The Treatment

Knives were flashing in Washington. A new victim had drawn into sight: Alan Valentine, the newly appointed Economic Stabilization director. He had been promisingly launched as a sensible educator, a middle-of-the-road businessman, a Quaker and a Rhodes scholar. Then the Potomac knife throwers went to work. Their efforts provided a fascinating peek at how such things work in the nation's capital.

Fair Dealers and their C.I.O. buddies dug out his speeches, reread old articles, measured him for the target board and found him a perfect fit. He had once pronounced the New Deal's welfare programs a menace to the American way of life, in 1941 had loudly opposed Lend-Lease and U.S. "involvement" in Europe, had viewed with alarm presidential powers "to control completely the industrial life of America down to the smallest factory." What's more, he was also suspected of being overly soft toward Big Business.

This thesis was promptly developed at length by the Fair Dealing New York Post. The Post found Valentine "alternately timid, unimaginative and fatalistic." C.I.O. lobbyists spread the word that Valentine was "reactionary," "anti-labor," and had also been known to take a drink. "He'd be wasting his time trying to win our support," said one C.I.O. official. Former ECA "subordinates" who knew him when he was ECA administrator in The Netherlands spread the word that he was vituperative, bumptious, inflexible and prejudiced. "A brilliant fellow but a little kinky," said a former associate. "He's right robust with his own opinions." Even the Wall Street Journal, which claimed him as "business-minded," noted that "Rochester students consider Valentine a 'stuffy' prexy. Newspapermen have found him irascible."

Valentine hadn't even got himself an office yet.

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