The Center

People and Power in Political Washington

Stewart Alsop

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781480445994
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A portrait of Washington politics during one of the most turbulent eras in American history by the twentieth century's premier US government insider.
 
During his three decades as a journalist and political pundit for the New York Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine, Stewart Alsop covered many of the defining historical events of mid-to-late twentieth-century America, from the post–World War II boom and the Red Scare to the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and the Vietnam War. In The Center, Alsop provides a perceptive, provocative, and marvelously erudite insider's view of the American political landscape of the 1960s, reporting from the beating heart of Washington, DC, the power center of the Western world.
 
With an unblinking eye and razor-sharp intellect, Alsop cogently explores an arena of unbridled political power and influence that spans from the White House to Capitol Hill to the Supreme Court. He offers remarkable insights into the motivations and very human foibles of the key figures behind some of the century's most momentous events: Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, CIA Director Richard Helms and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, among many others.
 
The Center is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics and how the system got us to where we are today.
 

1

THE DRAMA OF CONFLICT

The sons-of-bitches are gaining on us.

It is best for a reporter to admit his bias. My bias is this: I like Washington. It is not only, after a couple of decades, my home town. It is also, in all the world, my favorite city.

There are lots of things wrong with Washington, of course. As everybody knows, the summers can be dreadful. There are no really first-class restaurants, and the parking lot operators practice legal highway robbery. Persons interested in theater, music, and the like are fed on very thin fare. The tax laws have encouraged real estate speculators to turn much of downtown Washington into a characterless mass of flat-faced, steel-glass-and-concrete office buildings.

There are other things that are more profoundly wrong with Washington. There is too much crime, and there are too many poor Negroes crowded into too small an area, which is, of course, one reason why there is too much crime. There are also things that are very wrong with the government of the United States, which is Washington’s only reason for existence. Even so, the bias is there: I like Washington.

I like Washington for small reasons, like May, or the eleven o’clock rule, or the occasional whiff of the past. But I like Washington for larger reasons, too.

The tourists come to Washington in April to see the cherry blossoms, when Washington is often chilly and blossomless. They ought to come in May. May is a lovely month, but nowhere in the world lovelier than in Washington. Washington’s May makes up for Washington’s August, which is saying a great deal.

As for the eleven o’clock rule, it is a lifesaver for anyone who has to dine out a lot, and for most denizens of Political Washington dining out is part of the job. The eleven o’clock rule is a curious, un-American custom imposed by the fact that Washington is filled with diplomats and other protocol-conscious persons. The ranking guest leaves the house at eleven—eleven-fifteen at the latest—which means that everyone can get to bed sober and at a reasonable hour. And because of the eleven o’clock rule, a sensible hostess serves dinner within half an hour of the time the guests were invited, without the eternal standing and guzzling which precedes dinner in New York and most American cities. New Yorkers who have lived long enough in Washington to become used to such amenities never again quite accustom themselves to the barbarities of dining out in New York.

As for that whiff of the past, Washington is a young city, of course, even by American standards. In 1800, when the federal government moved from Philadelphia to the “Federal City” and Abigail Adams first hung her washing in the East Room of the unfinished White House, Washington was not a city at all, but a rather slovenly bad joke. But largely because George Washington’s dream of the Federal City (modestly, he never called it Washington) as a busy industrial center never came true, the smell of the past is strong in Washington.

It used to be strongest of all in the White House. As a very young man this reporter, as a rather distant Roosevelt relation, first attended family gatherings at Franklin Roosevelt’s White House. (My father was always infuriated when the Alsops were identified in the newspapers as “Roosevelt kin.” He felt that the Roosevelts ought to be identified as “Alsop kin.”) In those days the big house was like some very old, very pleasant, slightly down-at-heel country mansion of a very rich family. The past was everywhere, in every crack in the plaster and creak in the staircase. Now there are no more cracks and no more creaks, and not much past either.

When the whole interior of the White House was hauled out, during Harry Truman’s administration, so that the house consisted only of the outer walls, the past was hauled out with it. Mrs. John F. Kennedy did her brilliant best to refurbish and rearrange the house in such a way as to remind the visitor that it is an old house, with much history lived out in it. But it really isn’t an old house any more, but a very new house with a commodious facsimile of what once was there built inside old walls. The house is not like a rich family’s old mansion any more, but like the new house of a very rich man, filled with very expensive old furniture.

Was the gutting of the White House really necessary? Mr. Truman had no doubt that it was. I wrote to ask him about it and received this answer: “There was no question that the interior was in danger of imminent collapse and it was not possible to consider an archaeological restoration.” Well, maybe so. But as John Kenneth Galbraith has pointed out, old houses always seem on the verge of disintegration, which is part of their charm, but they never do actually collapse.

The restorer-vandals have been at work on Capitol Hill, but they have not yet succeeded in excising the smell of the past—since the gutting of the White House it is stronger there than anywhere in Washington. Everyone who interests himself in such matters is aware of the horrors perpetrated by the nonarchitect, Architect of the Capitol George Stewart, and by his Congressional backers, notably that most admirable man, the late Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. The chief horror is the extension of the east front of the Capitol. It is a faithful but meaningless replica of the old east front, in lifeless dull gray marble. As this is written, a drive is on similarly to desecrate the west front. But even if the vandals triumph, the smell of the past will still prevail in the interior of the old building.

It is conventional to admire the old Supreme Court Chamber, and like many conventions this is a sensible one. It takes very little imagination to see that semicircular, rather cozy room as it was when the Senate sat there, and to hear Webster thundering, or Calhoun defending “the South, the poor South,” or Clay exercising the wily arts of compromise. But there are also odd corners, which are hardly known at all, and which are much as they were when Benjamin Latrobe, with Thomas Jefferson eagerly peering over his shoulder, began the building of the Capitol, even before the British in 1814 made a “most magnificent ruin” of the place, as Latrobe wrote to Jefferson.

There are plenty of other places in Washington where suddenly the past is present: in the corridors of the pre-Civil War Treasury Building, with the gilded pilasters topped by federal eagles; in the later Old State Department Building, with its open fireplaces and its endearing flounces and furbelows; in the Smithsonian Institution’s red sandstone Norman castle; in the old houses of Georgetown. But for a real sense of the seamlessness of time’s web, the place to go is Capitol Hill. In any case, the smell of the past is not hard to find in Washington for those who like it.

But the best thing about Washington is, quite simply, the people who live there. The people who live in Political Washington—in The Center—are involved in the business of governing the United States, or in the business of dealing with the rest of the world on behalf of the United States, or dealing with the United States on behalf of the rest of the world. In short, they are involved in politics, in its broadest dictionary sense—“the science and art of government … the theory or practice of managing the affairs of public policy.”

It follows that those who find politics interesting find the people who live in Washington interesting. Mind you, Washington has its generous quota of bores. It is very easy to come across denizens of Political Washington who are only too happy to try out their latest speech on you, complete with gestures. Some of the women, who are in Washington only because they married Senator So-and-so or Secretary Such-and-such in their long-lost nubile youth, are boring quite beyond the bounds of belief. The vivid phrase “I felt as though I were being nibbled to death by a duck” was invented by a male Washingtonian subjected to the dinner-table conversation of such a rapaciously tedious female. But if you are interested in politics, it is not necessary to be bored in Washington.

Just as it is necessary to be interested in automobiles in Detroit, or movies in Hollywood, or insurance in Hartford, it is absolutely essential in Washington to be interested in politics. Culturally minded, nonpolitical persons tend to go mad if exposed to Washington for too long a period. Especially New Yorkers and especially ladies. But if you are interested in the political process, Washington is an interesting, even an exciting, place. There is drama in Washington—more drama, surely, than in making automobiles, or writing insurance, or even making movies.

Washington’s drama is, curiously, a recent discovery for the rest of the country. Until recently, for example, the Washington novel, aside from such exotica as Henry Adams’ Democracy and bits of Edith Wharton, hardly existed. Then Allen Drury wrote his Advise and Consent. Since then the bookstores have been flooded with Washington novels, in which generals unleash nuclear war, Senators commit sodomy, Presidents go mad, and beautiful hostesses leap relentlessly in and out of the beds of Very Important Persons. No doubt there is a certain amount of leaping in and out of bed among the town’s movers and shakers, but far less than in the novels, for Political Washington is a rather moral town. The drama of Washington is of a different order.

It is of two kinds. First, and rarest, is the ceremonial drama, which can be unforgettable. A Presidential Inauguration is always moving, for it symbolizes the legitimate assumption of great power—and the transfer of power without risk of bloodshed is in itself a great, and historically novel, accomplishment. The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy was peculiarly moving, in part because it also symbolized the transfer of power from one generation to another. And surely no one who witnessed it will ever forget the ceremonial drama of the Kennedy funeral—the rearing riderless horse, the boots reversed in the stirrups, the drums beating to the tempo of the human heart.

But the drama of Washington lies more often in conflict than in ceremony. It is conflict that chiefly produces drama, and conflict is the stuff of which Washington is made—and always has been, back to the time when George Washington’s two chief lieutenants become mortal enemies. When conflict concerns vital national issues, as in the case of Jefferson and Hamilton, the drama takes on grandeur. And although Washington has always had its share of squabbles based on personal ambition and petty rivalry, the basic conflict almost always revolves around issues of genuine importance—sometimes, of life-and-death importance. In today’s Washington, for example, it is around such issues that the conflict between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, as dramatic in its way as any conflict in Washington’s history, revolves.

Anyone who has lived in Washington for a good many years can recall, out of the jumbled attic of memory, a few scenes that are still real and vivid after the passage of the years. I remember, for example, a dinner party in the spring of 1950 at my brother Joseph Alsop’s Georgetown house. Dean Rusk, who was then the youthful Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East, was there. So was the Secretary of the Army, Frank Pace. So was George Kennan, then chief of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. So were various other officials, as well as the accustomed assortment of politicians, private persons, and pretty girls.

It was a pleasant evening, and a relaxed party—the Berlin blockade had ended, and Senator Joe McCarthy had not yet become the Washington obsession he later became. The men were chatting over the brandy and cigars when Dean Rusk was called to the telephone. He returned gray-faced, and although the evening was still young, he said hasty goodbyes, murmuring that “something” had happened. Frank Pace was next, then George Kennan, then one or two lesser officials. No one was tactless enough to ask what the “something” was—that is contrary to the Washington ground rules—but it was obviously something pretty big.

It was. That was the evening that brought the first news of the North Korean attack on South Korea. In a properly written novel or movie script, somebody would have said something modeled on Lord Grey’s famous curtain line: “The lights are going out all over Europe.” Instead, everybody just muttered. But an adequate if wordless comment was made a few days later by George Kennan. At another party he was seen doing a little jig. The decision had just been made to commit American forces to the defense of South Korea. The jig was an expression of Kennan’s delight. He was, and is, anything but a war hawk, but he knew better than most how steep a price the West would have to pay in time if the United States failed to meet Joseph Stalin’s carefully calculated challenge in Korea.

Another small scene, which occurred not long after, and which was in some ways a direct sequel of the first (for Joe McCarthy was a product of the guilt and frustrations of the Korean War), frightened me more than it should have, as I can see in retrospect. It occurred on the floor of the Senate, during one of the debates that followed the McCarthy charge that there were large but constantly shifting numbers of Communists operating in the State Department. McCarthy, with much advance beating of drums, presented his “evidence,” in a long speech late in the evening, before a full Senate and crowded galleries. He had a lectern, piled high with documents on his various “cases.” Any Senator, he said, who wanted to examine the evidence on his cases was at liberty to do so. Then he went into his familiar “I-have-in-my-hand” routine.

About halfway through the performance, Senator Herbert Lehman recognized one of McCarthy’s “cases” and knew it was false. He rose, reminded the Senate of McCarthy’s promise to let any Senator examine the evidence, and as he spoke he walked down the aisle and stood in front of McCarthy, with his hand out. The two men stared at each other, and McCarthy giggled his strange, rather terrifying little giggle. Lehman looked around the crowded Senate, obviously appealing for support. Not a man rose.

“Go back to your seat, old man,” McCarthy growled at Lehman. The words do not appear in the Congressional Record, but they were clearly audible in the press gallery. Once more, Lehman looked all around the chamber, appealing for support. He was met with silence and lowered eyes. Slowly, he turned and walked—or rather waddled, for he had a peculiar, ducklike way of walking—back to his seat.

“There goes the end of the Republic,” I muttered to my wife, whom I had smuggled into the press gallery to see the show. It was a poor imitation of Lord Grey, but it did not seem exaggerated at the time. For at the time this triumph of the worst Senator who has ever sat in the Senate over one of the best did seem a decisive moment. The silence of the Senate that evening was a measure of the fear which McCarthy inspired in almost all politicians—an understandable fear, for McCarthy controlled absolutely something like a quarter of the votes in the big swing states, enough to make or break any politician. Thus old Senator Lehman’s back, waddling off in retreat, seemed to symbolize the final defeat of decency and the triumph of the yahoos.

I was wrong, of course. McCarthy got his richly deserved comeuppance. The liberal intellectuals who despise President Johnson for his uncouth ways forget that the chief architect of McCarthy’s destruction—other than McCarthy himself—was the young Democratic leader of the Senate. Surely one of Lyndon Johnson’s more astonishing achievements as a Senate leader was the vote of every Democrat in the Senate, including the crustiest of the Southern conservatives, to censure McCarthy. (There was one absentee for reasons of health—John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.) In any case, I was wrong, and in due time the country was cured of the strange McCarthy malignancy.

This suggests another reason why I like Washington. To the occasional visitor, and especially to the foreigner unaccustomed to our disorderly ways, Washington may seem an appalling capital for a great nation. And yet, over a period of years, Washington comes to seem an oddly reassuring place.

An elaborate, rather pointless, but curiously memorable tale which the late Frank Kent, a great newspaperman, used to tell, serves to suggest why. The story, which Kent claimed was true, was about an ancient and long since retired Maryland judge, who came to Baltimore once a year to see the sights and enjoy terrapin Maryland at the Baltimore Club. While in Baltimore he occupied the quarters of the chief judge—a previous chief judge had been his friend, and after his friend’s death, he continued to use, as if by right, the quarters of his successors.

One day the current chief judge found it difficult to concentrate, because his aged colleague kept striding up and down, declaiming, “They’re gaining on us, they’re gaining on us all the time.” At length, overcome by curiosity, the chief judge asked the obvious question: “Sir, you do me the honor to share my quarters. Do you mind telling me who is gaining on us?”

“Why, goddammit, Chief Judge,” replied the ancient jurist, “the sons-of-bitches are gaining on us, of course. I counted twenty-six of them on Charles Street this morning.”

In Washington the sons-of-bitches always seem to be gaining on us. Native yahoos or foreign enemies always seem to be on the verge of triumph. But the sons-of-bitches never quite catch up—which is why Washington comes to seem, in the long run, a reassuring place to live.

Frank Kent was also fond of instructing fledgling reporters (including this one, just after the Second War) on how to regard politicians: “The only way for an honest reporter to look at a politician is down.” He was quite right—or, at least, an honest reporter has no business looking up to a politician. And yet, to be fair, the average Washington politician, though he may not inspi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Drama of Conflict
• 2. The Washingtons
• 3. The Center of the Center
• 4. A Backward Glance
• 5. The Sad State of State
• 6. Defense: The McNamara Revolution
• 7. The Press: Fashions in the News
• 8. CIA: Triumph of the Prudent Professionals
• 9. The Inner Cabinets
• 10. The Sinking Hill
• 11. The Court: Mystique and Reality
• 12. The Era of the Insoluble
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright Page