(2 of 3)
Acheson had his misgivings about Roosevelt. "It didn't flatter me," he later remarked, "to have the squire of Hyde Park come by and speak to me familiarly, as though I were a stable boy and I was supposed to pull my lock and say, 'Aye, aye, sir.' " That was no way for one squire to treat another. But in 1941 Acheson was invited to return to the Government—this time to the State Department. He remained for six years, then left to resume his law practice until he was appointed Secretary by Truman in 1949. His success was partly due to his keen analytical mind, but it owed something as well to the impression he created. Acheson seemed to be typecast for Secretary of State, the Continental beau ideal of a diplomat—correct, precise, immaculately attired, imperious or witty as the occasion demanded, ever so slightly condescending.
Unforgivable Personality. If his bearing won plaudits overseas, it endeared him to few at home. His enemies might forgive him his policies, but never his personality; it was not mainstream America. As his State Department colleague Louis Halle put it: "He was too unrepresentative to be trusted." Said Canada's former Prime Minister Lester Pearson: "Not only did he not suffer fools gladly, he did not suffer them at all." "A good many members of Congress didn't like me," said Acheson. "This didn't bother me at all. I didn't care whether they liked me or didn't like me. The point was that they did what they were asked to do. And if they did that, they could have any views they liked about me."
They did indeed go along with much of what he proposed, but then some of them savagely turned on him. The collapse of Chiang Kai-shek gave them an excuse. Exploiting a confused and distressed public, Senator Joseph McCarthy seized the issue to denounce the "Red Dean" and demand his resignation. Illustrating what Halle called a "moral courage that sometimes amounted to recklessness," Acheson came to the defense of Alger Hiss, the onetime State Department official who was exposed as a Soviet agent. "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss," he told a stunned press conference.
The American right thereupon proclaimed that at last they had proof that Acheson was the Communist dupe they had said he was. Under attack as never before, Acheson offered to resign, but Truman, who vastly admired him, pluckily backed him up. "I suppose an element of pride entered into this," Acheson later explained. "I knew this question was going to be asked. And I knew the press was going to believe I'd run. And I just said, 'I'm not going to run. I'm going to let you have it right on the jaw.' And perhaps I knocked myself out."