In this volume, Herbert Brownell, the man Dwight D. Eisenhower said would make an outstanding president, recounts his achievements and trials as one of the GOP’s presidential operative in the 1940s and 1950s and as Attorney General at a crucial time in American history. Instrumental in getting Eisenhower to run for office and wielding considerable influence over many of the president’s decisions, Brownell had to make many tough and controversial recommendations. In his memoirs he recalls his relationship with the president and the difficult issues confronting them, including civil rights, McCarthyism, illegal aliens, anti-trust laws and national security vs. individual rights.
I am often amused when people pine about going back to the ‘quiet days’ of Eisenhower , writes Brownell, who served during an administration that faced not only the wrath of segregationists and Communist witch hunters but also the resolution of an increasingly unpopular war in Korea and a new definition of American-Soviet relations following Joseph Stalin’s death. Particularly difficult,but among the high points of the Eisenhower administration for Brownell, were the painstaking gains made in the area of civil rights. Despite personal attacks by the opposition on his integrity, he tenaciously supported and enforced the Supreme Court’s decision in
Brown vs. Board of Education
and Little Rock desegregation. Going beyond the years he spent on Eisenhower’s cabinet, Brownell describes the events and people that have influenced his colourful life, including those from his early years in Nebraska, his apprentice years in New York as he joined the opposition to Tammany Hall, his stints as chairman of the Republican party and manager of Thomas Dewey’s two unsuccessful presidential campaigns, and his 62-year private law career. Brownell’s memoirs, filled with history, anecdotes, personal observations and subtle humour, reveal a highly intelligent and modest man who achieved great accomplishments - developing the first civil rights act since Reconstruction, preserving national security while protecting individual rights - by doing what he thought was right, not by being politically correct.