The Eisenhower Commission on National Goals
I recently completed a wonderful tour de force of our nation’s history by New Yorker writer and historian, Jill Lepore. These Truths: A History of the United States, described two occurrences during the Eisenhower administration that were revelations to me. I previously wrote about the struggles of Eisenhower’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Overta Culp Hobby, in distributing the Salk polio vaccine. In this column, I will discuss President Eisenhower’s attempt to “discover a national purpose” by appointing a Commission on National Goals.
Lepore writes, ‘“The year 1960 was a time, when Americans stopped taking their national purpose for granted and started doing something about it,” Life reported. Eisenhower appointed ten eminent men — politicians and editors, business, and labor leaders, and the presidents of universities and charities — to a Commission on National Goals, and asked the commission to identify a set of ten-year objectives for the United States.”
At the time, the idea was novel and has not as far as I can determine ever been replicated since.
President Eisenhower’s overall hopes for the commission were stated in his State of the Union message of January, 1959: “The Commission on National Goals is being asked to identify the great issues of our generation and describe our objectives in these various areas. To do so will be to give us the basis for coordinated policies in both the domestic and international areas.” The goals were supposed to be for the next ten years.
Ten distinguished citizens were appointed to the Commission: Henry M. Wriston, Chairman; Frank Pace, Jr., Erwin D. Canham; James B. Conant; Colgate W. Darden, Jr.; Crawford H. Greenewalt; Alfred Gruenther; Clark Kerr; James R. Killian, Jr.; and George Meany.
The preparation of the report was under the auspices of the American Assembly, a nonpartisan educational, non-governmental body, housed at Columbia University. The project was funded by private support through several foundations
The Report was presented to President Eisenhower on November 16, 1960. Based on the input provided by 100 experts, essays were prepared in fourteen areas.
The Report itself was brief, just 23 pages, with additional statements by individual members, adding to a total of 31 pages. It was divided into three sections containing eleven “goals at home,” three “goals abroad” and a “financial accounting” section. The recommendations were followed by the detailed essays and resulted in a 372 page volume which was published by Prentice Hall on December 12, 1960 in both paperback and hardbound editions.
The eleven at Home Goals were: National Goals in Education,
Great Age for Science, The Quality of American Culture, An Effective and Democratic Organization of the Economy, High Employment and Growth in the American Economy, Technological Change, Farm Policy for the Sixties, Framework for an Urban Society, Meeting Human Needs, The Federal System and The Public Service
Under these goals the Commission embraced the notion of equal rights for all regardless of race, religion, or sex (note the Commission did not contain a single woman); education strengthened at every level; art and sciences advanced, on every front; maximum economic growth, full employment, improved climate for new investment; technological changes to up-grade our defense preparation; government help for farmers including price supports’ better living conditions, slum clearance, urban renewal programs and government assisted housing; more hospitals, clinics and nursing homes; and extension of medical insurance through private and public agencies.
The three Abroad Goals were: The United States Role in the World,
Foreign Economic Policy and the Objectives and Look Further Ahead
The underpinning Abroad goal was the preservation of own independence and free institutions. Consistent with this the plan called for an expansion of free trade, a gradual reduction of tariffs, increased foreign aid, vigilance with regard to the Sino-Soviet threat and strengthening of our Pacific defense to forestall the hostility of Communist China. It also emphasized that limiting and controlling nuclear armament is imperative and called for the preservation and strengthening of the United Nations.
Some of the Commission’s recommendations seem very general in nature, almost truisms, e.g., “every state must make progress in good faith toward desegregation of publicly supported schools.”
George Meany, a member of the Commission and the President
of the AFL-CIO, makes this point in his comments about the Commissions recommendations when he wrote “the Commission’s report marches right up the issues, always faces them boldly, then often turns away, without making the necessary, if sometimes unpopular, proposals for attaining the very goals the Commission believes necessary.”
I can find little evidence that the Commission’s Report sparked any specific governmental actions. Nor is there clear evidence that it was the driver of a subsequent policy achievement, but it did represent, an attempt on the part of President to forge a national consensus on a wide range of important issues facing our nation.
The creation of the National Goals Commission could never happen today because of the severity of the partisan divide. Nowadays, the situation is so corrosive that there was not enough good will available for the leaders of both parties to put their partisanship differences aside to form a nonpartisan, impartial, independent 9/11- styled Commission to study to study exactly what happen on January 6th when the Capitol was attacked and determine what steps can be taken to avoid a similar insurrection in the future. That is incredibly sad and deeply disappointing, but indicative of the destructive nonproductive nature of politics today.