Howard McGrath

Howard McGrath appears in the account as both a skilled party organizer and a consequential, ultimately unsuccessful attorney general. As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he helped shape the political operation around Harry S. Truman’s 1948 campaign, including efforts to reach foreign-born voters. Later, as attorney general, McGrath was entrusted with investigating corruption in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, but his conflict with the investigator he appointed ended with his own dismissal and left the administration’s cleanup effort in disarray.

Party leadership and campaign work

McGrath’s political experience included three elections as governor of Rhode Island. That background informed his attention to foreign-born Americans as an important constituency. During Truman’s 1948 campaign, McGrath understood that the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the president’s immigration policy could matter to these voters. His judgment rested not only on national issues: he had won three gubernatorial elections in Rhode Island with the support of foreign-born voters.

The campaign’s outreach gave that insight practical form. Democratic National Committee publicity director Jack Redding arranged for Truman’s press releases to be translated into several languages and distributed to foreign-language newspapers and radio stations. The material appeared in Polish, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Swedish. The account estimates that 35 million Americans were foreign-born, roughly a quarter of the population, and that 11 million were eligible to vote. McGrath’s part in this effort was as a political leader who recognized the constituency’s importance and the appeal that the administration’s foreign policy and immigration position could hold for it.

McGrath also worked within the campaign’s broader political machinery. Redding later described the campaign as the product of separate elements coming together, and the account emphasizes that the candidate was not its only source of strength. McGrath and other party figures worked behind the scenes despite understanding how difficult Truman’s prospects appeared. Their contribution helps explain why the campaign cannot be reduced to Truman’s public style alone: organizing, publicity, and an understanding of voter groups mattered alongside the president’s appearances.

At the 1948 Democratic convention, McGrath called Truman from Philadelphia after Alben W. Barkley’s speech. He told Truman that Barkley had moved ahead as a possible vice-presidential nominee. Truman replied that if Barkley was the convention’s choice, he would support him too. Truman had previously considered a younger, more liberal running mate, and Barkley was neither younger nor geographically advantageous to the ticket. McGrath’s report nonetheless helped bring the convention’s apparent preference directly into the president’s decision-making.

Party conflict and political opportunity

McGrath’s political role also included exploiting the confrontation between Truman and the Republican-led Congress. After Truman called the 80th Congress the worst in history, Republican leaders answered with their own attacks on the president. Senator Robert Taft objected to Truman’s criticism of Congress during his whistle-stop tour. McGrath and Redding recognized that Taft’s characterization of the campaign stops offered a way to turn the dispute back on him.

They sent telegrams to the mayors of thirty-five western towns on Truman’s route, asking whether they agreed with Taft’s description of their communities as mere whistle-stops. The replies included denials from local officials who insisted their towns were not what Taft had called them. The maneuver converted a national argument over presidential conduct into a succession of local responses. It also shows McGrath acting not as a speechmaker in the foreground but as a party strategist attentive to how an opponent’s criticism could be made to work against him.

Counsel during the McCarthy controversy

McGrath was among those Truman summoned to a confidential meeting at Blair House to discuss what could be done about Senator Joseph McCarthy. The gathering included Attorney General McGrath, four Democratic senators, a veteran Kentucky congressman, Solicitor General Philip B. Perlman, Democratic Party chairman William Boyle, Clark Clifford, and writer John Hersey, who attended as a witness to the discussion. Truman sought private advice as McCarthy’s accusations against officials and public figures were contributing to a poisonous political atmosphere.

At the meeting, Senator Clinton Anderson raised the possibility of using a dossier about McCarthy’s personal life to damage him. Participants discussed leaking the material to the press. The account does not identify McGrath as the source of the suggestion; it places him among those present while the proposal was considered. Truman rejected the idea, striking the table and making clear that he would not use such tactics. McGrath’s presence locates him among the president’s political and legal advisers at a moment when the administration confronted pressure to answer McCarthy through methods that Truman considered unacceptable.

Attorney general and the failed cleanup

In January 1952, Truman put McGrath in charge of a cleanup effort targeting corruption in the Bureau of Internal Revenue. McGrath’s previous leadership of the Democratic National Committee made his appointment vulnerable to charges that the investigation might be a whitewash. He appointed Newbold Morris, a respected New York lawyer and a Republican, to lead the inquiry, but the arrangement soon became a struggle between the attorney general and his investigator.

Morris’s comprehensive questionnaire asked federal employees, including members of the Cabinet, to report their assets and sources of income. McGrath regarded it as an invasion of privacy and a violation of individual rights. He refused to fill it out. Truman also read the questionnaire and decided it should not be used. The disagreement thus reached beyond a clash of personalities: the inquiry’s proposed method had become unacceptable to both McGrath and the president.

The breakdown came on April 3. McGrath announced that he had fired Morris, apparently believing that this was what Truman wanted. Truman instead fired McGrath. The decision followed the president’s growing frustration with McGrath’s performance, which Truman later distinguished from his feelings about McGrath personally. He maintained that he had liked him and saw no personal wrongdoing in him, but considered his handling of the job inadequate.

The episode ended in a farcical reversal: the attorney general dismissed the investigator, only to be dismissed by the president. The administration’s housecleaning effort appeared to have collapsed, and the affair reinforced the image of disorder in Washington. Truman later wrote privately to McGrath that his fondness for him had not changed, while acknowledging the pain political situations could cause. By December, as congressional scrutiny of the revenue scandals continued, Truman’s approval rating had fallen to 23 percent. McGrath’s departure therefore marked not simply the end of his tenure, but a conspicuous failure in an effort intended to restore confidence in the administration.