THE PRESIDENCY: Hercules Is Unwilling

• Share

The mighty man stepped gingerly into the Augean stables, sniffed once and backed out again. Hercules was unwilling, after all. Less than a week after Federal Judge Thomas Murphy let it be understood that he would take on the job of sweeping out the littered corruption of Harry Truman's Administration, he threw up his hands, turned his back on pail and broom.

One big explanation for Tom Murphy's change of heart was apparently the advice of his fellow jurists, among them, the cousins Learned and Augustus Hand of the U.S. court of appeals. They felt that federal judges should not accept administrative jobs without resigning from the bench. More important, Murphy had found out that he would not get the tools he needed for a thorough stable-cleaning; he was to get no powers to subpoena witnesses, or to cite them for contempt if they proved balky. The job had been offered as a pail-and-broom detail, but what Tom Murphy needed was a bulldozer.

Murphy's refusal all but ended Harry Truman's hope of prompt action against malefactors in government. All week long he had searched in vain for two other cleanup men with the stature and prestige to make the commission an effective weapon against the charges of corruption. Without Tom Murphy, the search would beharder than ever.

It all added up to one of the gloomiest holiday seasons Harry Truman had ever faced. Behind him the rising tide of scandal pressed closer; ahead loomed the steel deadlock, which might bring the sharpest economic crisis of the year. The President ducked his weekly press conference, labored grimly through the week over his messages on the State of the Union and the budget. This week he boarded his plane for a short respite in Independence, a sorely troubled King Augeas, with not a Hercules in sight.