October 7, 1958: Sherman Adams, arguably the 2nd-most powerful man in America, ceases to be so. And for reasons that would have seemed rather tame after 1974, let alone in the 21st Century.
Llewelyn Sherman Adams was born on January 8, 1899 in East Dover, Vermont, and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War I, and graduated from Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in Hanover, New Hampshire.
He went into the lumber and banking businesses in New Hampshire, and was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1940 and 1942, briefly serving as Speaker in 1944. That year, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He ran for Governor, losing in 1946, then winning in 1948 and 1950.
When General Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for President in 1952, Adams aided his win in the New Hampshire Primary. Impressed by this, "Ike" made Adams a major part of his campaign, which paid off at the Republican Convention.
Upon winning the general election, Ike appointed Adams to be White House Chief of Staff, a position which came to be known as "the gatekeeper to the President": If the Chief of Staff doesn't tell you that you can see the President, or doesn't tell you that your concerns will reach him, you're out of luck. Although several men had held positions like this in the past -- Colonel Edward House to Woodrow Wilson, Harry Hopkins to Franklin Roosevelt -- the official post hadn't really existed before. Ike borrowed the title from military parlance.
And Adams relished it. Memos with "OK, S.A." written on them became prized possessions among the staff. On the other hand, he easily dismissed requests, often with a simple, "No." He became known as "The Abominable No Man" and "The Iceberg." When Eisenhower had his heart attack in 1955, and his less serious but still worrying stroke in 1957, he proved invaluable to Vice President Richard Nixon in carrying out official duties until Ike could return.
He was willing to make public statements that were less than "presidential," taking criticism from Ike's opponents, whether they be Democrats or the occasional Republican with whom Ike disagreed, like Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Adams was instrumental in Ike's contribution to McCarthy's downfall in 1954, after seeing what McCarthy and his handlers had asked Ike to do in Wisconsin in the 1952 campaign.
Because of his heroic status in World War II, and his overwhelming popularity, Eisenhower was unattackable -- one might even say, "unimpeachable." So his critics would attack Adams instead. After all, if the word of Adams was the word of Eisenhower, then an attack on Adams was a safe way of attacking the President. A joke circulated around Washington in the 1950s: Two Democrats were talking, and one said, "Wouldn't it be terrible if Eisenhower died, and Nixon became President?" The other replied, "Wouldn't it be terrible if Sherman Adams died, and Eisenhower became President!"
But on October 7, 1958, Adams was fired, for hypocrisy more than anything else. Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson discovered that Adams had accepted an expensive vicuña coat and an oriental rug from Bernard Goldfine, a Boston textile manufacturer, then under investigation for Federal Trade Commission violations. Goldfine, who had business with the federal government, was cited for contempt of Congress when he refused to answer questions regarding his relationship with Adams.
By the standards of the time, this conflict of interest was considered a resignation-necessary offense. But it was the hypocrisy: During the 1952 campaign, the Republicans had ripped the Democrats for "corruption." Their platform was "C2K1," , meaning, "Communism, Corruption, and Korea."
Although they never cited outgoing President Harry Truman, outgoing Vice President Alben Barkley, Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, or Vice Presidential nominee John Sparkman, for any particular legal questions, they noted that wives of Democratic officials had received fur coats -- sometimes mink, always the byword for fur coats, although vicuña coats were popular in the 1950s -- in apparent attempts to influence those officials on policy.
So when it became clear that Adams had done pretty much the same thing he and his '52 campaign aides had accused the Democrats of doing, he had to go. Ike resisted this, telling a press conference, in a voice seemingly too meek to have come from the man who was once the world's leading military man, "I need him."
By October 7, the outcry had become too much, and, instead of doing it face-to-face, man-to-man, Ike sent Meade Alcon, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, to tell Adams he was fired. The Eisenhower Administration has been called "The Hidden-Hand Presidency," but this was too hidden: Not telling Adams himself was a cowardly move by the ultimate modern Army man.
Retroactively speaking, however, it was a just punishment, because Adams ended up costing the Republican Party, and thus Ike himself, very badly in the next 2 elections. The Adams scandal and a recession, minor compared to later ones from the 1970s onward, combined to make the Congressional elections a month later a Democratic landslide: The Democrats gained 49 seats in the House, a total they haven't topped since (they matched it in the post-Watergate election of 1974), and 15 seats in the Senate, a total neither party has matched since (the Republicans gained 12 in 1980).
And Adams' successor, Wilton "Jerry" Persons, simply was not as skilled. Had Adams not accepted those gifts, or had they not been discovered, he surely would still have been Chief of Staff in the Spring of 1960, and helped Ike better handle the U-2 "spy plane" incident, and also advised him to help Vice President Nixon out as he campaigned to succeed him. That failure, and the U-2 incident, among other things, were key to helping Senator John F. Kennedy win a close election over Nixon.
Adams returned to New Hampshire, and built and ran the popular Loon Mountain ski resort. He died on October 27, 1986, all but forgotten -- but, with Watergate having happened, and Iran-Contra having happened right after his death, any thought of his scandal quickly disappeared.
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October 7, 1958 was a Tuesday. There was no scores on this historic day: It was a travel day in the World Series that the New York Yankees would win over the Milwaukee Braves, it was midweek for football, the NHL season started the next night, and the NBA season started 12 days later.
There was one notable event on this day, connected with sports: Scott Morrison was is born. A hockey writer for the Toronto Sun, he has contributed to Rogers Sportsnet and the CBC's Hockey Night In Canada. He has been awarded the Hockey Hall of Fame's media award, the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award.
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