My latest reading of Irwin Gellman's The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952
focused on the Alger Hiss scandal. I'll go more deeply into the Alger
Hiss scandal in my post tomorrow, for my latest reading brings up things
that are explained in more detail or resolved in my next reading. My
next post won't be exhaustive, mind you, but I'll talk a little bit
about the people involved in the Hiss incident, and perhaps I'll provide
you with links in case you want to study the topic further. Since the
Alger Hiss scandal was a significant part of Richard Nixon's political
career, I'm sure that it will come up again in my readings and blog
posts for my Year (or More) of Nixon!
In this post, I'll highlight two items from my latest reading.
1.
As I said in an earlier post, inflation was a significant issue during
the time that Richard Nixon was a congressman, which was when Harry
Truman was President. On page 192, Gellman states: "Nixon argued that
the president deplored high prices, yet he proposed government housing,
higher minimum wages, federal health subsidies, federal aid to
education, larger Social Security benefits, and more money for the
United Nations. These pieces of legislation had to fuel inflation."
I've
talked about inflation a lot on my blog, particularly the topic of what
policies contribute to it. This issue came up during the 1980
Presidential election, which was a time of high inflation, as the
candidates accused each other of supporting policies that would be
inflationary.
It seems to me that one can make the case that
right-wing and left-wing policies could both be inflationary.
Conservatives believe that more government spending is inflationary, for
a variety of reasons: it increases demand, for the government is
spending more as a customer; the government may choose to raise taxes to
pay for its increased budget, and companies pass the cost of higher
taxes onto their consumers; and the government prints money to pay for
its programs and its debt, and printing more money results in
inflation. Others have argued, however, that tax cuts fuel inflation,
for they increase demand because people now have more money in their
pockets to spend. A number of conservatives maintain that the way to
get inflation under control is to tighten the money supply, and, while
that has sometimes worked, I wonder if even that can result in higher
prices: a tight money supply entails high interest rates, so if
companies are borrowing money in order to invest, wouldn't they pass on
the cost of the interest rates to their consumers?
Supply-siders
have maintained that certain tax cuts can combat inflation, by removing
hindrances on investment and productivity. That makes a degree of
sense, for productivity is a way to combat inflation, since it increases
the supply of goods and allows it to keep up with the demand. But I
don't think that tax cuts for corporations always result in
lower prices, for some corporations may choose not to produce because
they like the profits that the high prices are bringing them. Some
argue that this is why the tax cuts for the oil companies under
President George W. Bush did not result in lower gas prices.
2.
I'll give you a little preview of my post tomorrow on Alger Hiss.
Essentially, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers were ex-Communists
who were accusing people who served in the Franklin Roosevelt
Administration (maybe also the Truman Administration) of being involved
in espionage for the Soviet Union. Truman attacked the House Committee
on Un-American Activities, claiming that the Republicans in Congress
were merely trying to divert attention from their own failure to tackle
inflation. On page 204, Gellman states that Nixon did not understand
what "stopped [Truman] from investigating the legitimate charges brought
out by Bentley and Chambers." Later in the book, Gellman speculates
that the refusal of the Truman Administration and Republicans in
Congress to cooperate on the subversion issue set the stage for Senator
Joseph McCarthy. But, getting back to page 204, Gellman states there,
as he quotes Nixon: "'The cover-up,' much on Nixon's mind in the fall of 1972, 'is what hurts you.'"
Ironic,
isn't it? But I guess that it's easier to criticize people in power
than it is to consistently do the right thing once one is in power, when
that right thing is inconvenient.