the country must become a “trained and loyal army,” became embodied in the National Industrial Recovery and Agricultural Adjustment Acts. Each aimed to create giant cartels in every segment of the economy as a means to rid it of “ruinous” competition. “The jig is up. The cat is out of the bag. There is no invisible hand. There never was,” wrote Rexford Tugwell, a member of Roosevelt’s “Brains Trust” and later an official in the agriculture department. “Time was when the anarchy of the competitive struggle was not too costly. Today it is tragically wasteful. It leads to disaster. We must now supply a real and visible guiding hand to do the task which that mythical, nonexistent, invisible agency was supposed to perform, but never did.”20
For their part, Eisenhower and Clay both held high hopes that Roosevelt could end the depression. Clay had “followed the election very closely, and I can remember sitting up election night listening to the returns.… I was thrilled at the election results.”21 For Eisenhower, the early New Deal’s rhetoric proved intoxicating. “Congress met and gave the Pres. extraordinary powers over banking,” Eisenhower wrote in 1933. “Now if they’ll just do the same with respect to law enforcement, federal expenditures, trans. systems, there will be such a revival of confidence that things will begin to move.”22 Later that year he noted, “The purpose of the [National Recovery Administration] is to establish codes of business practice among our various trades associations, with the idea of … raising prices … and wages for labor. As in all other ideas of the President’s that have been translated into actual national effort—the announced objective is a most desirable one.”23
In large measure, Eisenhower embraced the early New Deal because its intellectual genealogy included a common progenitor of his own—the War Industries Board headed by Bernard Baruch. Indeed, Baruch and other members of that board proved deeply influential in the design of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and in the general thinking about the economy that permeated Washington in Roosevelt’s first years.24 Eisenhower sensed the way these ideas had come of age. As he noted, “a course that three years ago would have been unquestioned, either by the govt. or by any private citizen” had fallen out of favor. Now “unity of action is essential to success in the current struggle.” Indeed, Eisenhower felt that “individual right must be subordinated to public good”—that “we must conform to the President’s program.… Otherwise dissension, confusion and partisan politics will ruin us.”25
Yet for all the talk of American society functioning like an army, Roosevelt had little interest in helping the actual army. Looking to make good on promises to eliminate waste in the federal government, he sought to trim two-fifths of the army’s appropriation, requiring the dismissal of about twelve thousand men. He also sought to “furlough at half-pay any army officers the President may select.”26
MacArthur felt compelled to speak up. In a meeting soon after the inauguration he confronted Roosevelt. “The world situation [has] become too dangerous to allow a weakening of our defense.” Japan, Germany, and Italy all showed signs of rearming. The American army had already been cut to the bone. “The country’s safety [is] at stake,” MacArthur said bluntly.
Roosevelt dug in. He ridiculed MacArthur’s concerns and mocked his tone. Roosevelt had no interest in sparing the army, and did not appreciate MacArthur’s second-guessing.
The two went back and forth for a few minutes until MacArthur finally lost his cool: “When we [have] lost the next war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat, [has] spat out his last curse, I [want] the name not to be MacArthur, but Roosevelt.”
“You must not talk that way to the President!” Roosevelt boomed.
The room went silent. MacArthur knew he had overstepped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “[You have] my resignation as Chief of Staff.” His career, he assumed, had come to an end.
As he turned to leave, he heard a conciliating voice: “Don’t be foolish, Douglas; you and the budget must get together on this.” Roosevelt blinked first. Both men took deep breaths and agreed to work together. Then MacArthur left the president’s office, went to the White House steps, and threw up.27
The underlying message, though, quickly became clear. To protect itself, the army needed to become relevant to the New Deal. Perhaps because his father had served for years in Congress, Clay intuited the political reality more quickly than anyone else. He saw in the proliferating New Deal relief agencies—the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—an opportunity. None of these had a bureaucratic infrastructure or list of potential projects to employ relief workers. The “Corps of Engineers was going to have to expand and take on a great deal of this work,” he explained, “because we were the only ones … that had programs and projects on the drawing board.” Given time, the New Deal agencies could figure this out, and when they did, they might eventually replace the corps as the federal government’s construction agency. Clay decided to approach Harry Hopkins, head of WPA, about involving the corps in its projects. “We would like to lend to you, in each of your regions, a capable, competent Engineer officer who would bring with him a capable and competent chief clerk who knows how to disperse and set up public funds, just to get you going.”
Hopkins was suspicious: To whom would these people report? Did the corps aim to steal the role just given to the WPA?
“No,” Clay explained. “These people would be reporting directly to [you]. They would be [your] people.”28
In the end, Hopkins warmed to the idea. In particular, he liked Clay. As the corps became involved in the WPA, the Public Works Administration began to look to the army for talent to take on its projects. Eventually, it found Eisenhower, who jumped at the idea of joining the relief agency, calling it a “marvelous” opportunity. But MacArthur killed it. He had come to depend upon Eisenhower, and, so long as MacArthur had a voice, Eisenhower would work for no one else. Yet MacArthur recognized Clay’s insight that the more the military helped the New Deal, the safer its appropriations. He allowed Eisenhower the task of overseeing Civilian Conservation Corps camps from time to time.29
As the New Deal unfolded, Clay became increasingly enmeshed in its politics. Because of his father, he had both Democratic Party connections and a sense of how Congress functioned, and so he often testified on behalf of the Corps of Engineers before congressional committees. Eventually, he took charge of specific relief projects. Between lobbying and testifying he became the main liaison between the military, Congress, and the National Emergency Council, (a kind of clearinghouse for New Deal domestic policy). On the council he became close to many of the big names in Roosevelt’s administration: Chester Davis, General Hugh Johnson, Harold Ickes, Donald Richberg, and Frances Perkins.30
In the meantime, Roosevelt and MacArthur also managed a working relationship. To MacArthur’s surprise, Roosevelt asked his thoughts on the many social programs emerging from the New Deal. Eventually, MacArthur asked, “Why is it, Mr. President, that you frequently inquire my opinion regarding the social reforms under consideration, matters about which I am certainly no authority, but pay little attention to my views on the military?”
“Douglas,” Roosevelt replied, “I don’t bring these questions up for your advice but for your reactions.”31
By the time the Supreme Court invalidated large parts of the New Deal in the spring of 1935, MacArthur and Eisenhower’s destiny lay elsewhere. The Philippine Independence Act (often called the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934) instructed Filipinos to draft their own constitution, “republican in form,” containing “a bill of rights” and “submitted to the people of the Philippine Islands for their ratification or rejection.”32 Once drafted,
