1985 January 15
Note: Access online.

INTRODUCTION

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
Scope and Content Note: Born in Oshkosh, parochial grammar school; public high school. Father had a paint store; manufactured the paint on the third floor of the building. Also had a filling station. Mother a housewife. Neither graduated from high school, but both knowledgeable. Four older sisters. Irish, Catholic on both sides of the family. Parents not active politically. Father very conservative politically; very anti-La Follette.

POLITICAL ACTIVITIES AT UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
Scope and Content Note: Developed his political leanings at the University. Attended UW 1933-1937. By second year of college was very involved in campus politics. Memorial Union Student Board roughly equivalent then to the current Student Association, except that it was all male, as was the Memorial Union. As a junior, managed Carl Thompson's campaign for senior class president. He lost to Carol Morse, Senator Wayne Morse's younger sister. Political ferment on campus. Young Communist League and some front groups. Intellectual antagonism between Selig Perlman and the communists. Doyle was not a Young Progressive and was not attracted to them. The New Deal “was too tame for me. I didn't think that it was a powerful enough change from the strictly free enterprise system.” Considerably left of center politically, but not affiliated with any party. Most distinct political lines on campus were between the fraternities and sororities on the one hand and the independents on the other; roughly equivalent to conservatives and liberals.

DOYLE ELECTED SENIOR CLASS PRESIDENT
Scope and Content Note: Marvin Laird's older brother, Dick, was the fraternities' candidate against Doyle. The vote was probably 225-150 out of 1500 to 2000 students. At his class' forty-fifth reunion a few years ago no one had the slightest recollection of the election, even though he thought it was very important at the time.

COSMOPOLITAN ATMOSPHERE ON CAMPUS WAS BIGGEST FACTOR IN SHAPING HIS POLITICAL VIEWS
Scope and Content Note: Influenced by several teachers, but his political views developed independently of the classroom. Majored in history. Influenced by English constitutional historian Bob Reynolds and by William Hesseltine, American history professor. Also influenced by the “continuing debate” in philosophy between Max Otto, a pragmatist, and Alexander Meiklejohn, an idealist.

IN 1936, HIS FIRST ELECTION, VOTED FOR FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT FOR PRESIDENT AND FOR PROGRESSIVES ON THE STATE LEVEL

DOYLE AND HIS FUTURE WIFE (RUTH BACHHUBER) WENT TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AFTER THE UW
Scope and Content Note: He went to Columbia law school in 1937 and she came to graduate school there a year later. Active in student politics at Columbia also, Moot courts on campus similar to fraternities except that they were the structure around which the mock trial aspect of one's legal education were organized. Teams from the various moot courts would compete against each other arguing cases. Moot courts had sharp discrimination against Jews; “so we had a big rhubarb almost the whole time I was there.” Issue eventually resolved favorably. At Columbia his politics remained to the left of the Democrats. As at the UW, he was a “peacenik” when he started at Columbia, but eventually became more anti-Hitler than pro-peace. The Spanish Civil War diluted his pacifism.

“I NEVER, NEVER IMAGINED THAT THERE WAS ANY OTHER WAY TO GO AT IT THAN TO ATTEMPT TO GET CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT AND TO WIN THE OPPORTUNITY TO USE THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT IN THE DIRECTION THAT I THOUGHT THINGS SHOULD GO.”
Scope and Content Note: Never any doubt about the efficacy of government. Never had the alienation from government or the lack of confidence in government as a means for solving problems which later characterized many students in the 1960s.

GOT A JOB WITH THE U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RIGHT AFTER GRADUATION FROM COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL, 1940
Scope and Content Note: Professor Herbert Wechsler at Columbia was invited by Solicitor General Francis Biddle to take a sabbatical to work for a year representing the United States in criminal cases before the Supreme Court at the time Doyle graduated. Wechsler was invited to bring along a law clerk. Doyle was quick to accept the offer.

ANECDOTE ABOUT HOW HE BECAME LAW CLERK TO SUPREME COURT JUSTICE JAMES F. BYRNES, 1941-1942
Scope and Content Note: Byrnes never finished high school; admitted to the bar by studying in a law office while working as a court reporter. A key figure in the U.S. Senate during the New Deal years. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1941. Byrnes did not know how Supreme Court Justices selected their law clerks, so he asked Justice Hugo Black to pick two law clerks for the year, one for Black and one for Byrnes. Doyle and another fellow showed up at Black's outer office one day. Black and Byrnes came out for a short interview, then returned to Black's office and flipped a coin. “I always felt that I got the better of that flip....”

END OF TAPE 36, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON BEING LAW CLERK FOR JUSTICE BYRNES AND ITS EFFECT ON DOYLE
Scope and Content Note: “A very important time in my life politically as well as otherwise.” Close association. Only Byrnes, his secretary (also from South Carolina), and Doyle were in the office. “I just began to get ideas about how it really is in American politics and American institutions in a way that I had never really glimpsed before.” Admired Byrnes greatly. “A glimpse of an extremely able and very pragmatic person, a principled person according to his lights with a totally different orientation than mine.” What the South looked like through the eyes of a white southern politician. Becoming a Democrat at this time, although the transition began as soon as he came to Washington, D.C. The difficulties of conceiving of social and economic programs, shaping them into legislation, and then shaping them into administrative application. “The total effect of it was conservative in that it was to conservatise me in the sense that my ideas about great radical transformations in the society in the right direction.... My notions about that were undercut considerably.” Herbert Wechsler was the person who paved the way for his getting the clerkship with Byrnes. A network by which young attorneys got clerkships with Supreme Court Justices.

ENTERED THE NAVY IN 1942
Scope and Content Note: A supply corps officer. Could not be a line officer because of his color blindness. Anecdote about how he and UW political science professor Leon Epstein experimented with their diet to try to remedy their color blindness. Went to supply corps school at Harvard Business School, then to Norfolk where he was in “an advance base unit” which organised naval bases overseas. Eventually wound up as supply officer on a Navy cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean. “Not a fighting ship. Around the backwaters, on the edges of the fighting, but close enough.”

OFFICE OF WAR MOBILIZATION AND RECONVERSION, 1945
Scope and Content Note: At Roosevelt's request, Byrnes left the Court in Summer of 1942 to become the United States' “Economic Czar” for the War. Small staff of people; office in the White House. In January 1945 Byrnes located Doyle and had him transferred back to Washington to work on Byrnes' staff. Byrnes resigned on April 1, 1945.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT, 1945-1946
Scope and Content Note: Right after Harry Truman became president, Truman asked Byrnes to return to Washington as Secretary of State, which he did as of July 1, 1945. Doyle then joined Byrnes in the State Department. “When I said earlier that I thought that I got the better of that toss of the coin, I meant that, having been Byrnes' law clerk rather than Black's meant that I had the chance to be with Byrnes briefly while he was War Mobiliser and then for a year while he was in the State Department.” “I had no background to bring to either of these assignments.” In the State Department Doyle served as an assistant to the Counselor (advisor) of the State Department, Benjamin Cohen.

RETURNED TO WISCONSIN IN 1946
Scope and Content Note: “Ruth and I really never imagined anything other than that we would...come back to Wisconsin, and we were just carrying that out. It was a big change and kind of a deflationary change, I must say, for me, in terms of just the sense of being in on big doings....” In Washington, those who are not elected and who do not have their power base back home are dependent on elected officials for their positions. That would have bothered him after a while.

ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, MADISON, WISCONSIN, 1946-1948
Scope and Content Note: Was looking for a position in Wisconsin, noticed this opening, applied, and got it. Much later he came to think that the U.S. Attorney at the time “thought that he was supposed to appoint me,” given the State Department, James Byrnes, etc. connections.

1946 SENATE PRIMARY
Scope and Content Note: Ambivalent, but voted in the Democratic primary since he was a Democrat by this time.

DOYLE WAS UNDER THE PROVISIONS OF THE HATCH ACT “FOR TWO IMPORTANT YEARS IN THERE,” 1946-1948
Scope and Content Note: Hatch Act was relatively new at the time and Doyle took it seriously. His wife and all his friends, however, were getting more and more involved in politics and he obviously engaged in many informal discussions and “was waiting anxiously for the time when I could get into it.”

BY THE SUMMER OF 1948, ALMOST ALL HIS FRIENDS HAD DECIDED TO JOIN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

END OF TAPE 36, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE (AVC)
Scope and Content Note: “Citizens First, Veterans Second.” An alternative to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Consciously not to be a lobbying group for veterans interests, “but to be the veterans organization that would carry through on the purpose of World War II and to establish freedom and equality here in the United States and peace in the world; it was to have marked the whole turning point in the whole history of warfare and the aftermath of warfare in that this veterans group would be different....” Strongly liberal; organized and developed by independent minded people. “Extremely important organization in terms of the general theme of our conversations about what was to happen later in Wisconsin in the Democratic Party.” Through the AVC, all the people who were trying to decide where to go politically, in the wake of the 1946 elections, “could start doing their thing”--organising, finding one another, developing platforms, etc. “In that context a whole lot of us really came to know and see one another a lot.” “Petered out” about 1950. Nationally may have had about 20,000 members; maybe 1000-1500 at its peak in Wisconsin. “We got to know the labor people, the young labor people, in that context.” Horace Wilkie was very prominent in AVC. Red Newton and Elmer Beck were labor people in AVC. AVC differed from AmVets in that AmVets was similar to the American Legion, except designed for World War II veterans.

JOINED THE LA FOLLETTE, SINYKIN AND DOYLE LAW FIRM, 1948; THE GLENN FRANK AFFAIR
Scope and Content Note: Phil La Follette and Doyle had known each other a little during Doyle's college days. A fortunate thing for Doyle, largely because of his treasured association with Gordon Sinykin. La Follette was aware of Doyle during his college days because he was “around” with many of the Young Progressives, but perhaps most because of the Glenn Frank episode on campus, in which Doyle testified, as senior class president, that it was difficult to judge student opinion in regards to Frank. It was important for La Follette to have someone say that the student body was not necessarily one hundred percent in favor of Glenn Frank. Horace Wilkie's father was chairman of the Board of Regents at this time. Joined the La Follette firm as a partner; there was only the three of them. Phil La Follette was interested in having his own law firm, “but he really wasn't too interested in getting into heavy day by day law practice, and he never really did.” Phil was active in many corporations outside the law firm. Sinykin was a “hardcore La Follette progressive,” and never became active in the Democratic Party.

PHIL LA FOLLETTE'S POLITICAL ORIENTATION AFTER 1946
Scope and Content Note: Very conservative and grew steadily more conservative. A right-wing Republican. However, he supported Earl Warren for president; probably thought Warren was more conservative than he turned out to be. Phil was “very kind and warm and friendly to me.” Doyle did not focus on La Follette and his political opinions because he was so wrapped up in his own political activities. A militarist. Devoted to Douglas MacArthur. Very anti-Soviet. Isolationism had changed to internationalism. Believed in world leadership for America, through the exercise of its industrial and military power.

DOYLE TOTALLY INVOLVED IN THE 1948 CAMPAIGN AFTER BEING RELEASED FROM THE HATCH ACT

END OF TAPE 37, SIDE 1
Note: Tape 37, Side 2 is blank.