McCarthyism…the need for some counterforce

Robert W. Van de Velde

The Rockefeller Public Service Awards (RPSA) were a great and useful idea, and it was Donald H. McLean, Jr. who "invented" them.

I first met Don McLean early in 1957 when I became Faculty Secretary of the awards program which was administered by Princeton University. The director of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs introduced Don and me because Don was then, in effect, John D Rockefeller, 3rd’s chief of staff and the man on whom the philanthropist depended on to keep an eye on the program’s activities and progress. We formed, almost it once, a strong friendship and a trusting association. He was like that.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s a particularly vicious type of government-criticism and bureaucracy-baiting was taking place. Led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, the forces of Know-Nothingism rose again and used the Cold War to throw suspicion and distrust on career public servants of the federal government.

Don McLean has seen enough of government and had known enough government people to be convinced that there were many, in all grades and in all agencies, who were intelligent, conscientious, and dedicated to the public interest of the United States. He recognized that  the effort, then beginning to be called McCarthy-ism, was dangerously undermining public confidence in our government and therefore eroding the morale of the men and women who conducted the day-to-day business of government in all his policies, plans, and programs. He was wise enough to see the need for some counterforce. The Rockefeller Public Service Awards were launched in 1952.

Two recipients come quickly to mind as notable examples of the sort of excellence government that the program hoped to recognize.  These two also exemplify the wide variety existing among government bureaucrats and the ways in which time-out from daily routines - a sabbatical - helped both to whet their abilities and to keep them from leaving government careers in the face of tempting monetary rewards in the private sector.

Rufus Miles, an awardee in 1956, was a human generalist administrator and the sort of key executive who keeps an organization going, almost regardless of what its primary function is. He served the United States for over thirty years, much of it in the Department of Health Education and Welfare (under seven secretaries of HEW) and when he retired he had achieved the top career position of Assistant Secretary for Administration. After retirement he became a visiting lecturer with the rank of professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Later he became a "senior fellow" there and still serves on its advisory council. He has written several books, including the widely acclaimed Awakening from the American Dream, and a number of articles for professional journals.

Louis M Branscomb, at the time of his award 1957, was in the National Bureau of Standards as the chief of its Atomic Physics Section. A dedicated natural scientist, he spent his year off at University College, London, doing research on physics and astrophysics. Return to NBS and rose in that highly respected agency until, in 1969, he was its overall director. He remained in government service for 15 years after his Rockefeller Public Service Award and retired in 1972. At that time he joined International Business Machines as its chief scientist.

For public consumption, of course, the awards were credited to Mr. Rockefeller. Don was too good a staff man, too supportive of his principal, and too personally loyal to JDR, 3rd ever to give any hint that the public version was not entirely accurate. But in the ten years that my association with these men continued, it became more and more evident to me how fully JDR, 3rd depended on Don’s wisdom and advice in this as in so many other of his good works.

The first phase of RPSA ended in 1959 after the Government Employees Training Act of 1958 began to make possible, with government funds, the sort of sabbatical year of reflection and study, pioneered by RPSA for particularly promising career public servants. The second phase - established to recognize and publicize a few outstanding public servants and to encourage them to write, for publication, on their experiences and satisfactions in the public service — ran from 1960 to 1966. Too many job demands on their time and energies prevented most winners from fully exploiting their awards.

But again, scores of the most highly placed and most thoughtful career bureaucrats, urged Princeton and Mr. Rockefeller not to terminate the program - even if its nature had to change, to keep some privately supported program alive and to continue to call it  Rockefeller awards - to recognize distinguished public service careers. Typical of comments were some made by Philip L. Graham, President of the Washington Post: “Any society maintains only those virtues which it honors and encourages…" and “This awards program was primarily created to remind the public of our democracy, that excellence did in fact exist in the Federal service - and to remind them further that such excellence was imperative to the survival of free government."

John Rockefeller wants both of the qualities he considered essential to greatness in public service. They were, he said, courage, sensitivity, and vision. I wonder if he didn't have his principal associate in mind too, for Don McLean had, and used, all three of those qualities. And in its way, Don's life was also one of public service.

He had more; he had a personal wit that could prick the balloons of pomposity, and he knew when to encourage and when to poke gentle fun at his colleagues - and himself. He was a grand human being to know and a great man to work with.

Robert W Van de Velde was faculty secretary of the Rockefeller Public Service Awards at Princeton University. Active in the United States Army before, during and following World War II, he joined the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton 1957.