Last week, as usual, there was no news about the man who, in a sense, runs the U.S. Government. Harold Dewey Smith's 45th birthday did not make even the society column of his home-town paper, the Arlington, Va. Daily. Because it was Sunday, Mr. Smith celebrated his arrival at this milestone of middle age by sleeping late (9:30 a.m.) and playing eleven holes of dufferish golf at the nearby Washing ton Golf and Country Club, a course which would test a mountain goat. (If his tall, athletic wife Lillian had gone along, she would have trounced him. She shoots in the low 80s.) At dinner there was a cake, which they ate on the porch (see cut) surrounded by Sunday newspapers.
The four Smith children — Lawrence Byron, Sally Jane, Mary Ann and Vir ginia Lee, aged 4 to 14 — sang Happy Birthday.
In a crowd, Mr. Smith is the fellow in the brown suit. Middle-sized and homely, he has pale blue-grey eyes behind rimless glasses, and a mustache which (though he boasts "I haven't had a clean-shaven upper lip in 15 years") is invisible in a poor light. He is cautious with his talk, and likes to take several puffs at his straight-stemmed briar pipe before answering a question. His friends joke that "Harold has only one speed: low gear." He works hard at his job, including most evenings, and has very little time for fun. When he does, he golfs or bowls a bit, but he prefers to gather his family at the piano for a sing, or to fix things around the house. His hobby is making furniture in his basement workshop. Mr. Smith bought his colonial brick house cheap because nobody had ever been able to make the plumbing and heating and wiring work right. He fixed them up fine.
Mr. Smith is Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, a job which this year means supervising the spending of more than 100 billion dollars. A Congressman once said: "We grant the powers and Harold Smith writes the laws." Says Vice President Wallace: "Harold Smith is the most important man in this Administration."
Mr. Smith & the Washington Mess. Even allowing for a normal degree of exaggeration, these are astonishing statements about a man who is almost completely unknown to the U.S. public. Much of Harold Smith's obscurity is deliberate. The rest derives from the fact that most citizens know little more about his job than they do about him.
The Bureau of the Budget is generally thought to be a branch of the Treasury which collects and adds up what the various departments of the Government would like to spend during the coming year, and presents the figures each January in a bulky tome called the U.S. Budget. Except that the Bureau was transferred in 1939 from the Treasury to the Executive Office of the President, this is true. But it is only the starting point, the excuse, for Harold Smith's real assignment. If he had the title that fits his job, he would be called Gen eral Manager of the U.S. Government.