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In 1938, Congress rejected a package of administrative reforms that had been developed by a committee of academics headed by Louis Brownlow. The defeat was the worst that President Roosevelt would suffer in three terms as President. This article suggests that the Brownlow Committee contributed to the debacle in Congress by ignoring evidence that its recommendations would prove contentious. It is argued that the committee members were caught in a dilemma: On the one hand, they wanted to obtain immediate reforms fora president to whom they felt a personal loyalty; on the other, they needed to maintain a demonstration of neutrality, which made it difficult to undertake the tasks of political management that were essential to craft a viable reform program. The demonstration of neutrality was a combination of arguments and routines that the academic community had invented to allay public skepticism about its members 'trustworthiness as advisers on contentious issues.
In March 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a committee of three "specialists in public administration"-Louis Brownlow, Charles Merriam, and Luther Gulick-to advise him on administrative reform of the national government, which had grown dramatically and chaotically because of Roosevelt's New Deal policies. The group of three has come to be known as the Brownlow Committee, after its chairman, Louis Brownlow, who might have been the most influential man in the field of public administration at the time. The report of the Brownlow Committee, released in January 1937, contained recommendations for dramatic changes to the structure of the executive branch (President's Committee on Administrative Management [PCAM],1937).
A bill incorporating the Brownlow recommendations was promptly sent to Congress, where it precipitated a legislative struggle more bitter and intense than any other since Roosevelt's election in 1932. As Richard Polenberg has observed, "nearly every pressure group in American society took exception" to some aspect of the proposed legislation (1966, p. 79). Right-wing opponents of the president, led by Frank Gannett's National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government and the popular radio pastor Charles Coughlin, organized a broad public campaign against the proposals, calling them a plan for one-man rule and authoritarian government. This was aggravated by intense campaigning by civil servants and political appointees within the administration, including at least three cabinet secretaries, most of the independent...