Only eight of the committee’s seventeen members were waiting to question her. Along with Chairman Fulbright were Senators Humphrey, Mansfield, Morse, Kennedy, Lausche, Aiken, and Alexander Wiley (R-WI). Clare was escorted to her seat by Senator Prescott Bush, from her own state of Connecticut. Introducing her, he said that her “brilliant ability” and “excellent performance” in Rome would make her a “highly effective” envoy to Rio.21
Fulbright asked if the nominee would like to make an opening statement. Clare had none prepared, but expressed pleasure at seeing “my old colleague of 1943 sitting in such high eminence in this beautiful room.” The chairman responded with equal courtesy. He asked a few questions about possible Luce investments in Brazil, and whether her husband intended to live with her in Rio. She said they had no conflicts of interest in the country, and that Harry would stay about half the time.
“Do you speak Portuguese?”
“Senator, it is a very difficult language,” Clare replied. “I can hardly say that I have mastered it, but I expect that by the time I arrive … I will be able to conduct an ordinary conversation in the language.”
He asked if she knew of Brazil’s “precarious” financial condition.
“Indeed I do, Senator,” she said, and rattled off a series of its international debt statistics, relating them to “the loss of a large part of the coffee market.” When Fulbright noted that Brazil was one of the largest borrowers from the Export-Import Bank, she interrupted. “About $500 million up until now.”
Turning to the Bolivian riots, he asked if she thought her effectiveness would be impaired by Time magazine’s responsibility for the violence. Clare was ready for him.
“I am not the editor of Time, and I am being sent as an Ambassador to Brazil and not to Bolivia.”
Fulbright suddenly said, “Do you still believe that mortal enemies of the United States are growing and thriving in the organism of the Democratic Party?”
He was referring to a savage national television campaign speech she had made on September 30, 1952, and asked her if she recalled it. Her reply was both evasive and pert.
“I recall a few of yours, Senator.”
Fulbright quoted her remarks for the record. “For twenty years mortal enemies of ours have been growing and thriving in the organism of the Democratic Party. There is only one way to dislodge them.… The tree of government must be shaken hard. Then these rotten apples, these mortal enemies, will fall out before all from the top branches.”
Again she was facetious. “That is awfully good oratory.”
“Well,” he retorted, “it is yours.”
Aware she had gone too far, Clare explained that she had not been attacking his party per se. “Where there are subversive elements in any country, they seek very hard to lodge themselves in the organism of the party in power.… That is the logical place for them to go. They want to be in with the ‘ins,’ not out with the ‘outs.’ ”
Fulbright pressed further, saying that her use of the phrase top branches meant President Truman. “You don’t subscribe to that doctrine, that he was a traitor to this country, do you?”
“Certainly not. I never said so.”
“That is the implication to be drawn, if I may use that word. May I draw that?”
“I am glad you are implying and not inferring,” Clare said.
“Well, we do learn, you know, after a long time,” Fulbright conceded.
He then asked if she stood by her attack in 1944 on another Chief Executive, calling Franklin D. Roosevelt “the only American President who lied us into a war, because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it.”
Clare said that history proved Roosevelt had not initially told citizens the truth about the German threat. He should have made it clear “that we were going to have to fight the Nazis … sooner rather than later.”
“You stand by that statement, then, you think?”
“I stand by—”
“You think he lied us into a war?”
“I stand by my statement.”
“I was hoping that time had mellowed your judgment a bit, but it hasn’t,” Fulbright said. “That is quite clear.”
“Time has mellowed my language, I hope,” Clare replied. “But the accuracy, historical accuracy, I must stand by.”
The chairman yielded to Senator Mansfield, who wanted to place on record Clare’s “commendable” service in Congress and “outstanding” achievements as Ambassador to Italy, in particular her role in the settlement of the Trieste crisis. Senator Aiken added that she “seems to stand up very well under direct examination.”
“Thank you, Senator,” she said.
Aiken sat back, and the chairman said, “Senator Morse.”22
Wayne Lyman Morse was a fifty-eight-year-old, hawk-nosed, mustachioed political maverick with improbably thick black eyebrows. He had been in the Senate since 1945, first as a Republican, then (in protest of Eisenhower’s choice of Nixon as running mate) as an Independent, and now as a Democrat. Intellectually acute and well-read, he was considered the most eloquent, if long-winded, orator in the Senate.23
He began by saying that although his questions were going to be “rather pointed,” he had “no personal animosity” toward Mrs. Luce, but was merely fulfilling his “public trust” as a committee member.24
Citing her assertion that she stood by her accusation that FDR had “lied us into a war,” Morse said he was shocked by it. “I could not possibly vote for your nomination until you document [that] statement … because, undocumented, I would consider it subversive.”
Clare apologized for her “intemperate” language, and explained that it had been in the heat of a political campaign.25
“What was your position, if any, on October 11, 1944?” Morse asked.
“I was a member of Congress.”
“Yes. You were not a private citizen … you had a responsible position of public trust, and I say most respectfully you were out trying to get the American people in 1944 to believe they had a lying President, and I think you ought to be required to prove your statements.”
She asked what proof would satisfy him.
Morse said he would accept any reliable authorities. Going back further, he stated that “on March 3, 1943,” she had said that Harry Truman had been “handpicked by big city bosses who are ready to stuff a ballot box or steal an election before you say ‘Missouri.’ ” Was she still of that opinion?
“I think he was certainly their candidate.”
“Big city bosses?”
“He was certainly their candidate.”
“What do you mean by ‘their candidate’?”
“They were for him.”
“You mean they supported him?”
“Yes.”
“And whenever anyone supported you for your races for Congress, did that make you their candidate? Did they handpick you?”
Clare became rattled. “What do you mean by ‘handpicked’?”
“I don’t know. You used the word. I didn’t.”
“I have no idea what I may have meant by it. What does it mean to you?”
“Suppose you tell us what it means. I’m trying—”
“I have no idea.”
“It is your judgment that is under examination before this committee, Mrs. Luce.”
“It is not only my judgment,” Clare came back at him, “but it is my memory that seems to be under observation, and I find it awfully difficult to imagine what I may have been thinking—how many years ago, Senator?”
Morse checked his notes and found he had made a mistake. “I beg pardon. This was June 20, 1948.”
“Well, that is more than ten years go. I cannot always remember exactly what was in my mind about any given phrase as long as ten years ago.”
“I’m only asking,” Morse said, “what is in your mind today.…”
“You do catch me very much off base,” Clare replied, “because when you ask me what was in my mind when I cam
e here, what was in my mind was Brazil.”
Senator Aiken asked Morse to yield. “I wonder if we have completely forgiven Germany and Japan … for what happened fifteen years ago, but still hold Mrs. Luce responsible for something she said in the heat of emotion at that time.” He suggested she was being found guilty for not voting for Truman.26
Morse rejected this as a “non-sequitur argument.”
“Is it his view,” Clare asked, “that anyone who took a dim view of the election of Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Truman is not fit to represent their country abroad?”
“Not at all,” Morse said.
Clare could have reminded him that in his days as a Republican, he had himself been vituperatively critical of Roosevelt and Truman. But she refrained.
Changing the subject to her Italian mission, the Senator quoted an article in the left-wing periodical The Reporter of February 23, 1956. It accused her of interfering in Italian elections, favoring the “former Fascist goons” of the Monarchist Party, and using the blandishment of foreign aid to persuade the Italian government to give exclusive oil-drilling contracts to American companies. He asked her to comment on these charges, saying he was particularly interested in the third, since her husband’s magazines promoted the acquisition of foreign oil by United States companies, and “Brazil is a country that operates an oil government monopoly.”
Clare replied that her Milan speech of May 1953 had merely expressed the policy of her own government, as articulated by professionals on her staff. She said that her remarks had created a stir only in “the Communist and the Socialist press.” As for her alleged support of the Italian right wing, “At no time ever, in any circumstances, did I or any member of my Embassy ever give aid, comfort or encouragement to the Fascist Party of Italy.” She indignantly refuted the insinuation that she had used aid as “blackmail” for oil concessions. All she suggested was that Western countries of any flag should be allowed to give Italians the benefit of their extraction technology. “Because as you know, Senator, you must dig an average of seventeen wells to hit one.”
To this, Morse had no reply except to say, “Are you through?”27
Senator John Kennedy, who had just decided to run for the presidency, asked permission to interrupt with a brief statement, before he left for another meeting.28 Morse yielded.
“I have known Mrs. Luce for twenty years,” Kennedy said. “I think personally that she could fulfill the ambassadorship to Brazil with competence and to the credit of the United States, and I have every confidence that she can, based on her public record, and I am delighted to support her nomination wholeheartedly.”29
“Thank you, Senator,” Clare said.
After some forty minutes more of testimony, Clare left the hearing room close to tears. She broke down in the elevator, and an unidentified man in a trench coat tried to screen her face.30
Wayne Morse had continued to bludgeon her.31 Should American Ambassadors accept decorations from foreign governments? Was arsenic poisoning the primary reason for her departure from Rome? What were her views on the relative merits of career versus political appointees to diplomatic posts? Had she asked Dulles for the job?32
Clare had tried to be temperate and dignified in her responses. Concerned by the overall impression she had made, she asked to be allowed to edit from the transcript of the proceedings “anything that might cause embarrassment.”33
That afternoon, the committee met in executive session to confirm her appointment. But at the urging of Langer and Morse, the Senators decided to delay a vote until those who had missed the morning’s exchanges could read a transcript. They agreed that the nominee should not be allowed to edit her own words. But she was welcome to provide “supplemental materials,” including the documentation Morse demanded, as well as her Foreign Affairs article entitled “The Ambassadorial Issue: Professionals or Amateurs?”34
The following morning, the Republican Party rallied to Clare’s defense, condemning Morse’s “harassing action.” Senator Kenneth Keating of New York recalled no such “preposterous” attack on her when she was confirmed for Italy. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona compared the hounding of Mrs. Luce to the tactics of the late Joseph McCarthy. Fulbright angrily countered by saying that this remark exceeded the “proper bounds” of senatorial conduct.35
Clare’s friends among the Washington elite, including Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Perle Mesta, and General Walter Bedell Smith, gave supportive parties for her over the next few days. She was also seen at a Brazilian Embassy function wearing a black tennis shoe on her aching foot.36
Finally, on Thursday, April 23, the committee met to vote on Clare’s confirmation. Once again, Senator Morse dominated the proceedings, saying he needed at least thirty minutes to present his “analysis” of her case. “I feel that this appointment is a great mistake, and I venture the prophecy … that after she is sent to Brazil, in due course of time, it will be to our embarrassment.”
He attacked Clare’s character and diplomatic competency. “The only role for which I believe she is well qualified is political hatchet-man. She does very well at making inflammatory and demagogic political statements.” Her record did not show that she had “sound judgment and a capacity for self-restraint.” Nor had she displayed much commitment to her mission in Italy.
She was a notorious absentee, even allowing for her long illness just before she resigned. In 1955 she was absent from her job 87 days, and was on vacation for another 69 days. None of that was for sick leave or due to illness. In 1956 she was absent from her job 84 days. Plus, she took 23 days of vacation and 95 days of sick leave.… Her total record for those two years showed her absent 171 days of duty, 187 days of non-duty, that is, vacation and sick leave.
Turning to Clare’s citation of five scholarly books to adumbrate her thesis that FDR “lied” the United States into war, Morse said he had read the first, Professor Charles A. Beard’s President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941, and found no “specific case of falsification … to substantiate Mrs. Luce’s charge.” Nor did he see any confirmation in her second source, chapter 8 of Robert Sherwood’s Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History.
He began to orate as if he were on the Senate floor. “Does Mrs. Luce believe that what happened at Pearl Harbor was a foreign war, one that we should have ignored? Does she think that the bombs that rained down on American ships in a peaceful harbor and upon the men, women and children in American territory were a foreign involvement that we should have closed our eyes to?”
Morse did not claim to have read Clare’s other sources—two works by Basil Rauch and Edgar Robinson, and Cordell Hull’s seventeen-hundred-page autobiography. But he said that Professor Rauch had wired him to complain that she had “misrepresented” his book, and that Hull’s massive memoir hardly constituted a verifiable reference.
No one challenged the Senator’s apparent erudition. Contrary to what he said, at least two of Clare’s sources—Beard and Sherwood—amply vindicated her statement, and both had been published four years after her alleged calumny of Roosevelt. At that time, Charles Beard was regarded as “the dean of American historians,” revered for his fervent patriotism and anti-imperialist philosophy. His book had challenged the received image of FDR as the soldier of freedom, and accused him of preaching peace and neutrality while secretly, through “binding agreements” with future Allies, maneuvering the United States into World War II. Sherwood’s chapter documented much the same behavior, and contained a sentence that uncannily echoed Clare’s words of 1944: “Whatever the peril, he was not going to lead the country into war—he was going to wait to be pushed in.”37
Morse, unstoppable, quoted at length from three Roosevelt speeches proving, in his opinion, that before 1941 the President had been preparing America for self-defense only. Shortly before 1:00 P.M., Fulbright interrupted. “I remind the Senator he said he would like 30 minutes.”
Senator Lausche chimed in. “He has had nearly 40 minutes. I think we sh
ould be permitted to go to lunch.”
Ignoring him, Morse asked Fulbright if he could “take a minute” for some more quotations, but the chairman ordered the committee reporter to enter two more Roosevelt speeches as read. One, dated October 30, 1940, contained the sentence that Clare had claimed to be a lie: I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
Morse argued that Clare had taken this sentence out of context, and insisted that the rest of Roosevelt’s speech proved that the President had had defense, not aggression, in mind. If other members sensed that Morse was talking at cross-purposes with Clare, they remained silent. She had merely meant to say that FDR saw the inevitability of having to stop Hitler long before Pearl Harbor, not as a result of it. They sat through a further attack on her Rome record, before adjourning for what was left of the lunch hour.
Fifty minutes later, the committee reassembled and voted to confirm Clare Boothe Luce as Ambassador to Brazil, with only one dissenting vote.
When the full Senate convened on Monday, April 27, to debate her nomination, Senator Morse again opposed it, this time for three hours and eighteen minutes. He scoffed at the appointment as “one more example of the Eisenhower Administration paying off political hacks,” and rehashed his earlier condemnation of Clare for abusing Roosevelt, Truman, and Acheson. “This woman has beclouded … and destroyed her usefulness,” he shouted. “She has neither the tact nor the diplomacy to serve in Brazil.” As for honesty or reliability, “I am satisfied that Mrs. Luce does not meet either criteria.”38
Morse’s diatribe—amounting to twenty thousand words out of the debate total of sixty-five thousand in the Congressional Record—appeared to influence some Democratic Senators, but Clare continued to have overwhelming bipartisan support.39 Her old friend Lyndon B. Johnson, now Senate majority leader, was for her. Kennedy, Lausche, and Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut spoke eloquently in her behalf. Hoping to rally at least a significant bloc of nays, Morse won a postponement of the vote until the following day.
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