Second Term Woes
Annika done said:
Clinton had Monica, Reagan had Iran-Contra, Nixon had Watergate. Eisenhower had, uh i don't know, golf i guess....
Rather than musing on what would be Bush's stumbling block (though I voted for Rove, for reasons that will become obvious in the next line), I done commented:
Didn't the Sherman Adams thingie happen during the second Eisenhower administration?
Remembering little about it, I done researched:
Who the hell is Sherman Adams?
Thanks to Body and Soul I found a neat link that lets you see the cover of Time magazine for the week you were born. Apparently mine was a slow news week. The cover story is about a guy named Sherman Adams, whom I've never heard of -- and I take pride in being fairly well informed....
Sherman Adams was a former Governor of New Hampshire. When I was born he was the Chief of Staff for President Eisenhower. He was very aggressive in controlling access to the President, a common role for modern chiefs but a pretty controversial role for his times. He made lots of enemies in his own party and was forced to resign when I was two years old.
That would be in 1958:
THE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT, BROAD-
CAST AND TELEVISED OVER THE NATIONAL
NETWORKS FROM 6:35 TO 6:45 PM, EDST,
MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 22, l958
Since last June a spirited controversy has taken place in which I, Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President, have found myself cast in a principal role....
Several months ago, a Committee of the House of Representatives started hearings designed to elicit information as to whether or not any person or persons had exerted improper influence upon the regulatory agencies of the Government. In the course of those hearings, I testified before that Committee. The sworn testimony that I then gave, together with that of every responsible official of whom the Committee made inquiry, clearly established that I had never influenced nor attempted to influence any agency, or any officer or employee of any agency in any case, decision, or matter whatsoever.
Despite the fact that this testimony is wholly undisputed, a calculated and contrived effort has nevertheless been made to attack and discredit me. As part of this effort, the Committee received completely irresponsible testimony and, without conscience, gave ear to rumor, innuendo and even unsubstantiated gossip.
A campaign of vilification by those who seek personal advantage by my removal from public life has continued up to this very moment. These efforts, it is now clear, have been intended to destroy me and in so doing to embarrass the Administration and the President of the United States.
An easy and obvious way to bring such an attack to an end is to remove the target. There were those who thought I should resign because they felt I had been imprudent in not foreseeing the interpretation that could be placed upon my exchanging gifts with a friend, even of some fifteen years standing....
Within the past few days I have reached a decision. Early this morning I flew from Washington to the President's vacation headquarters at Newport. I conferred with him and, in the course of that conference, tendered my resignation. This he has accepted, to be effective as soon as an orderly transition can be arranged for the assumption of my duties and responsibilities....
Here's NPR's take:
Half a century ago there was a joke among some Washington insiders that began with a reference to President Eisenhower and his vice president: "Wouldn't it be terrible if Eisenhower died and Nixon became president?" Then the punch line: "Yeah, but what if Sherman Adams died and Eisenhower became president?"
Like Karl Rove, the top strategist for President Bush, Adams was once considered so essential to the man in the Oval Office that people could not imagine the White House functioning without him....
An able administrator, Adams also handled a lot of the inside political work Ike did not care to do himself. As the war hero president became known for playing golf (and surviving a heart attack), Adams assumed more and more authority.
But Adams came crashing to earth in Ike's second term. He was found to have accepted gifts (famously including a vicuna coat) from a business friend who needed help with federal regulators. Even as the scandal was reaching its crescendo, Eisenhower was pleading for forbearance for his man. His explanation was pithy: "I need him," the president said.
No one doubted that need, but in the end it was not enough to save Adams, who resigned in 1958 and lived out his life in relative obscurity....
Which leads to one question - what the heck is a vicuna coat? Let's turn to Pravda for help:
Argentina's northern province of Catamarca holds an unexploited treasure. Vicuna's clothes are considered even better than Cashmere ones, but the lack of a sustainable industry deprives country"s poorest regions of extraordinary earnings....
The 15.000 soul town of Belen is the southern gate of the Puna. It is located next to the Inca"s way, the grand pre-Columbian road that used to link Peru, in the North, to the western Argentine province of Mendoza, in the South. Belen is known as the cradle of Poncho, the typical gaucho cloak made of wool. The cheapest of them are made of sheep wool, as other ones are made of vicuna, world"s finest wool, and therefore, the most expensive.
The vicuna, a camelid that lives in the Puna can be woven into cloth as light and smooth as silk. In ancient Peru, the vicuna wool was reserved for the Inca and the royalty, exclusively....
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