Washington Insider
NEUSTADT, RICHARD E.
Washington Insider A Passion for Anonymity. Reviewed by Richard E. Neustadt By Louis Brownlow. Department of government, Chicago. 500 pp. $7.50. Columbia University Reviewed by Richard E....
...This volume carries his reminiscences to 1945...
...For Brownlow has some fascinating information to impart...
...But it is only the upper seventh of the iceberg...
...That last phrase caused a lot of laughter...
...and so it is...
...years of revolutionary governmental change in which he—and his Clearing House—played a remarkably useful part...
...for if this book makes no demand for notice by non-specialists, it deserves their attention, nonetheless...
...He has been friend and counselor to still more generations of Washington correspondents, from whose ranks he came...
...The way he turned to Brownlow for these things shows keen appreciation for the latter's sense and objectivity—and steadfast anonymity...
...indeed, for everyone who seeks to understand the nature and requirements of presidential "leadership...
...Brownie...
...During five decades literally hundreds of officials at every governmental level have shared their problems with him, benefited from his penetration, good sense and good humor...
...But how are such men made...
...Not only are the Roosevelt sketches lively and enlightening in themselves, but they tell a great deal about the need of Presidents for men in whose sophistication and disinlerestedness they can trust...
...Characteristically, Brownlow's memoirs do no advertising to attract the general public...
...F.D.R...
...The large professional reputation he acquired in those vears brought him to the directorship of a pioneering organization: the Public Administration Clearing House, a venture privately financed and brilliantly managed, which worked all through the '30s and '40s to enlarge expert resources and to facilitate their use in public administration at all levels of government...
...into the field of city management and urban planning, outside Washington...
...in the '20s...
...The first part, A Passion for Politics, published in 1956, covers the years before 1915...
...Brownlow came to Washington in 1904 as a working reporter...
...His vivid accounts of F.D.R...
...Yet he has never been a "public figure" in the usual sense—and he has never sought to be...
...That experience led him...
...wider audience is welcome if it happens to be interested, but Brownlow forbears to place his work in a perspective which might help lay readers understand its overall importance...
...Among Old Washington Hands, familiar with the causes of Potomac fever, it was generally asserted that "there ain't no such animal...
...he held his first and only Federal office I consultantships aside I as District of Columbia Commissioner before and during the First World War...
...in action—a major portion of his story in this second volume—are quite enough to make the book a "must" for Roosevelt buffs...
...That is a pity, in a way...
...That every President can gain much from such men, if he knows how to find them and make use of them, these Roosevelt stories demonstrate beyond a doubt...
...But actually, despite the cynics' certainty, the species does exist...
...Columbia University Reviewed by Richard E. Neustadt Department of government, Columbia University TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO, Franklin D. Roosevelt, endorsing the proposals of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, called for an expansion of his office to include, among other things, six administrative assistants possessing "high competence, great physical vigor and a passion for anonymity...
...Wilson and F. D. R. particularly...
...Every President from T. R. to Truman has sought Brownlow's acquaintance and his counsel...
...A student of government (in the term's broadest sense), a lover of it, and a practitioner at it since the other Roosevelt's time, his cumulative contribution has been as great as it has been generally unknown...
...Louis Brownlow is one of the most charming and most perspicacious—and most useful—men to have participated in American public life this past half century...
...Eleven years later, in the Wilson Administration...
...here, is reminiscing for his friends who understand his interests and concerns...
...The sorts of things he asked of Brownlow show him chary of officialdom as sole source of assistance to a President...
...The reason: he has kept his competence under the wrap of public anonymity...
...such beings have appeared, even in Washington...
...For answer, one must ponder Brownlow's memoirs as a whole...
...no one has a better right to the title he has chosen for this book...
...He has sharpened the insights, heightened the professional competence (and warmed the hearts) of three generations of students of American public administration...
...If Eisenhower is not of this company, the loss is his, not Brownlow's...
...His leadership of the President's Committee on Administrative Management remains his best-known contribution...
...used Brownlow, on occasion, as he used other men outside his official family, to do chores of a confidential character, strictly on the President's account...
...That was Brownlow's vantage point in the extraordinary years of the New Deal and World War II...
...One of them was then the chairman of the President's Committee, and is now author of this book, the second volume of his two-part memoirs...
Vol. 42 • January 1959 • No. 4
