Given the consistent failures in Harold Stassen’s long pursuit of the presidency, it is difficult to find space for his pursuit of an accord with the Soviet Union that would de-escalate the Cold War. His transparent ambitions stood in the way of an appreciation for his positive contributions to American policy during his four years in the Eisenhower administration. One remembers his quixotic and self-defeating attempt to remove Richard Nixon from the vice presidency in 1956, his alienation from almost all his colleagues in the Eisenhower cabinet, his losing feud with Secretary of State Dulles, and—not incidentally—his bad luck in seeing his recommendations fall victim to presidential campaign politics in 1956 and to the implications of Sputnik for Soviet-American relations in 1957.
The problems emerging from his presence in the Eisenhower administration were exacerbated by his generation-long effort to keep himself in the public limelight after his resignation from the White House in 1958. His attempt to win the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania—an effort to transform himself into a Pennsylvanian, based on his experience ten years before as president of the University of Pennsylvania—failed badly; he antagonized the Republican establishment in the state. Failure only spurred him on over the next forty-four years. He threw his hat into the presidential ring in 1964, 1968, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992. Counting his three earlier attempts in 1944, 1948, and 1952, he tried to win the nomination nine times. Only in 1948 was it a genuine possibility. When he was not looking toward the presidency, he turned to the governorship of Pennsylvania, his adopted state, in 1958 and 1966 and to the governorship of Minnesota in 1982, after returning to his home state. In Minnesota he ran for a US Senate seat in 1978 and again in 1994, when he was eighty-seven years old. He had even tried to become the mayor of Philadelphia in 1959. None of these ventures came close to success. There was one slight exception: he was Minnesota’s Republican candidate for Congress in 1986 but lost the election to his Democratic opponent in November.
In spite of this record, Stassen cannot merely be dismissed as the “perennial” candidate. Rather, he seemed to fit the definition of insanity: repeating the same mistakes while expecting different results. Even Robert Matteson, who was usually more outspoken about Stassen’s virtues than his defects, was frustrated by his vendetta against Nixon in 1956 and attributed the problem to Stassen’s inability to see himself as others saw him.1
Those closest to him were aware of the folly of his ambitions, but this did not prevent Stassen from attracting a number of devoted followers at an early age and keeping them over the years as supporters and allies in his political odyssey. An example of the loyalty he inspired may be found in the career of Amos J. Peaslee, a successful Republican lawyer and committed internationalist who was attracted to Stassen’s strong championship of the United Nations. In addition to being a key figure in Stassen’s 1948 and 1962 campaigns, he edited a collection of Stassen’s speeches in 1951 when the former governor tried again for the Republican nomination. Peaslee’s prestige in the Republican Party won him an ambassadorship to Australia and then service with Stassen as deputy special assistant to Eisenhower in 1956–1957.
The enthusiasm among young Republicans for the liberal governor of Minnesota in the 1940s did not wane, despite his abortive campaigns. Stassen’s progressive views on labor and the United Nations and his ability to articulate his positions effectively assured him of a loyal staff during his tenure in the Mutual Security Agency in 1953–1955 and in the White House and State Department in 1955–1958. His aides were no longer young or even radical by then, but they had become effective members of his team. The extensive correspondence and commentaries from his staff disclose how supportive they were of Stassen in his capacity as the president’s assistant on disarmament. They rarely addressed him informally: no one referred to him as “Harold”; “Governor” seems to be as informal as they could manage. But there was a warmth in their appreciation of both his talents and his objectives. No serious friction surfaced in Stassen’s communications with his aides. So harmonious was the relationship that one simple request—asking an aide not to sit behind any delegate other than a US member—was treated as a rebuke, but not by Stassen. The guilty aide apologized, asserting that he had been trapped when a latecomer took the American delegate’s seat while he was delivering a note to the British delegate.2
Although relations with his staff are well documented in the Stassen collection at the Minnesota Historical Society, another important element of his life—his religious sensibilities—are rarely displayed in his professional correspondence. Not that his connections with the religious community were absent from the public record. They were present in abundance. A lifelong member of the American Baptist Convention, he demonstrated his commitment to civil rights by joining Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 march to Washington. He sought and achieved high offices in church affairs beyond his own denomination. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he was a prominent member of the US delegation to the Inter-Religious Committee for Peace that visited Vietnam in 1968.
His religious convictions were most clearly displayed in his correspondence with his wife, son, and daughter. His prayers for his wife’s health were heartfelt. An affectionate tone permeated his correspondence, especially during his long periods abroad in the 1950s. Particularly revealing was an exchange between Stassen and his son, Glen, who asked for his father’s blessing on his choice of a wife. Glen assured him that his fiancée was a faithful Baptist and would be a suitable partner for a young man entering the clergy.3 Glen later became a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
Although a mix of the personal with the professional is rarely found in his writings, Stassen’s goals for the country reflected that combination. The ultimate objective of his diplomacy was to de-escalate and end the Cold War with the Soviet Union, based on the reasonable assumption that the rivalry surrounding nuclear weapons had the capacity to destroy the world. He believed he knew the means to achieve this goal and had the capacity to bring it to fruition.
It was World War II that compelled Stassen to move from his progressive concerns for labor relations and efficient government to the larger world scene. President Roosevelt provided the first platform for him to learn about and participate in US foreign policy as a delegate to the San Francisco Conference on the United Nations Charter. On leave from his naval duties in 1945, he displayed the kind of leadership that marked all his activities, charting a course for the United States that equated the objectives of the United Nations with those of the United States.
Even if he had not been at the center of the movement out of isolationism, his identification with Republican internationalism likely would have marked him as a leader. That he saw himself as a key player in the transition of US foreign policy was an indication of his future as a leading figure in US politics. The United Nations became a lodestar in Stassen’s career, even as he recognized its limitations. His concern about the Soviets’ abuse of the veto power in the UN Security Council, which he expressed at the San Francisco Conference, anticipated future difficulties between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies.
While Stassen’s opposition to communism caused his misstep in the fateful debate with Dewey in 1948, it did not define his future relations with Soviet leaders or his expectations of collaboration with the Soviets in arms-control negotiations. Once again, his ego was involved. In 1946 he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, and in 1947 he embarked on a fact-finding tour of Europe to polish his credentials. Visiting Moscow on the eve of a meeting of foreign ministers, he managed to have an extensive conversation with Stalin about the differences in their respective nations’ economic systems. It was a cordial meeting that allowed him to proclaim the virtues of a free democracy over communism. At the same time, it gave him excessive visibility at a time when Secretary of State George Marshall should have monopolized the attention of the American press. That the Soviet leader would spend time with an American politician who held no office was a boost to Stassen’s self-esteem and a sign that he could speak openly with and perhaps influence the Communist leader.
This conception of himself as a communicator with the other side resurfaced ten years later. Andrei Gromyko, then the Soviet ambassador to Britain, had no record of warm friendships with American politicians, yet he purposely brought Stassen together with Nikita Khrushchev at a reception at the French embassy in April 1956. It is likely that Gromyko saw in the president’s assistant someone whose openness to negotiations might serve Soviet interests. Certainly, Khrushchev himself went out of his way to display cordiality, even intimacy, in his dealings with Stassen. He also told Charles Bohlen, the US ambassador to France, that Stassen was a much more effective diplomat than Secretary of State Dulles. Stassen accepted this praise as evidence of the importance of personal connections in diplomatic negotiations. His hopes for a breakthrough were enhanced by the informal connections he made with Valentin Zorin, his counterpart as head of the Soviet delegation in London. That he exaggerated his influence with the Soviets did not dampen his enthusiasm for securing Soviet collaboration in his quest for nuclear de-escalation.
If Stassen misjudged his relationship with the Kremlin, he also failed to identify exactly where he stood with President Eisenhower in the 1950s. He never lost faith in the linkage between his own conception of the Cold War and Eisenhower’s. This confluence in their outlooks was still strong in his mind a generation later when he wrote his account of life in the Eisenhower administration. In Eisenhower: Turning the World toward Peace Stassen underscored his bond with the president. They were both dedicated to a liberal new order embodied in the United Nations, as well as a conservative means of achieving it. An incremental approach accompanied by sensitivity to fiscal obligations was a common denominator.
There was some substance to this evaluation. Eisenhower undoubtedly wanted Stassen to serve as his surrogate in a cabinet dominated by strong personalities with harsh judgments of the Soviet Union, most notably John Foster Dulles. Yet Eisenhower was always aware that Stassen’s ambitions affected and weakened his judgment. As he told Matteson in an interview in 1964, “Mr. Stassen was very imaginative—a tireless worker with great energy—but he had difficulty working as a team.”4 When he had to choose between his secretary of peace and the secretary of state, Eisenhower usually chose the latter, even when he felt that Stassen was closer to the path he wanted to follow.
Eisenhower has been credited with a “hidden hand” presidency, and his treatment of Stassen and Dulles confirms this judgment.5 He often left advisers in the dark, playing on their fears and aspirations. Alternatively, he kept them guessing about his own intentions, which may have been a result of indecision on his part. His hand was always well hidden, even from himself, to the discomfort of Stassen and, to a lesser degree, the secretary of state. Dulles was more aware of Eisenhower’s occasional ambivalence than Stassen was, and he could usually use it to his advantage.
Stassen’s advice on leaving office in February 1958 was a variation of the themes he had been propounding since entering public life. It included listening to signals from the Soviet Union and acting on them to reduce the tensions that could result in a nuclear catastrophe. He was always ready with detailed approaches, most notably, suspending nuclear tests for a specific time and holding a summit gathering at a suitable venue, such as UN headquarters in New York. Relaxing pressure rather than increasing pressure, as Dulles would have it, was his key to future relations with the Communist superpower. His eventual hope, much like George Kennan’s, was to expose the inner contradictions of communism and to assume that the benefits of democratic capitalism would transform the USSR.
Writing at the National War College a decade later, Matteson, Stassen’s closest adviser, judged: “The fact that the Dulles policy won out resulted in the loss of a great opportunity in the spring and summer of 1957. That opportunity was to break the 11 years of East-West deadlock in the disarmament negotiation by accepting a final offer to suspend nuclear tests for two or three years under an agreed inspection system.”6 Matteson, like Stassen, was more optimistic about the future of arms control than circumstances warranted. Neither took sufficient account of the power of the opposition in Eisenhower’s cabinet or the implications of external events. Public opinion in the West strongly supported the steps Stassen advocated, but the Soviet success with Sputnik in the fall of 1957 and the United States’ resulting vulnerability to intercontinental ballistic missile attacks inevitably stiffened the Soviet embrace of nuclear weapons, undermining the developing rapprochement Stassen had championed. It would take more than a generation for the Cold War to end and the Soviet empire to implode. Stassen lived to see this outcome.
Stassen’s pursuit of nuclear disarmament was one that Eisenhower shared. It reflected an aspiration that emerged from World War II—a liberal American foreign policy centered on a new world order, exemplified by the United Nations. Its goals remain an essential part of America’s conception of its place in the world, even though it has never been fully implemented. But the idea of taking modest steps toward a freer and more orderly world endures. Stassen’s vision of a future free from fear of a nuclear holocaust has not been realized. But the optimism he personified has not yet been extinguished.