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"I Was Always Running." The commissioner's job is to administer the tax laws, not shape them. But Caplin, unlike his predecessors, attends the staff meetings of his boss, the Secretary of the Treasury, and as a highly respected tax expert, he works closely with Secretary Dillon's top tax-policy aides, Under Secretary Henry Fowler and Assistant Secretary Stanley Surrey. "I am able to get some of my ideas across," says Caplin.
Despite his lack of administrative experience, Caplin is notably better qualified than many of his predecessors. Under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the post went to Democratic politicos. Among them: New York Politician Joseph D. Nunan Jr. (1944-47), who later served two years in prison for evading $91,086 in income taxes. Eisenhower's first Internal Revenue Commissioner, T. Coleman Andrews, was at least a qualified accountant, but after leaving the Administration he went into right-wing politics and declared himself an enemy of the progressive income tax. Ike made sounder choices later on, and his last commissioner, Dana Latham, was a highly qualified tax lawyer.
Commissioner Caplin, 46, draws laughs by claiming that he got the IRS job because of his "good judgment—the good judgment to have both Bobby and Teddy Kennedy as students at the University of Virginia and to pass them both."* But in fact, the way he got the job was by letting it be known that he wanted it.
Both the jest and the fact are typical of Mortimer Maxwell Caplin. He is a bouncy extravert who wears colorful bow ties and shows frequent flashes of humor ("There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist—the taxidermist leaves the hide"). But beneath the relaxed surface seethes a fierce and driving desire for success. "There may be something in being a member of a minority that makes a man run," he says. ''Anyway. I was always running."
"Along Came Morty." Caplin is two generations removed from Bialystok, Poland. His grandfather migrated to the U.S. in 1888. sold used shoes and paintbrushes from a pushcart in Brooklyn. In the second generation, Uncle Hymie managed boxers, including five champions, served four years in prison for his part in a card-game swindle. Wrote Sports Columnist Red Smith when Hymie Caplin died in 1949: "It is wrong to mark a guy no good simply because he got himself jammed up. I was fond of Hymie and he wasn't a bad guy." Referring to Hymie's fighters, Smith added: "Not many managers have had so many good ones, or done so well with them." By some accounts, another uncle, Nathan. known as "Kid Dropper" in New York rackets, was killed in a gangland fight in 1923.
Mortimer's father Daniel was a white sheep, became a physical education teacher, eventually rising to assistant director of health education in the New York City school system. On the side, he managed a few professional fighters.