(4 of 7)
Congressman Herter's most important achievement was helping to sell the U.S., especially skeptical Midwestern Republicans, on the Marshall Plan idea. In 1947 Herter proposed creation of a special Select Committee on Foreign Aid, became its chairman, shrewdly arranged that its 17 members should include a sprinkling of deep-dyed isolationists. Leading his committee on an allwork, no-play tour of war-ravaged Europe, he saw to it that his fellow Congressmen got an eye-opening look at the ugly realities of postwar Europe. Result: the Herter committee's reports came out so staunchly for aid to Europe that the Marshall Plan won sturdy bipartisan support. "Without the Herter committee's groundwork," said a top Washington aidman. "the program of foreign aid would never have been passed."
Long-Shot Chance. Herter was often riled during his Capitol Hill years by isolationist speeches of fellow Republicans. "If the Republican Party is going to survive," he warned in 1942, "it must be represented by as many individuals with a worldwide outlook as the party can find. Abandonment of isolationism is the Republican Party's main issue." Spotting Dwight Eisenhower as a man with the worldwide outlook that the G.O.P. needed, Herter visited him in Europe in 1951 and urged him to run. He had the courage to give Ike some blunt advice: "If you think there's going to be an Eisenhower draft at the convention, coming from the grass roots, you're very much mistaken . . . You've got to let your friends know where you stand."
Soon after Herter got back to the U.S., he had to listen to some fervent urging himself: a group of top Massachusetts Republicans insisted that it was his party duty to run for Governor against brass-lunged Democrat Paul Dever. Herter protested angrily: he liked his job and his prospects on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not much care to give it up for a long-shot chance at an office that he did not really want. But in the end he agreed to run. Boston bookmakers gave odds as long as 10 to 3 against him.
Heavy Shillelagh. In his campaign against Dever, Herter showed a hard streak that surprised many of his friends. He called Dever a "British-type socialist" (an extra-heavy shillelagh among Boston Irish), belabored his administration as the "most powerful, wasteful, callous, boss-ridden outfit that ever shamed this state." In the 1952 Eisenhower landslide, Herter squeaked into office. Ike's margin in Massachusetts: 208,000; Herter's: 14,456.
Ex-Legislator Herter was remarkably successful in getting along with his legislature, got through a program that trimmed expenditures, streamlined administration, slowed the state's loss of industry by tax incentives and improved "business climate." When he ran for a second term in 1954, his winning margin soared to 75,252. ("As Governor," grouses a friend, "he wouldn't even fix a library card for you.") In 1956, as an outstanding G.O.P. Governor, Herter reluctantly got involved in a Herter-for-President-if-Ike-decides-not-to-run movement, and then was dragged into fancy-free Harold Stassen's Herter-instead-of-Nixon drive. Herter slapped Stassen down by making a nominating speech for Nixon at the 1956 G.O.P. Convention.