Brownell: G.O.P. Middleman

The answer to an important politic puzzle of the of the present Administration can be found in the office of the Attorney-General of the United States. It concerns the touchiest of domestic issue, internal Communism, and the keenest political mind in the Eisenhower cabinet, Herbert Brownell, Jr. The puzzle involves making sense out Brownell's perambulating policy on the Communist issue--from his charge that former President Truman knowingly promoted a Russian spy, to his more recent participation in the Administration's attempt to undermine the influence of senator McCarthy.

The Department of justice, which the Attorney-General heads, has rarely been used as a political bureau. Its function is to enforce federal statutes and to represent the Government in court. But Brownell has been the most political Attorney-General yet. Part of the reason for this lies in the man. Ever since boyhood, when his hobby was collecting campaign buttons, everything Brownell has touched has turned to politics. He became the chief strategist for New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey back in the 1930's, when the two fought against the "white-shoe" faction of the New York County Republican committee. In this role, he engineered the nomination of Dewey for President in 1944 and 1948, playing a key-part in the bitter intra-party was between Eastern and Midwestern Republicans. In 1952, he sat in a little room in Chicago's Hilton hotel and directed the "Fair Play" offensive, which crushed the candidacy of Senator Taft.

Subversion at Home

Domestic subversion would have been a vital issue to the Attorney-general's office no matter who occupied it. In the election of 1952, the charge that the government was riddled with communists gained many normally Democratic votes for the Republicans. It drew them from districts populated by nationality groups of low income which had been sensitive to the Communist threat since before World War II. And because the task of controlling domestic Communists fell to the Attorney-General, Brownell's office automatically became the focus of public interest.

Thus his political problem was twofold: to strike out forcefully against domestic Communism, but not to play into the hands of the Republican party's midwestern wing, which, to that time, had profited most from the Communist issue. The Harry Dexter White case represented the first part of this strategy. That Brownell made unprecedented public use of secret FBI files was overshadowed in the public mind by the fact that he had uncovered a spy high up in Truman's Treasury Department. Brownell followed this exposure with requests for "new and powerful constitutional weapons" to fight subversion. They included death for peacetime espionage, provisions for compulsory testimony before government tribunals, the right to deprive communists of citizenship and the ability to dismiss them from defense plants. Appearing on television, he claimed credit for jailing 36 Communist party members under the Smith Act but neglected to say that Truman, with much less fanfare, had jailed over 200.

There moves were political, designed to convince votes that the Eastern Republicans of the Executive Branch could handle the Communist problem as well as McCarthy, Jenner, or any of the party's right-wing. Once this was done, the second half of Brownell's strategy could proceed: to keep the McCarthy wing from using its anti-Communist crusade so rashly that it interfered with the operations of the Army and other important parts of the government. This is the meaning of the preparation of the Cohn-Schine charges.

Alternative to McCarthy

But had the Administration, through the Attorney-General's office, not previously established itself as an effective alternative to McCarthy in combatting domestic Communism, the fight against the Wisconsin Senator could not have succeeded so well. In short, Brownell's strategy was purposely inconsistent. He has established the Eisenhower administration in the critical middle position: between the Democrats and the right wing G.O.P., with appeal to the votes of both.

Of course, Brownell's actions can also be interpreted as a series of spot decisions. But they fit too well into a pattern of lifelong political strategy not to be a planned maneuver. Back when Brownell was masterminding Gubernatorial politics in New York, the Republicans consistently posed as a party of liberalism, pulling issues of social reform out from under the Democrats and winning state elections when the national party was losing them. Dewey's "me-too" campaign of 1948 was an extension of the New York strategy to the national scene. Brownell has now reached out from his middle position to guide the Eastern Republicans, whose task for the last fourteen years has been first to beat the conservatives, then to turn around and top the Democrats

On the issue with which he is particularly concerned as Attorney-General, Herbert Brownell's pitch to the people is clear: that the Democrats, though loyal, are too lax about Communists, the Midwesterners too reckless. He has never explicitly stated his theory of political success. But his actions make it quite clear; simply run a steamroller down the middle of the road.