Two days later at Philadelphia, he spoke of the need for an open, frank government:
“We must not minimize the difficulties; neither can we seek with words and dollars to make the going look easy when it is tough. There will be mistakes, but the mistakes we make will not be doctored up to look like triumphs. There will be no curtain of evasion, of suppression, or double talk between ourselves and the people.”
At Des Moines, Iowa, on September 18: “We are going to cast out the crooks and their cronies.... And when it comes to casting out the crooks and their cronies, I can promise you that we won’t wait for congressional prodding and investigations. The prodding this time will start from the top. And when we are through, the experts in shady and shoddy government operations will be on their way back to the shadowy haunts, the sub-cellars of American politics from whence they came.... The first thing we have to do is get a government that is honest....”
And at St. Louis, Mo.:
“... we must take the people, themselves, into our confidence and thereby, restore their confidence in government. We will keep the people informed because an informed people is the keystone in the arch of free government.”
The crusade against secrecy and corruption stayed at the forefront of the campaign and swept Eisenhower and Nixon into office on November 4. When the electoral vote was tallied, it stood 422 Republicans to 89 Democrats—a genuine mandate to clean up “the mess in Washington.”
CHAPTER IV
Army-McCarthy—A Claim of Secrecy Unlimited
On the morning of May 17, 1954, the klieg-lighted Senate Caucus Room was jammed with spectators. Near the end of the huge table at the front of the room, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy hunched over a microphone, reviling the Eisenhower administration. He claimed that high officials of the Eisenhower administration were arbitrarily silencing witnesses from the executive branch, and in doing so were preventing him from defending himself.
It was the eighteenth day of the already famous Army-McCarthy hearings, an exciting political drama that held the attention of an estimated 20 million television viewers. Over the weeks the Senator had sneered at Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens and anyone else who disagreed with him. His smirking disrespect and heavy-handed humor had already cooled the enthusiasm of many of his followers. Some had even turned against him. Senator McCarthy, in short, had created the worst possible climate in which to make any appeal to fair play or decency. And yet the Wisconsin Republican was now making such an appeal and would soon be receiving some sympathetic comment from Democratic as well as Republican senators.
The point at issue was simple: Should Army Counsel John Adams be required to testify as to conversations at a meeting at the Justice Department on January 21, 1954? Adams had already testified to being present on that day with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., Deputy Attorney General William P. Rogers, Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams, White House Administrative Assistant Gerald D. Morgan, and United Nations Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. The meeting had been called to try to find ways to curb Senator McCarthy’s free-wheeling investigation of the loyalty-security program in the Defense Department.