The Strauss Aftermath

July 6, 1959

The consequences of the Senate’s rejection of the nomination of Lewis L. Strauss as Secretary of Commerce will be felt for a long time—and few of them seem likely to be good.

Strauss was eminently qualified for the position. Few of his predecessors in the office, indeed, have had equal qualifications. These were revealed in the eight months he had served as Secretary and in his previous long record of public service. As Arthur Krock summed up the case in The New York Times, the rejection of his nomination “marks a Senate repudiation of the type of highly talented, self-sacrificing citizen that it has become increasingly difficult for Presidents to recruit for government service except in time of war. [Strauss] had served and been commended by four Presidents, awarded five of the highest national decorations, was an officer in the Naval Reserve who rose to rear admiral, and who, as he vastly understated it in his comment on his rejection, had ‘done the best I knew how to do to protect and defend the national security when that was not the recognized, nor easy, nor popular course of action at the time’ (the decision to produce the H bomb).”

Yet Strauss was the first Cabinet appointee to be rejected by the Senate in 34 years, and only the eighth such rejection in our history.

THE REASONS FOR IT

When one seeks the reasons for this, the last place one finds them is in the explanations most frequently offered. We are told that he had grave personality faults. For example, when he was violently attacked, he defended himself! When he was accused of all sorts of wrongdoing, he refused to admit it! This proved his “arrogance.” Also, the Administration was accused of “lobbying.” That is to say, when Strauss’s enemies in the Senate resorted to personal vituperation, almost daily calling him a “liar,” Administration supporters had the impudence to put in a quiet word in his behalf! We were told at the same time that the senators who voted against him did so because his answers were “evasive and unresponsive,” and because he insisted on replying to every charge. He further infuriated his questioners by bringing in documents that disproved their charges.

Suppose we look at the real reasons for Strauss’s rejection, most of which were not hidden.

The first is that he really stood for private enterprise, and had the courage to try to slow down the steady expansion of the socialized and subsidized public-power empire represented by the Tennessee Valley Authority. He had continued to stress private rather than public development of nuclear power.

SOME CONSEQUENCES

The second is that Strauss was too aggressively and persistently anti-Communist. The Senate committee that passed on the nomination listened to a delegation from the Federation of American Scientists. These gentlemen complained that Strauss had been responsible for the dismissal of J. Robert Oppenheimer; had urged construction of the H bomb; had favored restrictions on the dissemination of scientific secrets, and had opposed suspension of bomb testing.

The third reason for Strauss’s rejection is that Democrats in Congress, playing the most petty type of partisan politics, wanted to “rebuke” the President and show that “the veto can work both ways.”

The action of the Senate majority was vindictive and irresponsible. By repudiating the President’s nominee, they violated the long-standing tradition that a President should be free to choose the members of his official family. They have weakened the President’s prestige in foreign negotiations at a time when it is imperative to strengthen it. They have discouraged men of dignity and stature from accepting nominations to Cabinet posts that may subject them to the insult and vituperation that was poured upon Mrs. Luce and Admiral Strauss. They have shown that they will punish nominees who are in favor of private enterprise rather than socialized enterprise; who are hesitant about releasing defense secrets; who have the courage to remove security risks; or who take a leading part in developing weapons, like the hydrogen bomb, that constitute our greatest source of national security.