After a half-hour conference with Harry Truman, Democratic National Chairman Frank E. McKinney bustled out of the White House last week with the air of a hot-eyed reformer. The President, he said, was "angry over being sold down the river by some disloyal employees." There would be "drastic" action soon.
This setting of the stage was enough to jam 168 reporters into the President's press conference two days later. With a tight-lipped grin, Truman said he had nothing to announce, but he understood there were questions. The Washington Post's Edward Folliard opened the show: "Chairman McKinney told us you are planning to take drastic action toward a Government housecleaning."
Truman took the cue, but he abandoned McKinney's reformer line. Instead of showing indignation at the evildoers, the President seemed to have saved it for the U.S. press; his main points at the conference were to minimize the scandals and to insist that his Administration, not congressional committees, deserved the credit for what housecleaning has been done. In answering Reporter Folliard, he said that continued drastic action was a better phrase than drastic action. There is really nothing unusual or new in the current situation in Washington. This sort of thing is going on all the time. Some people go wrong and are fired. Oh, the trouble may be a little higher up in some places now, but a look at the record will show that there isn't any more of it.
All the wrongdoers were discovered and punished by the executive department long ago, and then congressional committees moved in and got a lot of headlines. "Wrongdoers," said Truman, "have no house with me . . ."*
To Show Honesty. The astonished reporters knew that, in many respects, the record did not support what Harry Truman was saying. In the past four months, 62 officers and employees of the Internal Revenue Bureau have been fired from their jobs. So far this year, the total is 113, including six regional collectors, key men in the system. In the twelve months of 1950, only 40 internal revenue employees were fired. Annual average for the past five years: 36. Exposures of corruption in the bureau can be traced clearly to the campaign started on May 28, 1948 by Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams. In most cases, investigations forced Administration action.
The New York Times's William Lawrence asked the logical question: "If it isn't anything new or unusual or any great numbers involved, why then are you even considering extraordinary action?" The real reason, replied Truman, is to show that the vast majority of Government employees are honest.