The Evening Star (February 18, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
Pauley confirmation would weaken morale
By Dorothy Thompson
Having just returned from the West Coast, former Secretary of the Interior Ickes’ reference to the “cloud no bigger than a man’s hand” seems a gross understatement. The cloud is as big as all get out. The proposition to make Edwin W. Pauley assistant secretary of the Navy and by implication and circumstance secretary designate – in a position, therefore, to exercise vast influence on world affairs – is something that, whether or not it is adequately noted and opposed at home, is already being noted abroad, in Asia, the Middle East and the Soviet Union.
The “system of private enterprise” is already in a precarious position in the world. Never was there a greater need for political, social, and economic statesmanship among its supporters. To associate it now with a system of private graft reminds one of the ancient proverb, “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.” If Mr. Pauley’s nomination is ratified, we shall hear repercussions from it throughout the globe. It will prejudice our case in Iran and the Middle East; it will support every foreign attack on the American international position.
Mr. Pauley’s record in California is well known, and apart from congressional investigations there are plenty of members of the Democratic State Committee who are willing to spill the beans – and they are not all New Dealers, either.
Mr. Pauley’s qualifications for so important an office are a smattering of economics, a few years of success in California Legislature. He began by representing independent oil companies and rose to represent the major ones. He began in debt and ended rich. He climbed into national politics, went to Europe to handle international economic situations in which American oil companies have great stakes, and returned to become one of the big three around President Truman. That he has ability is shown in his record – just the kind of ability we don’t need; there is no evidence at all of comprehension of those matters vital to America and all humanity in a world of poverty and the struggle of nations and classes for power.
Mr. Pauley took the Democratic Party out of debt – for a price. The New Deal in California was supported by the radicals, but financed by the interests – counting on the possibility that Mr. Pauley’s man for vice president would be in the White House before 1948. Sure enough America lost Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Pauley had, on the national scale, the chance he had exploited in California.
The analogy between California tidelands oil and Mr. Pauley, and Sinclair Oil and Teapot Dome is exact. Mr. Pauley has the California legislature in his pocket. If the tidelands belong to the state, he and his bosses will control them.
The issue transcends “liberalism.” The crowd around Mr. Pauley is liberal when liberalism means votes and liberal on all matters except its own interests, these being oil. Far better an honest conservative than a liberal in the pockets of predatory interests. The interests Mr. Pauley represents would like to control the oil of the world, not only the tidelands of California. An assistant secretary of the Navy with Mr. Pauley’s record will be regarded with more suspicion and distrust than the atomic bomb, and any move made by our Navy will be regarded, not as an action of the United States, but as an oil action. A friend of mine who met the Soviet ambassador, Mr. Gromyko, at the San Francisco Conference, found that he knew much more about Mr. Pauley than the average American does.
The Soviet theory about the “bourgeois” state is that it is always an instrument of predatory capitalist interests, never of the people, and that such states are the cause of wars for loot. This was a theme of Mr. Molotov’s address on November 6, 1945, and of Stalin’s on February 9, 1946. Mr. Pauley’s confirmation would lend evidence to this thesis, and go far to destroying morale among our people and armed forces.
As for Mr. Truman – his association with the Pendergast gang was explained on the argument, probably true, that he was an honest man among thieves. That is not a good enough description of the president of the United States.