Let 'em Holler - A Political Biography of J. Bracken Lee

The United Nations

13 The United Nations At the 1953 Governors' Conference, Lee made national head­lines by offering some controversial resolutions about the United Nations. He called upon the president and Congress to insist that member nations contribute military personnel in direct pro­portion to each member nation's population. Lee complained that the United States and South Korea had borne almost the entire burden of battle in Korea. His second resolution called for appointment of a presidential commission to study all phases of U.S. membership in the United Nations "to the end that our people may be apprised fully as to our liabilities and privileges in the organization."1 To his chagrin he received no support for either resolution from the other governors. However, ultraconservative William Loeb, editor and publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, lauded Lee's proposals and optimistically estimated that 80 per­cent of the American people would favor them because they were designed to force a showdown on "the whole nonsense in connec­tion with the United Nations." Arguing for more strong and assertive leaders like Lee, Loeb bellowed, "Governor Lee is in step; the others aren't."2 In a related matter Lee supported congressional conserva­tives led by Sen. John Bricker of Ohio who proposed a constitu­tional amendment that would have required a treaty made by the president with a foreign country to be sanctioned by a major­ity vote of both houses of Congress to become effective. Treaties, then, would become subject to the legislative process. Critics suggested that the amendment would make the U.S. system the most cumbersome in the world, imposing delays and seriously weakening our bargaining position with other nations. The amendment also would have confined the government's power 159 J . BRACKEN LEE to make treaties to those subjects on which Congress could legis­late under the powers delegated to it by the Constitution. State legislatures would have had to acquiesce in agreements that involved subjects ordinarily thought not to be so delegated, such as narcotics control and atomic energy. Finally, the amendment would have given Congress the right to regulate executive and other international agreements, thus trimming considerably the emergency power of the president. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles thought it would be "calamitous" for the country, and President Eisenhower said he was unalterably opposed to it because it "would hamper the President in his Constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs."3 As a conservative, Lee favored the amendment as a neces­sary means of defending the Constitution from being subordin­ated to treaties that jeopardized the system of government; therefore, he proposed it to the Utah legislature, which passed a resolution of support and forwarded it to Congress.4 Congress rejected it. Lee also proposed it to the 1953 Governors' Confer­ence which also rejected it. Lee remained undeterred. In a radio interview he took a more radical turn and proposed U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations unless his desired changes took place. He asserted that the people would demand withdrawal unless the UN were founded on moral standards.5 Brigham Young University Professor Richard D. Poll re­buked Lee for suggesting that the UN be "junked," thus restoring the isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s. Poll admitted that the UN had "not brought the Millennium," but he reminded Lee that the people of Utah were unusually cosmopolitan and entertained a philosophy emphasizing the brotherhood of man. Perhaps, he said, there were greater virtues for Lee to cultivate than candor.0 In a defensive reply Lee insisted that he was not suggesting "junk­ing" the UN unless it could not stand up under investigation. He maintained that its chief defect was the voice given to the Soviet Union in all affairs, "knowing all the while that the objec­tives of Communism include world enslavement" and the viola­tion of any agreement if that would further her aims.7 160 THE UNITED NATIONS Soon afterward he enthusiastically endorsed a letter and peti­tion to the president from some prominent Americans denouncing the admission of Red China to the UN.8 In justification of his support Lee argued that Communist China's membership would have made the UN "that much worse."9 He noted that even John Foster Dulles had criticized the UN as inadequate because its "effective functioning depends upon cooperation with a nation which is dominated by an international party seeking world domi­nation." 10 Since the alleged purpose of the UN was prevention of war, Lee called it ridiculous to include in its inner circle a power that practiced war and aggression. It was, he said, like putting "the top criminal on the Police Commission."11 But his most radical statements were still to come. In a net­work radio debate with Palmer Hoyt, editor and publisher of the Denver Post, Lee argued that the UN had cost the U.S. "millions of dollars, and when we run out of money we won't have any friends left." It was his opinion that the country was "just one Supreme Court justice away from being controlled by the United Nations," because there were already court decisions suggesting that the UN charter superseded the Constitution. Lee believed that to be justification enough for passing the Bricker Amend­ment. 12 If we stay in the United Nations, this is what will happen. We will slowly but surely have our Constitutional rights taken away from us. . . . We are slowly going to turn this nation Communist.13 In a symbolic gesture of his opposition, Lee refused to declare United Nations Day in Utah. He was immediately congratulated for his "courageous position" by John Bricker, who personally supported the UN but opposed "setting aside one day a year for the purpose of holding a UN propaganda festival."14 Lee explained to Bricker that he had refused to declare UN Day because of the arbitrary refusal of the Governors' Conference a year earlier to take action on his UN proposals. When those resolutions failed, he could "no longer give wholehearted support to the UN."15 161 J . BRACKEN LEE The White House found Lee's action regrettable, and Sherman Adams, assistant to the president, disputed Lee's claim that the UN was not an effective instrument. Adams referred to Eisen­hower's statement designating UN Day in which he affirmed that the UN was "man's most determined and promising effort to save humanity from the scourge of war and to promote conditions of peace and well-being for all nations." In a personal letter, Adams tried to convince Lee that the UN had demonstrated its ability to stop armed conflicts that might have erupted into world wars, had struck at the root causes of international unrest, and had helped to transform colonialism into self-government. Even Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold admitted that the UN was imperfect but that the concept of world community to move from barbarism to civilization would produce a more abundant life for all. Lee remained unimpressed and announced his intention to declare United States Day in Utah the day before UN Day.16 In a letter to Morehead Patterson, chairman of the U.S. Com­mittee for UN Day, Lee called it incredible that the people were being asked to "continue to pay blind tribute to the United Nations." He suggested that if the UN were really effective, a NATO-type alliance of Far Eastern nations to meet the threat of Red imperialism in that sector would not be necessary. As for the plan to "stress the spiritual significance of the United Nations concept" because October 24 this year falls on a Sunday, I wonder if your committee has forgotten that the Communist doctrine is atheistic and that Communist nations have long records of religious persecution. Reference to God in the United Nations charter was omitted because of Communist objections, as I recall. In these circumstances, it is sheer mockery to plan the type of observance you intend.17 Lee may have hoped to appeal to the Mormon population of his state by suggesting a sacrilegious intent in UN Day. Of course, the comparison was overdrawn. Lee expressed much greater antagonism in his private letter to Sherman Adams. Explaining that he had not intended to reply at all, he claimed that the recent testimony of Gen. Mark Clark 162 THE UNITED NATIONS had changed his mind. Clark said he did not respect the UN and that it "should be reorganized as a United Nations against the Soviet Union." According to Lee, "even the most backward schoolboy certainly must be aware of the Communist conspiracy master-minded in the Soviet Union to overthrow the world." As General Clark put it, the UN found an asset in having "their spies and saboteurs spawning around over here." With tongue in cheek, Lee then suggested that the president include a gangster or two in his cabinet to make it a forum for the presentation of different points of view.18 While Lee's supporters considered his UN stand courageous, he nevertheless offended many citizens. Some thought that he was forcing his views on the entire population of the state. Some thought that his loss in the primary election of 1956, during his third-term bid, was directly attributable to his UN stand. UN sup­porters prevailed upon him to repent and declare UN Day in his last year in office as a symbolic gesture to the people. Unmoved, Lee insisted that his stand was more beneficial than harmful and was done absolutely without political considerations.19 In ensuing years Lee continued to assess the UN as the "biggest phony thing that ever happened," built on a foundation of sand and filled with injustice. He saw no honesty in European politics and cited George Washington as one who warned against entangling alliances. But Lee mellowed on China. He came to feel that China's admittance into the UN was inevitable, simply because it was impossible to ignore such a huge nation. Specu­lating that world government would only bring world dictator­ship, Lee concluded, "These people who are dreaming of world government are completely nuts!"20 Lee's stand on the UN represents the best example of his traditional right-wing philosophy, completely unmarred by time and history. He never conceded any benefit from the UN and over the years continued to interpret world politics and Commu­nism in the framework of the 1950s. The same is true with respect to his analysis of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, who came almost universally to be considered detrimental to American 163 J . BRACKEN LEE society and foreign affairs. In a 1953 radio broadcast Lee made this statement in support of McCarthy: People say that he's destroying the reputation and characters of people; I want somebody in all of America to write me a letter and give me the name of one individual whose char­acter has been hurt. Now, supposing I fool around with Communists and I'm called before that committee. Now, I can say that McCarthy hurt my reputation but who hurt it? I hurt it myself because I was fooling around with bad com­pany. Now, what has he done besides try to root traitors out of government? Maybe we could knock the edges off, and polish the edges up, on Senator McCarthy but when you did, I don't think he'd be able to root Communists out.21 One of the most effective letters Lee received to challenge his claims came from Richard Poll, who named UN delegate and law professor Philip C. Jessup, Dean Acheson, and George Marshall as persons whose reputations had been hurt. Poll accur­ately explained that no administrative or judicial tribunal had supported McCarthy's charges that Jessup was a fellow traveler. Further, said Poll, the Eisenhower administration had adopted 95 percent of the Acheson foreign policy, suggesting little basis for the McCarthy charge of incompetence. No evidence existed that Acheson had committed treason or that George Marshall had entertained ties with the Communists. Poll quoted Eisen­hower, who said, "The right to question a man's judgment carries with it no right to question his honor." Finally, Poll ventured the prediction that Lee's philosophy about the UN and McCarthy would go down in history with the rejected philosophies of Fisher Ames, John C. Calhoun, William Graham Sumner, and the American Liberty League.22 Lee weakly replied that he may have overstated the case for McCarthy but only because too many people were inclined to criticize him and defend those he had exposed: I contend, however, that in rooting out subversives from gov­ernment he is doing far more good than harm. His recent activities have merited the praise of the Deseret News and Telegram, as I recall.23 164 THE UNITED NATIONS In 1954 Lee went so far as to share a Chicago rostrum with McCarthy, whom he had praised and defended against censure. In a telegram to Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, coordinator of the National Rally for Joe McCarthy, he said, "the move to censure Sen. McCarthy will be a serious mistake-he should be com­mended." 24 Lee's opposition to censure put him in direct conflict with Utah's two Republican senators, Wallace F. Bennett and Arthur V. Watkins, who were strongly backing censure in the Senate. Lee announced that he intended to make a speech to the nation in support of McCarthy during a giant rally for him in Madison Square Garden.25 He endorsed McCarthy as a "real American" and said that he could not agree that he was a headline-seeker. "I know what he's up against," Lee sympa­thized, "I've had a little of it myself." Then, in the strongest statement of all, Lee concluded, "God bless him as far as I am concerned. I think we are making a terrible mistake if we don't follow the goal of Senator McCarthy."20 Over the years Lee's views remained unchanged. He con­tinued to think that McCarthy was "crucified" and that Watkins in his role as chairman of the committee was the "tool of Eisen­hower" in the act of censure. Allegedly, McCarthy did the coun­try no harm: I think that there's ample evidence that [for] everyone he ever mentioned he was right on. Not only that . . . - I felt sorry for the poor devil, because I knew something that very few people knew-that this list of names was furnished to him by the FBI-that this was an absolute record. And he was in a position where he could not betray the trust. And when they accused him of not having any records-he had the records, but he couldn't use them!27 Probably, Lee never did understand the depth of the prob­lem. Assuming that anyone McCarthy accused was either guilty or had been "in bad company," Lee seemed not to have con­sidered the possibility that some of the accused were not guilty at all. McCarthy's blacklisting technique kept thousands of people from finding work in their professions, ample evidence that he did the country harm. It took at least twenty years to 165 J. BRACKEN LEE effect a recovery process. While the young grew up with an inflated impression of Communism, Americans as a whole sus­tained an exaggerated fear of what Communists might do to the country. Unquestionably, McCarthy's effect on a whole genera­tion was profoundly negative. By the same token, although the UN was not successful in eliminating war it proved to be an effective instrument for negotiation, communication, and cultural exchange. Richard Poll was right in predicting that Lee's views of the UN and of McCarthy would be rejected by history. However, Lee's attitudes toward war are not so easily dis­missed. After the 1954 Governors' Conference, he returned home calling for a reassessment of American foreign policy. Visibly disturbed, Lee made the ominous prediction that the country was "getting ready to go to war" and that the administra­tion was "trying to prepare the American people for the worst." He feared that the people were so immersed in what he regarded as the excessive press coverage of the McCarthy hearings that they would "wake up and find themselves in a war we don't want." He urged those who did not want a "shooting war in Indo-China" to "sit right down and let their congressmen and senators know where they stand."28 Sounding strangely modern in an isolationist stand that would soon be embraced by Demo­crats, Lee said he was "not in sympathy with sending any more American troops to any more foreign countries to fight any more foreign wars." He was firmly convinced that intervention in past wars had been a mistake, and that "we had better stay home and attend to our own business."2" But war became a more acceptable alternative the following year when Lee discovered that the State Department still listed 500 Americans held by the Communists as a result of the Korean War. It was his opinion that the U.S. had a moral obligation to those prisoners and should serve notice on Communist China to release them: "And if the Reds do not comply within a reason­able amount of time, such action as necessary should be taken to gain their release, even though it meant war."30 Similarly, once involved in war the country must expend every effort to win it. For instance, when the Vietnam conflict 166 THE UNITED NATIONS reached a crucial stage in 1965 Lee called on the administration to withdraw from South Vietnam or win the war by "any means, including use of nuclear weapons." Supposedly, the "real reason for war" was the U.S. failure to support Chiang Kai-shek years earlier, thus delivering Asia to the Communists.31 In the aftermath, Lee was not sure that either Korea or Vietnam was "worthwhile," and he blamed the United States for each mistake. He recalled being disturbed enough over the Korean War that he wired every governor, imploring each one to refuse to relinquish control of his national guard unless Con­gress formally declared war: "I got one favorable answer. The Governor of Wyoming agreed with me." Because of the lack of response he pursued the matter no further, but he regretted not doing so. Nevertheless, he held the deep conviction that he should support his national leaders: I have the right as a citizen, and every other citizen does, to expect that when your government has decided that they're going to war, that they and everybody in this country must put everything they've got into winning it as fast as they can. And I say if a country and its leadership is not willing to do that, then we should never go to war. So I say, either go in there for the purpose of winnin' this thing and no foolin' around about it, or get outl"32 According to Lee, the country fought a "half-hearted no win war" in Korea and Vietnam. If he had been in Nixon's position after the election of 1968 he would have called in all his military leaders and asked what was necessary and said, "All right, and I'm holding you responsible. I'm giving you so much to do it, and if you don't do it, or look like you're gonna fail, you're through! 'Cause I'm gonna win it!" Then he would have in­structed the people to give up dessert and help pay for it, because "I inherited it, but I'm not gonna back out." If, on the other hand, the military had said, " 'We can't win it; we're just wasting lives,' then I'd a said, then get outV™ Especially with respect to Korea and Vietnam, there was great sympathy in the United States for that typically conserva­tive philosophy embraced by many Republicans and conforming 167 J . BRACKEN LEE to traditional military strategy. In later years Lee seemed far less radical in its espousal than earlier when he had praised McCarthy or attacked the UN. Yet, there was a certain consistency to his foreign policy beliefs which seethed hostility toward alli­ances and war but embraced patriotism and militarism once war was chosen. 168 THE UNITED NATIONS Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, August 21, 1953. 2Ibid. Loeb sent a copy of the pro-Lee editorial to Lee with a note saying, "Congratulations!" (Loeb to Lee, August 23, 1953.) Lee agreed with Loeb's estimate that 80 percent of the American people would support his stand and thanked him heartily. (Lee to Loeb, September 2, 1953.) Lee Gubernatorial Papers. 3Committee for Defense of the Constitution, Position Statement on the Bricker Amendment, ibid. 4Lee to Lucius D. Clay, Edward Corwin, John W. Davis, December 28, 1953, ibid. 5Facts Forum, State of the Nation, transcript of radio broadcast, August 1953, with Dan Smoot, moderator; J. Bracken Lee, guest; and O. N. Malmquist and M. DeMar Teuscher interviews, ibid. 6Richard D. Poll to Lee, September 2, 1953, ibid. Poll was then an asso­ciate professor of history at Brigham Young University and secretary of Repub­lican District 36 in Provo, Utah; he was a delegate to the Republican State Convention in 1952. 7Lee to Poll, September 30, 1953, Lee Gubernatorial Papers. 8Charles Edison, Walter H. Judd, Joseph Grew, Herbert Hoover, John McCormick, John Sparkman, and H. Alexander Smith to Lee, October 2, 1953, ibid. 9Lee to Dr. F. A. Harper, Hudson, N.Y., November 30, 1953, ibid. 10J. Bracken Lee, "Should UN Remain a Major Plank in US Policy?" Foreign Policy Bulletin, October 15, 1953, p. 4. "The Freeman (Irvington, N.Y.), September 21, 1953. "Ogden Standard-Examiner, December 20, 1954. lsDeseret News, December 20, 1954. 14John Bricker to Lee, June 30, 1954, Lee Gubernatorial Papers. 15Lee to Bricker, July 7, 1954, ibid. 13New York Times, October 22, 1954. 17Lee to Morehead Patterson, chairman, U.S. Committee for UN Day, Washington, D.C., May 21, 1954, Lee Gubernatorial Papers. 18Lee to Sherman Adams, assistant to President Eisenhower, August 12, 1954, ibid. 19Lee to L. H. Kirkpatrick, librarian, University of Utah, September 23, 1956, ibid. 20Lee interview. 21Facts Forum radio broadcast. 22Poll to Lee. 23Lee to Poll. 2iSalt Lake Tribune, November 5, 1954. 25Deseret News, November 29, 1954. 26Salt Lake Tribune, March 25, 1954. "Lee interview. 2SDeseret News, April 30, 1954. 29Deseret News, June 12, 1954. 30Deseret News, April 18, 1955. 31Deseret News, August 18, 1955. 32Lee interview. 33Ibid. 169