden's Western European Union, with its appeal to nationalism, better than EDC, with its emphasis on European political unity. The Communists testified to the plan's potential: they fought as desperately against it as they had against EDC.
The disaster in Indo-China left no doubt that three Communists were the Men of the Year in Asia. The victory belonged to Communist China's Premier Mao Tse-tung, his Foreign Minister Chou En-lai, and to Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh. For a considerable measure of recovery from the Indo-China disaster, the free world could thank John Foster Dulles. First Dulles hammered out and pushed through the Manila Pact, which committed eight nations to take joint action against subversion and aggression in Asia.
More important, perhaps, was Dulles' other Asian treaty of the year, the mutual defense agreement between the U.S. and Nationalist Chinese Leader Chiang Kai-shek. One tribute to the treaty's impact was the angry reaction of the Communist Chinese. The pact did not establish any new principle, but it wiped out some doubts. Said Dulles: "It is my hope that the signing of this defense treaty will put to rest once and for all rumors and reports that the U.S. will in any manner agree to the abandonment of Formosa and the Pescadores to Communist control."
Despite these attempts to shore up the anti-Communist position, the free world came to year's end with a net loss and a troubled outlook in Asia. There was scant hope that the Communists could be prevented from swallowing up all of Viet Nam. There was great danger in the aura of success that surrounded the Communists in the Far East, where the people want to know: Which side will win? Even in Japan, where the West's good friend, Premier Yoshida, was forced to resign, there was new talk of trade and friendship with Red China. On 1954's Asian ledger, the big figures were all Red.
He Likes the Work. As the Man of 1954 went through his incredibly difficult year, he was sustained by an important basic attitude: he likes the work. President Eisenhower and most members of his Cabinet can truthfully say that they did not dream of holding the jobs they have, and took them only out of sense of duty. But John Foster Dulles has wanted, almost all his life, the job he now holds. He learned his first lessons in international relations at the knee of his maternal grandfather, John Foster, who was Secretary of State in Benjamin Harrison's Cabinet and who helped negotiate the 1895 treaty that ended the Sino-Japanese War. At 19, he was secretary of China's delegation at the Second Hague Peace Conference; at 30, he served on the Reparations Commission at Versailles. Between the wars he had a brilliant legal career. In 1941 he got the Federal Council of Churches to set up a Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, headed it, and wrote a report that applied Christian principles to historical realities.
Called in by the Truman Administration after the end of World War II, Dulles negotiated a peace treaty with Japan that was the soundest bit of diplomacy that he inherited when he became Secretary of State in 1953. The rest of his policy inheritance was jerry-built on emergency and crisis. Dulles' first aim was to build a foreign policy for the long haul. To replace fear as the glue of the free world's alliances, he said he wanted to develop a cement compounded of strength, understanding and cooperation. He has explained the difficulty of this operation: "The best insurance against war is to be ready, able and willing to fight. Now it is extremely difficult to hold that position without leading some of our friends and allies to think that we are truculent and want to have a fight."
Ducking the One-Two. Because Presbyterian Dulles (a clergyman's son) talked a great deal about moral principle, some feared that he was trying to force his Christian morals on the rest of the world. But he has demonstrated that a diplomat who is clear about his own principles can find them highly useful in practical international politics.
By the end of 1954. Dulles, who had been accused of saber rattling with such phrases as "massive retaliation," found himself the target of other critics who accused him of speaking too softly about coexistence, particularly after the Chinese branded 13 imprisoned Americans as spies. Dulles' restraint in this case was deliberate, and resulted from his highly practical analysis of why the Reds made their announcement on the 13 prisoners. He was convinced that the Soviet and Chinese Communists were attempting to give the U.S. a diplomatic one-two punch: soft talk from Moscow and hard action from Peking.
In Paris last fortnight, Dulles analyzed the situation for the NATO foreign ministers' council. Said he: "At the present time, the U.S. is being subjected to the most severe kind of provocation in Asia. This appears to be deliberately planned in the hope of provoking the U.S. into actions which our European friends and allies would regard as ill-advised and which would perhaps shake our unity at a time when we hope it will be reinforced by the pending London-Paris accords. The U.S. does not intend thus to be hastily provoked into needless action." This highly practical talk was the more forceful because Dulles' line had already been proved right. U.S. allies, especially Britain, had been reassured by Dulles' verbal restraint and had not hesitated to denounce the Reds in terms as strong as any Dulles could have used.
At that kind of diplomatic opinion-molding, John Foster Dulles is a master. He recognizes the importance of communicating his ideas and policies to others, and works hard at checking his circuits of communications. (In his early months as Secretary of State, he would often ask associates, after a Cabinet meeting or a conference, whether he had gotten his ideas across.) When he finds he has been misunderstood, he tries again, tirelessly editing his own public speeches, and even his own thoughts.
In recent months Dulles has gained new confidence that he has found the right words and phrases. His reports to the people, e.g., his report on the Paris Conference at a televised Cabinet meeting, have been remarkable for their sweep and clarity. Dulles considers such reports a key part of his job for one large reason: he believes that the citizens of the U.S. have the right and the ability to understand his business.
As he goes tirelessly about that business, Dulles, at 66, displays a tremendous capacity for concentration and work. Almost all of his waking hours are working hours, whether he is flying across an ocean, seated in his map-lined office or resting at home (the yellow scratch-pad is always at his bedside). His depth of concentration sometimes unnerves staff members who have brought him problems: they think he has forgotten that they are there. His favorite form of relaxation literally gives his staff the shivers: he likes to swim wherever and whenever he can, and sometimes does so, in water more suitable for polar bears than for Secretaries of State.
One-Plan Department. When Dulles travels, his airplane becomes a mobile State Department. He takes with him more aides than made up the entire State Department personnel in John Quincy Adams' day. (Adam's fullest staff: eight clerks.) On trips to Europe, the staff is headed by Assistant Secretary (for European Affairs) Livingston T. Merchant and Counselor Douglas MacArthur II. When Asia is the landing place, the Secretary's chief aide is Assistant Secretary (for Far Eastern Affairs) Walter S. Robertson.
The traveling State Department leaves at home 5,761 colleagues in a sprawling, uncertain organization that is at least two decades overdue for genuine reorganization and reorientation. Dulles has scarcely touched that herculean job, and he may never get around to it. But whoever does may find a legacy from Dulles' one-plane operation. A sense of policy direction must precede any basic change in the setup of the department; Dulles is providing direction to which the department may be some day geared.
"Pour la Paix." Obviously, John Foster Dulles goes about his job as a missionary at large rather than as an administrator. At first, some people at home and abroad thought that he was only going to preach. They soon discovered that this missionary did a lot of practicing. He not only carried the word into the jungle, quieted the local tribes and performed marriages, but also helped to clear the ground, dam the streams and stop epidemics of fear.
At year's end there was evidence that Missionary Dulles was making some converts where conversion was difficult. In Paris, a French foreign office official told a TIME correspondent: "You know, the other day a pamphlet came across my desk. Written in French, it was entitled Pour la Paix. My first reaction was that it was just another Communist propaganda tract. But it wasn't. It was John Foster Dulles' recent speech in Chicago. For years now- in Europe at least--the Communists have made `peace' their private property. Even though people knew what the Communists meant, the idea in their hands helped them and hurt us. It looks now as if your Mr. Dulles is going to take peace away from the Communists and restore it to its real meaning."
During 1954, as he kept working pour la paix, Foster Dulles disregarded the cries of those who would have had him take the high road toward war or the low road of appeasement. He stayed, instead, on the rutted, booby-trapped road in between, and he made some forward progress. If he has, indeed, captured the word peace for the U.S., his patience and caution were well worth the prize.
Three Tests Ahead. To 1954's Man of the Year, to his boss, Dwight Eisenhower, and to the people of the U.S. whose destiny they hold, 1955 will bring three critical tests. The immediate problem is the French reaction to the Paris agreements. Somehow, the rearmament of Germany will begin in 1955, whatever stand France takes. The other two tests facing U.S. foreign policy in 1955 are more serious.
After two years in office, the Eisenhower Administration has failed to plug the yawning gap in its foreign policy--the place where history, logic, opportunity and the poverty of the world cry out for U.S. leadership on a free worldwide front of economic advance. In the year's closing months, the President, despite strong opposition in his own Cabinet, seemed to be moving toward a positive policy for liberalized world trade and stimulated production. Dulles favors such a program. But he has been too busy with the international politics of his job to give it his own leadership: it has little chance of success unless he fights for it--in Washington and abroad.
The second challenge of 1955 is even bigger. Almost certainly, there will be a top-level conference between the Western powers and the Russians. Whatever the paper headed "Agenda" may say, the main business before the meeting will be agreement on atomic weapons. If the U.S. submits to crippling limitation on its power of massive atomic retaliation, it must get in return an equivalent enforceable limitation on the Communist superiority in land armaments and the techniques of subversion.
The prospects of agreement are not bright. But they are less dark than they were before a practical missionary of Christian politics began his extraordinary year of work.
[From: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jfdulles.htm]
Herbert Brownell, Jr.
Attorney
General: (1953-1957)
Herbert Brownell Jr. was attorney general under President
Eisenhower from January 21, 1953, to October 23, 1957. Brownell recieved his B.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1924
and earned a law degree from Yale in 1927. He was admitted to the New York bar
in 1928. Brownell was an associate at the law firm of Root, Clark, Buckner and Ballantine from 1927 until 1929. At that point, he joined
the more prestigious firm of Lord, Day and Lord.
While
he was an unsuccessful candidate for the New York State Assembly in 1931,
Brownell prevailed as a rare Republican victor in 1932 and won successive
elections until 1937. He managed Thomas E. Dewey's gubernatorial (1938 and
1942) and presidential (1944 and 1948) campaigns. From 1944 to 1946, Brownell
was the national chairman of the Republican Party.
After
playing an important part in securing delegates for Eisenhower's nomination in
the 1952 national convention and then during the presidential campaign,
Brownell became attorney general. He often advised Eisenhower on civil rights
matters. He also helped to expedite the electrocution of Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg, who were sentenced to death for passing secret files about the
atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
He also
enshrined the practice of allowing the American Bar Association to vet judicial
appointments. Finally, Brownell was instrumental in advising Eisenhower to
send federal troops to enforce the desegregation of Central High
School in Little Rock, Arkansas. After resigning in 1957, he rejoined his old
law firm as a senior partner until 1977 and then until 1989 as counsel. He died
in 1996.
Herbert Brownell, lawyer, politician, and Attorney General of the United States, was born in Nebraska in 1904 of New England ancestry. His father, Herbert Brownell Sr., was a college professor who taught science education at the University of Nebraska for many years. His older brother Samuel also became a teacher and served as Commissioner of Education during the Eisenhower administration. Their mother, May Miller Brownell, was the daughter of a minister in upstate New York. Her uncle William Miller served as Attorney General during the Benjamin Harrison administration. After majoring in journalism at the University of Nebraska Brownell received a scholarship to Yale Law School. This led to a life-long career in the legal profession. His first job after receiving his law degree was with the firm of Root, Clark, Buckner, Howland & Ballantine in New York City. In 1929 he transferred to the firm of Lord Day & Lord where he spent the rest of his career.
Brownell specialized in corporate law. He provided legal services to a wide variety of foundations and corporations. Such services included preparing charter and by-law revisions, mergers and acquisitions, stock offerings, tax forms, and annual reports. Major clients included the American Hotel Association and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Outside of his law practice he was a member of the American Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association. He was also active in various scholarly organizations which supported the legal profession, particularly the American Judicature Society and the Institute for Court Management. Despite his distinguished law career, Brownell came to the attention of the general public largely because of his political activities. After settling in New York City he became active in the Republican party and campaigned for Herbert Hoover during the 1928 presidential campaign. In 1931 he ran for a seat in the New York State Assembly from the 10th District on Manhattan Island. His campaign manager was a young Republican attorney named Thomas E. Dewey.
Although Brownell lost the election he ran again the following year and was able to defeat the Democratic incumbent. This feat, in Franklin Roosevelt’s home state in the year of the Democratic landslide, brought Brownell national recognition.
Brownell served five years in the New York Assembly and became noted for his progressive legislation. He supported unemployment relief and other measures to assist families during the Great Depression. In 1937 he declined to run for reelection in order to devote more time to his law practice. However, he continued to be active in politics. In 1942 he managed Thomas Dewey’s successful campaign for Governor of New York, and in 1944 was manager of Dewey’s unsuccessful campaign for the presidency. During the campaign Dewey arranged to have Brownell made chairman of the Republican National Committee. Brownell used the position to increase the efficiency of the RNC and improve contact with state and local Republican organizations.
In 1948 Brownell once again served as manager of Thomas Dewey’s presidential campaign and came very close to defeating Harry S. Truman. Four years later he supported Dwight D. Eisenhower’s candidacy and helped the Eisenhower forces defeat the supporters of Robert Taft at the Republican National Convention in July 1952. After Eisenhower was elected president he appointed Brownell Attorney General of the United States. Brownell served in the position until November 1957 when he resigned to return to his law practice. In 1964 he managed the re-election campaign of Senator Kenneth Keating. Keating was defeated by Robert F. Kennedy, a younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. After the Keating campaign Brownell largely retired from politics, although he remained active in legal affairs and continued to hold important positions. In 1972 President Nixon made him a special ambassador to resolve a dispute with Mexico over the quality of the water in the Colorado River. In 1975 President Ford appointed him chairman of the National Study Commission on Records and Documents of Federal Officials.
From DDE Library
James Hagerty
Press Secretary
Wife: Marjorie Lucas (m.
15-Jun-1937)
High School:
University: Columbia University
(1934)
ABC Vice President in charge
of Corporate Relations 1963-75
ABC Vice
President in charge of News, Special Events, and Public Affairs 1961-63
White House Press
Secretary 1953-61
The New York Times
Reporter 1934-42
Author of
books:
The Diary Of James C. Hagerty: Eisenhower in
Mid-Course, 1954-1955 (1983, Edited by Robert H. Ferrell)
Barry M. Goldwater
May
29, 1998
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/1998/goldwater_5-29a.html
Barry Goldwater, former senator and Republican presidential nominee, died today at his Arizona home. He was 89 years old. Following this look at his life, Jim Lehrer is joined by syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, and the NewsHour historians to discuss the life and legacy of Barry Goldwater.
SPENCER MICHELS: The many lives of
Barry Goldwater--military pilot, devoted family man, presidential candidate,
avid photograher, art collector. But Barry Goldwater
will be forever known as the father of modern-day conservatism.
The
father of modern-day conservatism.
Born in Phoenix on New Year's Day in
1909, Goldwater was a lifelong resident of Arizona. Early on he was attracted
to the military. He attended Virginia's Stanton Military academy and later
joined the Army Air Corps. Goldwater was a pilot during World War Two, and by
the time he retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1967, Major General Barry
Goldwater had flown 165 different types of aircraft. His political career had
begun when he won a seat on the Phoenix City Council in 1949. Just three years
later Goldwater gained national prominence by getting elected to the United
States Senate -- upsetting Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland. He brought
to Washington fundamental beliefs in a strong, aggressive national defense and
in an economy free of government 
regulation.
After a successful run for re-election, Goldwater developed presidential
aspirations and planned on running against President Kennedy in 1964.
BARRY
GOLDWATER: He was a very, very nice, decent guy. And while I relished the
chance to run against Jack Kennedy, we even talked about using the same
airplane and doing it the old fashioned way, get out on the stump and debate.
SPENCER
MICHELS: Of course, Goldwater would face President Lyndon Johnson instead.
Goldwater won the Republican presidential nomination at his party's convention
in San Francisco over more moderate candidate Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
And he delivered an acceptance speech that brought conservatives to their feet.
The
1964 presidential election.
BARRY GOLDWATER: I would
remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. [applause] Let
me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
SPENCER
MICHELS: But President Johnson capitalized on voters' fears of extremism and
produced arguably the most famous television ad in presidential campaign
history. That ad would forever be linked to the political career of Barry
Goldwater. Even in defeat, Goldwater always displayed a quick wit and a sense
of humor.
SPOKESPERSON:
Senator, how about you back in 1964?
BARRY
GOLDWATER: Oh, I kind of remember that. I was engaged in some kind of a
cliffhanger.
SPOKESPERSON:
Yeah?
BARRY
GOLDWATER: A real toughie.
SPOKESPERSON:
Yeah? Could have used some people?
BARRY
GOLDWATER: I could have used a hell of a lot of more.
SPENCER
MICHELS: Goldwater never again ran for president but was elected to three more
terms in the Senate. In 1974, during the height of the Watergate scandal, it
was Goldwater who advised President Richard Nixon he should resign from office.
SPOKESMAN: And
here you go, Mr. Conservative.
SPENCER MICHELS: And it
was Goldwater who was credited for the early rise of what eventually became
known as the Reagan Revolution. Throughout his years in the Senate--even well
into his seventies--Goldwater forever remained the outspoken Arizonan. Here
facing off with a young Alfonse D'Amato of New York.
BARRY
GOLDWATER: Wait a minute! You haven't debated this thing. You want to talk
about the airplane? It's a very interesting -- I've read that book. I've read all
the books that-
ALFONSE
D'AMATO: Senator, I've heard you on the floor before take this plane apart hoof
by hoof, piece by piece, convince this body that the plane couldn't even fly!
Now, you come to the-
BARRY
GOLDWATER: Oh, you're out of your head!
SPENCER
MICHELS: In 1987, at the age of 78 and after 30 years in the United States
Senate, Barry Goldwater retired from public office. Shortly after he announced
his retirement, Goldwater sat down with Robert MacNeil
and talked about the evolution of the conservative movement he started a
generation ago.
ROBERT MacNEIL: You were Mr. Conservative. In many ways, you
started this. You were in the beginning of and symbolized the tide of conservatism
that came in and brought Ronald Reagan into the presidency. What do you think
conservatism has done for the country, having come to power, so to speak?
Barry
Goldwater reflects on conservatism.
BARRY
GOLDWATER: Well, you find in conservatism the same thing you found in
liberalism: a split. You had liberals like Hubert Humphrey that were really
trying to make the country go with liberalism, and you had others that didn't
care what they said or what they appropriated, just so they made a noise that
was formerly unacceptable to 
American thinking. Now, conservatism has its others too. We
have conservatives who literally want to do everything in the bag, and that's
not possible. We have other conservatives like Ronald Reagan, myself and most
conservatives, who want to make progress on the proven values of the past,
which to me is a whole essence of conservatism. This doesn't mean we have to
bring in abortion or school prayer or every other thing in the book or
everything you find under the rocks. Make your progress on the proven values,
the Constitution, the free enterprise system, and don't mess around with it.
SPENCER
MICHELS: During his later years Goldwater's political views moderated as he
often spoke out on behalf of gay rights and against the Christian right. In
1996, Goldwater suffered a stroke and had been in declining health ever since.
He died today at his home in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
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KEY DATES IN THE LIFE OF BARRY GOLDWATER: Jan. 1, 1909: Born in Phoenix, son of Baron and Josephine Williams Goldwater and grandson of the founder of the Goldwater department store. 1928: Graduates from Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. 1930: Joins Army as second lieutenant. Sept. 22, 1934: Marries Margaret "Peggy" Johnson. 1941-45: Pilot and colonel, Army Air Force. 1945-52: Major general and chief of Arizona Air National Guard. 1949: Elected to Phoenix City Council as part of group committed to cleaning up prostitution and gambling. 1952: Upsets Democratic Sen. Ernest McFarland by 6,000-vote margin to win first term in Senate. 1960: His name goes before Republican convention as a candidate, but he withdraws in favor of Richard Nixon. 1964: Captures Republican presidential nomination after convention fight with Nelson Rockfeller. Declares: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Gives up Senate seat for presidential bid. Goes on to lose to President Lyndon Johnson. 1968: Re-elected to Senate. 1974: One of several GOP leaders who visit President Nixon, telling him impeachment is inevitable. Nixon resigns same week. 1985: Margaret "Peggy" Goldwater dies. 1987: Retires from Senate. 1992: At 83, marries health-care executive Susan Schaffer Wechsler, 51. 1996: Suffers stroke that damages frontal lobe of brain, which controls memory and personality. 1997: Doctors say he shows symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. May 29, 1998: Dies at his home in Paradise Valley, AZ. |
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
William F. Knowland
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(1908 - 1974) |
Senate
Years of Service: 1945-1959
Party: Republican
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KNOWLAND, William Fife, (son of Joseph Russell Knowland), a Senator from California; born in Alameda, Alameda County, Calif., June 26, 1908; attended the public schools and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1929; engaged in the newspaper publishing business in Oakland, Calif., in 1933; member, California State assembly 1933-1935; member, State senate 1935-1939; Republican National committeeman from California 1938-1942 and chairman of the executive committee 1940-1942; served in the Second World War as an enlisted man and officer; was serving overseas when appointed on August 14, 1945, as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Hiram W. Johnson; assumed office August 26, 1945, and was subsequently elected November 5, 1946, to fill the unexpired term ending January 3, 1947, and at the same time elected for the six-year term ending January 3, 1953; reelected in 1952 and served from August 26, 1945, to January 2, 1959; was not a candidate for renomination in 1958; majority leader 1953-1955; minority leader 1955-1959; chairman, Republican Policy Committee (Eighty-third Congress); unsuccessful candidate for Governor of California in 1958; resumed his newspaper career and took an active interest in civic affairs in the Oakland, Calif., area; died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his summer home near Guerneville, Calif., February 23, 1974; interment in Chapel of Memories Cemetery, Oakland, Calif.
Bibliography
American National Biography; Montgomery, Gayle B., and James W. Johnson. One Step From the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998.