29
I explained that I believe that the Director of the Budget should have no political
ambitions nor should he have any ambitions for any other job in the Government.... I
added that I felt that the Director had to be something of a political eunuch, operating in a
rather objective atmosphere devoid as far as possible of political ambitions and
considerations.
51
Indeed, consistent with Brownlow’s recommendation, Smith pushed for the
Bureau as a whole to be under civil service protection, including even the assistant
director. His ideal was “a permanent civil service organization that coordinates the work
of the Bureau to the advantage of any new Director coming into the Bureau.”
Numerous examples from the Roosevelt and Bureau archives substantiate the
BoB’s allegiance to this standard of neutral competence. A few suffice to give the
flavor. For instance, in 1939 one of FDR’s political operatives, Thomas Corcoran, asked
Smith to review the amount of money the Los Angeles area was paying for electricity
from the Boulder Dam. Some work by BoB established that the Bureau of Reclamation’s
estimates – rather different from LA’s – showed that the rates were not so unreasonable.
Corcoran’s response was to cite “political and psychological factors… we needed to
weigh that fact against mathematical considerations.” Smith didn’t object to more study,
but only because he thought the numbers were being fudged on all sides: “I, personally,
do not like the position the Budget Bureau is put in, of coming to a decision without itself
being well equipped to check the original facts.” Eventually, Leland Olds of the Federal
Power Commission was drafted to help reconcile the competing claims. While the matter
was settled, Smith was never really happy with the result: “we are not yet certain that the
proposals are such as would constitute sound Federal policy.”
52
51
2/8/46 notes, Conferences with President Truman, 1946, Smith papers, FDRL
52
On civil service, see Smith diary, 3/12/40; on Boulder, see Smith diary, 5/25/39, 6/13/39, 6/23/39,
6/27/39, 7/8/39, 7/20/39.
Convention