National Affairs: The General's Successor

The Senate took exactly four minutes to confirm Robert Abercrombie Lovett as the new Secretary of Defense; it happened to be on Lovett's 56th birthday. There was only one hitch. North Dakota's isolated Bill Langer wanted to know whether this was the Robert Morss Lovett who had been investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1943.* Assured that it was not, Langer made the vote unanimous.

Over the last eleven years. Defense's Bob Lovett has held down three important top policy-making jobs, just a short taxi ride across Washington from Capitol Hill. But Lovett, a tall, slender man with the poise and features of a balding Caesar, has nimbly sidestepped the publicity that might have made his name known even to Bill Langer. In a time of crisis, he is well content to work in the shadow of greater names.

Diplomatic Save. Lovett was one of many Wall Streeters (foremost: James Forrestal) who did outstanding work for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Wise old Henry Stimson, F.D.R.'s Republican Secretary of War, drafted Lovett as Assistant Secretary of War for Air in 1941. The smooth-working, selfless Stimson team, which included Lovett and Chief of Staff George Marshall, became a legend of administrative efficiency and warm mutual loyalty.

In Washington, Air Secretary Lovett took one look at U.S. defense nakedness, another at the tremendous lesson of Nazi air victories in Europe, and fought a campaign to get top priorities for a big U.S. bomber fleet. Then, holding down impulsive Air Chief "Hap" Arnold with a gentle hand, he skillfully got the air corps raised to the status of a semi-independent air force.

When General Marshall was named Secretary of State in 1947, he urged Lovett to come back from Wall Street to be his Under Secretary. Although Lovett was still recuperating from a serious operation, he came, commenting: "There are only three people to whom I can never say no —my wife, Henry Stimson and George Catlett Marshall." Half the time Lovett ran the department while Marshall was away in Europe. In 1948 Lovett was quick to see the implications of the Russian blockade of Berlin, strongly backed the Berlin airlift as a counterchallenge. A few months later he saved Harry Truman from a major diplomatic blunder. The President was all ready to go on the air and announce that he was sending Chief Justice Vinson to Moscow to reason with Stalin. Lovett heard about the plan, telephoned General Marshall in Paris, and confronted Truman with a joint ultimatum that both of them would resign if the plan went through.

Bob Lovett was born in Texas, the son of Robert Scott Lovett, general counsel and then president of Union Pacific. Young Bob left Yale (Phi Beta Kappa, Skull & Bones) during his third year to go overseas with the Yale Unit in the naval air force. In France he flew the lumbering British Handley Pages on some of the first night glide-bombing attacks, made a careful study of dive-bombing tactics which amazed his friends and delighted the Navy brass. The unit's historian summed up Lieut. Lovett in three words: "Observation, reflection, deduction—and there you were!"