A Limousine Republican
After years of fighting turf
battles as a senior official in the State Department during World War II, the
young Nelson A. Rockefeller returned to New York City to face a far more
daunting challenge: his father. All around the family's headquarters at
Rockefeller Center were reminders that John D. Rockefeller Jr. was lord and
master of the world's biggest fortune, and his children were not. Nelson's
response to powerlessness was architectural: He transformed part of the fusty
old family precincts into a sleek "Bauhaus fantasyland" for himself and his
brothers.
"Gee, Pa," Nelson exclaimed
when he showed his father the redesigned offices, "isn't this all
impressive?"
"Nelson," said the
patriarch, "whom are we trying to impress?"
Whom
indeed. Nelson Rockefeller was born into a family of such wealth, power, and
influence that it's hard to understand how he could have been so perennially
eager to please. His childhood on his family's sylvan 3,500 acre estate in
Pocantico Hills, N.Y., was one of almost unimaginable privilege, yet from the
beginning he felt compelled to flatter, cajole, and even engage in abject
self-criticism if that's what it took to get his way, particularly with his
puritanical and disapproving father. His efforts to insinuate himself were so
relentless that Cary Reich, the author of this sprawling new biography (and of
an earlier biography of the financier André Meyer), refers to his subject as a
"patrician Sammy Glick" (though he never reaches the heights of heeldom
demonstrated by the hero of Budd Schulberg's novel about pre-war Hollywood
back-stabbing). Rockefeller never won the presidency--despite all-out campaigns
in 1964 and 1968--but he served as governor of New York for 12 years and then
completed his public career as Gerald Ford's vice president. He had an enormous
impact on American politics and the landscape of New York. More than 15 years
after his death, you can still start a fight by calling someone a "Rockefeller
Republican." Among other things, this book helps explain what the term actually
means.
To admirers, "Rockefeller Republican" alludes to Nelson's
creation of an outstanding state university system, a vast network of
hospitals, housing projects, mental health facilities, water treatment plants,
parks, and highways. To enemies, it refers to a legacy of bankrupt state
government and failed social programs. What is most striking about The Life
of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958 (the first of a
projected two volumes), though, is that this duality--the push to achieve wed
to a penchant for flamboyant failure; the ability to win a passionate following
yet alienate the people who could keep him in power--was evident well before he
thought about running for public office.
It was
Rockefeller, after all, who single-mindedly campaigned for the United Nations
to be established in New York, persuading his father to buy and donate the East
River property for its site. During World War II, Rockefeller forged a defense
alliance among Latin American countries to ward off Nazi influence. He then
transformed it into an anti-Communist alliance on the eve of the Cold War. He
pushed for foreign aid and investment throughout the developing world and
helped persuade President Truman to come up with his famous Point Four
formulation in 1949, which set the framework for American economic assistance
overseas. As undersecretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Rockefeller
helped pioneer the idea of national health insurance. As overseer of Cold War
propaganda, he fought for and won adoption of Ike's "open skies" proposal
linking inspections to the cause of nuclear arms control. But in almost every
one of these efforts, Rockefeller either overextended himself or managed to
make so many enemies he ended up being ousted from power.
In Reich's generally quite readable--though
occasionally overly detailed--book, three strands of Rockefeller's character
emerge, all of them reflecting the same degree of urgent vitality and,
sometimes, an edge of self-destructiveness. The first is the womanizing
Rockefeller, a persona the public only glimpsed at his death, in
flagrante with a younger female staff member, in 1978. Reich focuses on two
aides, Joan Braden and Nancy Hanks, and on Rockefeller's empty marriage (and
separate living quarters) with his first wife, who could be seen weeping
quietly when he was elected governor in 1958. The stories fill in some blanks,
but not, unfortunately, in a way that explains what his philandering might
actually have been about.
The
second of Nelson's passions was for art, especially the abstract expressionists
of New York and Paris. Scheming to take over an institution his mother had
helped to establish, the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller oversaw every detail
of its construction and acquisitions--all by the time he was 30. He brought the
same zeal to his own collections, asking Picasso to weave tapestries out of his
own paintings, and Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger to create murals for his
Fifth Avenue apartment. Léger actually came to New York and painted his mural
in Nelson's living room. With the nonchalance of someone ordering a touch-up,
Nelson then asked the artist if, while he was at it, he could stay and do
murals for the staircase and hallways.
One reason for Nelson's enthusiasm for art and sculpture,
according to Reich, was his dyslexia, which made reading treacherous. As a
bureaucrat, Rockefeller certainly preferred big colorful charts to text in
laying out plans to colleagues. Reich might have gone further, however, by
noting that dyslexia is often accompanied by hyperactivity, which seemed to
characterize the astonishing and sometimes undisciplined energy Rockefeller
brought to everything.
Which brings us to the third
side of Rockefeller's personality and the main theme of the book, that of
empire-building. Nelson was probably destined for politics from the start, when
he was named after his mother's father, Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island,
whom Lincoln Steffens once called "the arch-representative of protected,
privileged business." He was the third child in the family, but from his
earliest years he was determined to be the leader of his generation of
Rockefellers. By his 20s, he was already striving to forge his siblings into a
powerful unit, organizing his brothers and sister to confront their father with
a demand that the family assets be turned over (gradually) to the next
generation. Nelson also carried out what was in effect a coup d'etat at
Rockefeller Center, forcing out the retainers loyal to his father so that he
could take over himself.
Early on,
Nelson got into the habit of tapping his own financial resources to surround
himself with talented people. He was forever commissioning huge semiacademic
studies of problems by an array of experts like Henry Kissinger, a practice
which throughout his life elicited resentment from colleagues less flush with
cash. Rockefeller's addiction to living in an expensive realm of his own, for
creating his own entourage, ultimately accounted for Gerald Ford's decision to
toss Rockefeller overboard and pick Bob Dole as his running mate in 1976
(something that will presumably be discussed in Reich's next book).
His involvement in Latin America was indicative
of how he would mobilize resources to get something done, then go to such
extremes he'd have to abandon the project. Rockefeller first became interested
in the region through its artists, and then through the Venezuelan subsidiary
of Standard Oil of New Jersey--the family business. To ward off increasingly
strident demands from leftists, Rockefeller wanted to create businesses that
would raise people's standard of living; using his own resources, he set up
companies to raise cattle, grow crops, market food, develop natural resources,
and build housing. Before long, however, many of these projects went bust, and
Nelson had to turn to his family for financial assistance to ward off
bankruptcy. Eventually, he decided that only the United States government could
supply the resources to do the job.
Nelson's
urge to enter the public arena was partly the legacy of his father, whose
Rockefeller Foundation helped create the modern science of philanthropy, though
its underlying purpose was to expunge the malevolent connotations attached to
the name of Rockefeller in the wake of the predations of the Standard Oil
trust. (The philanthropic worldview also informed Rockefeller's ambitious ideas
about government spending, which would eventually make him an easy target.)
Another influence was that patrician politician Franklin Roosevelt, who was,
like John D. Rockefeller, the focus of Nelson's relentless sycophancy and
black-belt bureaucratic infighting. Reich tells the story of how Rockefeller
got wind one day of a scheme to get the president to eliminate his
(Rockefeller's) operation at the State Department. He quickly found out who was
going to be seeing FDR that morning--it was Vice President Henry Wallace--and
persuaded him to win a stay of execution. But unlike Roosevelt, Rockefeller
never developed the resilience to stay in power. Eventually, his forced
resignations from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations led Rockefeller to
turn to elective office as the one way of establishing an independent base.
Upon first hearing that Rockefeller might run for governor
of New York, the millionaire incumbent Averell Harriman dismissed it as a joke.
He even let Nelson head up a commission on the state constitution, though
Tammany leaders warned he would regret it. As they predicted, Rockefeller used
the commission to educate himself and build a case for change in Albany. What
surprised everyone was that he turned out to be a most charismatic campaigner,
with a much more down-to-earth touch than Harriman ever exhibited. "Hey, these
subways are neat!" said Rockefeller. "I don't know why people complain about
them." It didn't matter that he was naive. People wanted somebody they knew
could not be bought.
Reich's book ends as
Rockefeller stands on the threshold of a new era of expansive government, the
presidency beckoning in the background. By then, we already know what being a
Rockefeller Republican consists of: a mixture of lavish spending, arrogance,
ambition, scheming, and pragmatism; a belief in expertise and big projects;
and, above all, excitement about the sheer adventure of governing. For all his
failures and disappointments, Nelson Rockefeller set a standard for excellence
that the country will not see again any time soon.
