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In chancelleries around the world, U.S. diplomats were explaining to foreign governments last week that the U.S. is in the midst of a major change in foreign policy. The outflow of dollars from the U.S. would exceed the inflow by some $4 billion this year; the end of the Marshall Plan period of unrestricted overseas spending had come. No, the U.S. did not intend to cut out foreign aid where it was needed, nor to retreat into "Buy American" protectionism, nor to cut dangerously its overseas military forces. But it might have to do all these things if such industrially strong nations as West Germany, Britain and Japan did not take over part of the aid to underdeveloped nations, drop trade barriers and get on with the business of working out a long-range program of stable free trade for the world.
Meanwhile, in his office above the pro's shop at the Augusta National Golf Club, President Eisenhower began hammering out the domestic budget for fiscal 1961 with his top Cabinet officers. "Gentlemen," he had told them at a session fortnight before in Washington, "you are going to have to prove each item to me." Despite pressures of rising prices and cries for ever more costly military hardware, the President was determined to make a balanced budget his top domestic priority.
Beneath this wide sweep of policy was a bedrock Administration decision to make the sound dollar the basis for the U.S. economic system, and to make a sound U.S. economic system the keystone of a free-world economic policy based on growing prosperity through freer trade. The drive was the President's own. But the man behind the drive was a tall (6 ft. 2 in.), mild-mannered Texan with a lingering touch of the prairies in his soft twang: Robert Bernerd Anderson, 49, Secretary of the Treasury and the strong man of Dwight Eisenhower's Cabinet.
The Velvet Glove. In any Cabinet under any President, the Secretary of the Treasury wields great power and carries grave responsibilities. He oversees the vast, intricate flow and ebb of the billions of dollars that the U.S. Government takes in and pays out. He is charged with managing the $290 billion national debt, a task in which small errors can be costly. But Robert Anderson's power and influence extend far beyond the statutory scope of his office, broad as that is. By force of mind and personality, Anderson molds politics that reach into every niche of the U.S. Government, every place of business, ultimately every home.