Books in Brief: Concerns of a Conservative Democrat

Concerns of a Conservative Democrat, by Charles Sawyer (Southern Illinois University, $10.00). A conservative in Harry Truman’s cabinet would seem like a contradiction in terms—and it is. Despite random cloves of concern about private enterprise and individual rights, the “conservatism” of Charles Sawyer, Ohio politico, FDR’s ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg and Truman’s Secretary of Commerce, is well masked by dedicated service to the New Deal-Fair Deal mystique. Nevertheless, this heavy memoir— well annotated by Eugene P. Trani—is a candid, often interesting account of a politician’s progress from the ward to the world. At best, Commerce is not one of the glamor drawers in the cabinet. At worst, it is a pigeonhole of obscurity, where “thank you’s” are as rare as feature interviews and one is always on target for disgruntled snipers. No one would call Sawyer a great cabinet member, but he was competent—which puts him. several rungs above the late average. Still, Sawyer is no conservative, unless one turns the political spectrum very hard to starboard. Conservatism, as a philosophy, has come so far since the Fair Deal days (being no longer an epithet) that it is blazoned on dust jackets as a plus for sales. But, despite PR, one still can’t tell a book by its cover. The most intriguing part, to this reviewer, of Concerns is Sawyer’s wartime tenure as ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg. His account is interesting, not for “insights” into the character of giants who strode Flanders at the time, but rather as a journal of the infighting of victors and the tribulations of being one thing to all men—the representative of the United States of America. By contrast, as HST’s Secretary of Commerce, Sawyer was less his own man and more of an executive appendage.

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Jack D. Kirwan

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Concerns of a Conservative Democrat, by Charles Sawyer (Southern Illinois University, $10.00). A conservative in Harry Truman’s cabinet would seem like a contradiction in terms—and it is. Despite random cloves of concern about private enterprise and individual rights, the “conservatism” of Charles Sawyer, Ohio politico, FDR’s ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg and Truman’s Secretary of Commerce, is well masked by dedicated service to the New Deal-Fair Deal mystique. Nevertheless, this heavy memoir— well annotated by Eugene P. Trani—is a candid, often interesting account of a politician’s progress from the ward to the world. At best, Commerce is not one of the glamor drawers in the cabinet. At worst, it is a pigeonhole of obscurity, where “thank you’s” are as rare as feature interviews and one is always on target for disgruntled snipers. No one would call Sawyer a great cabinet member, but he was competent—which puts him. several rungs above the late average. Still, Sawyer is no conservative, unless one turns the political spectrum very hard to starboard. Conservatism, as a philosophy, has come so far since the Fair Deal days (being no longer an epithet) that it is blazoned on dust jackets as a plus for sales. But, despite PR, one still can’t tell a book by its cover. The most intriguing part, to this reviewer, of Concerns is Sawyer’s wartime tenure as ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg. His account is interesting, not for “insights” into the character of giants who strode Flanders at the time, but rather as a journal of the infighting of victors and the tribulations of being one thing to all men—the representative of the United States of America. By contrast, as HST’s Secretary of Commerce, Sawyer was less his own man and more of an executive appendage.