In the weeks leading up to the censure vote, McCarthy mounted his own defense by lashing out at the Senate as a “lynch party” hell-bent on destroying his anti-Communist campaign. One of his biggest supporters was the conservative writer and Bonesman William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote, “McCarthyism . . . is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.” Prescott, who sought to be included in such ranks, reworked his code of fair practices and offered it again as an alternative to avoid censure. The next day’s
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reported his proposal under the headline “Watered-Down Substitute for M’Carthy Censure Move Offered in Senate.”
After burying Prescott’s proposal in committee, the Senate moved to reconvene after the November elections to consider the motion for censure. Dotty returned to her perch in the gallery to watch the proceedings and reported the palpable strain that gripped everyone:
To me this whole session seems very sad. There is a certain suspicion and caution amongst the wives in the Gallery which never existed before, some not even speaking to others. I do hope by the time January comes along all this will have blown over, or our Senate Ladies’ Day will be ruined . . . Perhaps I am unduly sensitive to tenseness, but to me all week the atmosphere in the gallery was most unpleasant.
“Prescott had worried about that censure vote for weeks,” recalled Bernie Yudain, a former editor of
Greenwich Time
and the brother of Ted Yudain, the newspaperman who was Prescott’s political mentor. “He knew that he could be signing his political death warrant if he voted to censure McCarthy. I was in Washington at the time, and he called me up and asked me to come to his office. He opened a cupboard jammed from floor to ceiling with mail. Thousands of letters from McCarthy supporters in Connecticut, all threatening him if he voted against their man.
“Pres talked about how much he loved being a senator, and how it had enlarged his life. He said he would never have gotten to know Portuguese workers and Italian stonemasons in Chickahominy or the Irish Catholics in Brack City, if he had not been Connecticut’s senator. He wanted to keep his position, but he also wanted to do the right thing and vote his conscience.”
By December 1, 1954, Prescott had finally made up his mind. He arrived at the Senate and stood to make a floor speech, his voice shaking with emotion:
Mr. President, all my life I have looked upon membership in the United States Senate as the greatest office to which one could aspire. Even as a schoolboy, I acquired a respect for the Senate that has stayed with me through the years . . .
Like other Senators, I had necessarily observed the junior Senator from Wisconsin, and had more than once expressed reservations concerning his methods, while endorsing always his stated objectives of combating communism at home and abroad.
He said he had to vote to censure because the honor of the Senate was at stake, and failure to rebuke McCarthy would be a victory for Communism. “For he has caused dangerous divisions among the American people because of his attitude,” said Prescott, “and the attitude he has encouraged among his followers, that there can be no honest differences of opinion with him. Either you must follow Senator McCarthy blindly; not daring to express any doubts or disagreements about any of his actions; or in his eyes you must be a Communist, a Communist sympathizer, or a fool who has been duped by the Communist line.”
Prescott Bush Jr. remembered that when his father finally made his decision, he was told that his political career was over. “[The] then Republican county chairman Bill Brennan warned that it would cost him the election in 1956.”
The senator later said he deeply regretted the necessity of incurring the acute dislike of so many of his constituents but he had reached his conviction after careful analysis of the issues and could not be persuaded to alter it.
On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67–22 to censure Joe McCarthy, and the next day Prescott received a note from J. William Fulbright, his best friend in the Senate, congratulating him on his stand. “This morning I read your speech in the Congressional Record and I think it was excellent,” Fulbright wrote. “I can well appreciate that, under the circumstances in Connecticut and especially with your colleague voting the other way, you were in a very difficult spot. It took a lot of courage and you deserve full credit for adopting such a statesman-like position.”
Prescott was so thrilled by the positive reactions he received that he decided to announce his plans to seek reelection. “He was insufferable about that vote and bragged constantly about his great opposition to McCarthy, which, as I recall, was a long time coming,” said Dotty’s nephew Dr. Ray Walker. “I can still hear him going on and on about how great he was standing up to ‘all those Catholics in Bridgeport.’”
In a burst of bonhomie Prescott invited all the state’s political reporters to a private lunch at the Hartford Club. He told them he was in the city to pay his respects to the new governor, Abe Ribicoff:
I wrote the governor-elect shortly after the election congratulating him on his victory and inviting him to feel free to call upon me for any assistance which he considers I may give in state problems in Washington. I also suggested that if it were the governor-elect’s pleasure that he invite me to visit with him when next I had an opportunity to be in Hartford. I received a most gracious reply and it is in response to his cordial invitation that we are meeting at his home on Bloomfield Avenue.
It was fitting that Prescott visit Governor-elect Ribicoff at his home rather than invite him to the Hartford Club. “That was a very exclusive club in those days, and very, very anti-Semitic,” said the governor’s son, Peter Ribicoff. “No Jewish person ever set foot in that club until my father was elected governor. The inaugural luncheon for the incoming and outgoing governors was always held there.
“My father went in 1954, but when he was reelected governor in 1958, he told the Hartford Club that he was aware of their restrictive policies, and since he hadn’t heard of any Jewish person being inside the club since he was last there, he thought it best that the inaugural luncheon be held in one of the local hotels.”
Sensitivity to restrictive covenants eluded Prescott Bush, who, like many of his generation, belonged to private clubs that admitted whites only and discriminated against Jews, women, and people of color. He also owned houses in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Hobe Sound, Florida, towns that carried restrictive covenants (contracts stated that homes could not be sold to black people). His dear friend Samuel Merrifield Bemiss believed in segregation, as did his best friend in the Senate, J. William Fulbright, who voted against every civil rights bill without apology. So Prescott seemed an unlikely choice to lead the charge for the Republicans on civil rights, but as chairman of the platform committee for the 1956 GOP convention, he pushed for a stronger plank than the Democrats. He supported federal fair-employment practices that outlawed discrimination; he proposed ending the filibuster; he declared himself against the poll tax; he urged the party to publicly applaud the Supreme Court decision in
Brown
v.
Board of Education
barring racial segregation in public schools.
He received a “My dear Pres” letter on June 22, 1954, from his friend Samuel Bemiss:
[F]or heaven’s sake soft pedal the Republican Party’s accomplishments with the assistance of the NAACP . . . The Supreme Court is still a New Deal court and to us represents a philosophy, which we regard with profound misgivings . . . History seems to indicate that decent and dignified segregation is a natural condition which has prevailed among peoples and animals since the Garden of Eden.
The worst thing in the world, Bemiss warned Bush, would be “a return of a New Deal government dominated by the Roosevelts and their standard of morality.”
In the end, Prescott did not get all that he sought in the civil rights plank, because Eisenhower drew his feather sword and deferred to the GOP’s southern delegates. But by then Connecticut’s senior senator had laid down an admirable marker of principle and tolerance that would severely challenge his political son, George Herbert Walker Bush, in the years to come.
CHAPTER TEN
P
rescott cared greatly about his public image. When he edited his oral history for Columbia University, he changed one of his quotes from “and by God” to “and by gosh,” because he did not want to be perceived as someone who invoked the name of God outside of prayer. His concern for appearances also prompted him to issue a press release when, after winning his Senate seat, he resigned his corporate directorships: “Though reluctant to give up these associations of many years’ standing, I am anxious to free myself entirely of obligations, which I cannot fulfill. I also want no possible conflict of interest with my duties as a United States Senator.”
As obsessed as he was with his own image, Prescott was obtuse about what constituted proper behavior for other politicians. He certainly did not understand the ramifications of slush funds when it came to keeping the public’s trust. The unreported money collected by politicians became an issue in 1952 when Richard Nixon’s secret fund of eighteen thousand dollars was exposed. Although the fund was technically legal at the time, the Democrats jumped on the issue and made it look unethical. The public outcry threatened Nixon’s place on the GOP ticket, especially when Eisenhower did not fly to his defense. The Republican National Committee purchased a half hour of television time for seventy-five thousand dollars so that Nixon could refute the charges.
“My fellow Americans,” he began, “I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned.” He then described the purpose of the fund and how it worked. He said the money was used solely for campaign expenses. In laying out his meager financial status, Nixon said that his wife could not afford a mink coat, only “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” He denied accepting gifts of any kind, except for a black-and-white puppy from a campaign supporter in Texas. His daughter Tricia had named the puppy Checkers, and Nixon said he would not send it back. He praised Eisenhower and vowed to work hard for the Republican ticket. He asked viewers to support him by sending telegrams to the Republican National Committee. The RNC was soon flooded with over 1 million calls and wires.
Prescott Bush was one of the first to telegram his support:
No fair-minded person who heard Senator Nixon bare his heart and soul to the American people Tuesday night could fail to hold him in high respect.
I have felt all along that the charges against Dick Nixon were a dirty smear attempt to hurt him and the Republican ticket. I doubt that either party can ever hope to put up a better citizen for high public office than Senator Nixon.
I believe the efforts to smear Dick Nixon will boomerang in his favor. Nixon is absolutely honest, fearless, and courageous. I’m proud of him.
Prescott, who believed in keeping certain matters secret, told reporters that he saw “no particular advantage” in forcing congressmen and high government officials to list all their sources of income. “The country has gotten along for 150 years without forcing men in public office to expose their private financial lives,” he said.
This view, which ran contrary to the Corrupt Practices Act, brought him troublesome publicity in 1955 when he, too, established a slush fund—more than twice the size of Nixon’s.
Newspaper reports of the time indicate that Prescott was facing political opposition. The right wing resented his vote to censure Joe McCarthy. He had not been invited to the huge McCarthy rally that one thousand people attended in Connecticut in 1955, and his absence was noted, prompting speculation that conservative Republicans might try to challenge him in the 1956 election. Determined to hold on to his Senate seat, Prescott established his fund to hire the number-one public-relations specialist in the state and to launch a series of semimonthly television talk shows in which he, Prescott, would be the star.
Prescott’s fund, which violated Connecticut’s election laws, was not reported to the secretary of the Senate or to the Republican State Central Committee. Six Wall Street bankers, including two of his brothers-in-law, bankrolled it. Each man made a personal contribution and agreed to approach others to do the same. Confidential letters were sent out over the signature of John B. Gates of Greenwich, who was listed as treasurer of the appeal. Below Gates’s signature were the names of George H. “Herbie” Walker Jr., also of Greenwich; James W. Walker; Lindsay Bradford; Gerrold Bryce; Thomas McCance (Brown Brothers Harriman); and Roland Harriman (Brown Brothers Harriman).
The story of “Bush’s slush fund” first surfaced in Connecticut in the
Bridgeport Herald
but became national news when the syndicated columnist Drew Pearson picked it up—Prescott’s second run-in with Pearson.
Despite his animosity toward the columnist, Prescott took Pearson’s call in 1955. The call was about the slush fund. Prescott explained that the money came from contributors who supported his political point of view. “I have never had a single one of them ask me for special favors,” he said. “They are the kind of people who are willing to contribute to get the kind of government in Washington they believe in.”
After writing that Prescott had committed a “criminal offense” by not reporting his fund, the columnist quoted him as saying that his friends gave him money because they agreed with his stable fiscal policy. Pearson examined Prescott’s voting record and determined that the senator’s votes concurred with the views of his big contributors on many more than financial matters. The conclusion was that Prescott was just another sleazy politician in debt to special interests.
The
Waterbury Republican
editorialized in his favor:
In the case of a man of Sen. Bush’s high-mindedness and integrity it is natural to believe that the “private” fund is the frank and harmless arrangement that he represents it to be. But the abuses to which such funds could lend themselves are glaring. If there are public men who can be bought, here plainly is a formula for making the purchase.
The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
editorialized against him and the “bland self-justification” Prescott used to defend his slush fund. “Funds like this are usually secret, or at least poorly publicized, until some enterprising newsman digs them out. Thus they violate the spirit of corrupt practices legislation which is meant to expose political contributions to public view.” The newspaper upbraided men like Nixon and Prescott Bush for “selling a piece of their position, standing and influence as members of the United States Senate—and doing so even if none of the contributors to the fund receives a direct and personal favor in exchange.”
The unethical charge stung, because Prescott considered himself more honorable than most. Besides, he protested lamely, other senators had set up similar funds. He concluded that Drew Pearson had singled him out because he, Prescott, was above reproach. “I think Pearson deliberately picks out people—and I hope this doesn’t sound immodest—but I think from time to time he does pick out people where he thinks they’re immune, where their reputation is so good that it’ll be news to attack him.”
Prescott continued his rant against Pearson years later in his oral history:
He twisted the thing around that it was a slush fund, you see, that people were going to buy favor with Senator Bush by making these personal contributions for his use . . . Just like the Nixon fund, where they crucified Nixon. I never personally felt there was anything wrong with the Nixon fund. It was a thoroughly clean proposition, done by people who believed in him at that time and wanted to promote his candidacy for the Vice-Presidency . . . They believed him to be a useful man and a helpful man . . . so they were willing to make these contributions for his campaign.
Luckily for Prescott, Pearson’s column was only carried in two Connecticut newspapers, so there was no fertile ground for a scandal. Prescott simply contacted both newspapers and refuted the charges, and the story soon died. He continued using his slush fund to finance his public-relations man, Charles Keats. One of the publicist’s assignments was to draft an endorsement letter for Prescott from President Eisenhower; the letter was to be released to Connecticut’s media during the summer congressional recess, when Prescott would be traveling around the state to shore up reelection support.
In later years Bush biographers would write about the close personal friendship between Senator Bush and President Eisenhower, an impression conveyed by the Bush family and bolstered by a June 20, 1957, front-page photograph in
The New York Times
of the two men playing golf. The day before that game with Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Prescott bragged about being Ike’s favorite golf partner and estimated he played with the President at least a dozen times at Burning Tree in Ike’s first term. Records in the Eisenhower Library indicate the two men played golf seven times in eight years. Those occasional games, plumped by the burnished recollections Dotty Bush gave to writers (and members of the Bush family), created a vivid picture of fraternity. Dotty genuinely believed that her husband was nothing short of essential to Eisenhower’s personal and political success. In fact, she promulgated the myth that Prescott had convinced Ike to run for President in 1952 when, in fact, he had simply been one of many peripheral supplicants.
Research into the Eisenhower archives in Abilene, Kansas, indicates that the relationship between Prescott Bush and Dwight Eisenhower was, if not one-sided, certainly lopsided, with Prescott the ardent pursuer and Ike the gracious recipient. The letters and memos show that Prescott was like an adoring fan at the stage door waiting for Ike, ever the star, to sign an autograph. Prescott’s various invitations—for the President to be his guest at the Alfalfa Club’s annual dinner, to visit him in Gettysburg—were graciously acknowledged but always politely declined. “The documents do indicate that the relationship probably meant more to Senator Bush than to President Eisenhower,” said Sydney Soderberg, a historian at Kansas Wesleyan University.
Having once fallen out of the chorus line over the Bricker Amendment, Prescott did not want to get out of step again with the administration. He suffered no ramification over his political difference, other than his own psychic discomfort. As soon as he found out Eisenhower opposed the amendment, he changed his position to be in accord. Prescott, who owned a big black standard poodle, could easily have posed with his dog in front of the White House and been asked the question “Which one is the President’s poodle?”
Prescott went out of his way to befriend Sherman Adams, the former governor of New Hampshire, who was Eisenhower’s chief of staff. Adams quickly became his conduit to the President.
When Prescott requested a letter of endorsement from Eisenhower in August 1955, he sent Adams a draft that was so self-serving even Prescott seemed embarrassed:
Dear Sherm,
This is purely a suggestion which I did not write and which makes me blush. Anything along this line would be wonderful to have.
Pres Bush
The last paragraph of the five-paragraph letter was effusive in the extreme:
Wherever you go, I want you to give the people of Connecticut my best wishes. From personal observation, I can assure them that you are my idea of what a United States Senator should be and that they are fortunate in having you represent them.
Adams sent Prescott’s grandiloquent draft to Bryce Harlow, a White House speechwriter, who toned it down considerably for the President’s signature. The final endorsement commended Prescott for his “effective and loyal support in the United States Senate” and “with my warmest appreciation” congratulated him on a job well done.
Prescott released the letter to Connecticut’s newspapers, which published it as front-page news: “President Praises Bush for His Loyalty, Support” (
Greenwich Time
); “Pres. Gives Support to Sen. Bush, Calls him ‘Loyal friend, Advocate’” (
Hartford Courant
). But the continuing publicity that Charles Keats had envisioned from Ike’s endorsement was soon drowned in the waves of Hurricane Connie and, five days later, Hurricane Diane.
“Those two hurricanes hit Connecticut in August 1955 and knocked the state into total disaster,” recalled Herman Wolf, a former aide to Governor Abe Ribicoff. “While the entire Atlantic coast from North Carolina through Massachusetts was affected, Connecticut suffered the most. We lost seventy-seven lives, and the flooding destroyed homes, farms, businesses, roads, shores, and utilities, causing over $350 million in property damage.
“We were still reeling from the first hurricane when we got hit by the second. The governor was at a governors’ conference in West Virginia and couldn’t get back that day so the lieutenant governor and a couple of the governor’s top aides moved into the state armory in Hartford to try to cope with the catastrophe.
“We worked around the clock, taking calls and making calls. About two in the morning, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and looked up and up and up. There was Prescott Bush, all six feet four inches of him, standing there. In a very quiet voice, he said, ‘Herman, what can I do to help?’
“I didn’t have time to converse, even with a United States senator. So I just shouted, ‘Get us some helicopters so we can survey the damage at dawn.’ That’s all he had to hear. He turned around and left. I don’t know where he went. I don’t know who he called, but at dawn there were two helicopters from the federal government ready to fly us around the state.
“For my money—and I’m a Democrat who worked for Abe Ribicoff—Prescott Bush was a fine gentleman. In fact, he was the best of the Bushes. After him, the blood thinned as it went down the line. His son George Herbert Walker Bush wasn’t much to look up to, and then, God help us, we got George’s son George Walker Bush, and the less said there, the better.”
Prescott threw himself into the flood-recovery crisis for Connecticut, touring the state to talk to the victims and survey the damage. He introduced legislation for federal flood insurance so that property owners and small-business men would be protected from financial ruin. He also submitted additional bills to increase Federal Housing Authority mortgage insurance for repair or replacement of damaged homes; to provide for rent-free accommodations for certain needy disaster victims; to provide temporary housing for disaster relief; to authorize construction of flood-control reservoirs; and to increase emergency-relief highway funds.