Martian's Daughter: A Memoir

by Whitman, Marina von Neumann

  We were hardly a cross section of America, but a group whose collective wisdom and experience would, hopefully, command public respect and support. In his own retrospective book on the Price Commission, its chairman, Jack Grayson, gave a short, pithy description of each commissioner. Here, in its entirety, is his view of me: “Searcher for levers. Newspaper devourer. Economic Portia. Full employment of mind.”8 I took this summary as a compliment.

  A few weeks before Don Rumsfeld's public introduction of the Price Commission, as Bob and I were returning to our classes and our children to their old schools and friends, the wage-price freeze was proving enormously popular with the American public, and political pundits hailed it as the opening shot in the 1972 presidential campaign. Strict adherence to the freeze was regarded as every citizen's patriotic duty; accounts of violators being brought to heel and forced to rescind illegal increases by means of the reports of irate fellow citizens provided grist for the media mill. New York City was forced to readjust its parking meters to pre-August 15 prices after it tried to reduce the parking time a dime would buy from two hours to one, and an inmate at the Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, filed suit in federal district court asking that the relevant authorities be held liable for the $125,000 “that prisoners…paid in unlawfully inflated prices” during the freeze.9

  Despite the popularity of the freeze, those in charge of administering it knew that it could not be extended beyond the original ninety days without causing severe distortions and disruptions in an economy as complex and dynamic as ours. The public was acutely aware of the scheduled expiration date of November 13, and concern about what was to follow mounted as the weeks went by. Finally, in a speech on October 7, the president outlined the Phase 2 program he had mentioned but left undefined in his blockbuster announcement on August 15.

  The two bodies charged with implementing the controls were a Price Commission, which “will develop yardsticks and will be empowered to restrain price and rent increases to the necessary minimum and to prevent windfall profits,” and a Pay Board “to stop inflationary wage and salary increases—the kind of increases that do not really benefit the workingman.”

  The president stressed that these boards would have small staffs, unlike the huge Office of Price Administration during World War II. “Stabilization must be made to work,” he said, “not by an army of bureaucrats, but by an army of patriotic citizens in every walk of life.”10 This tension between the desire to avoid government micromanagement of the economy and the political imperative of meeting the announced goal of getting inflation down to a range of 2 to 3 percent by the end of 1972 was to bedevil the controls program throughout its life.

  Late in October, just I was settling back into my teaching routine, I was asked if I would be willing to serve as one of the seven public members of the Price Commission. I was assured that it would be a part-time assignment and wouldn't require me to move back to Washington. Like most American economists, I had a natural antipathy toward direct government controls on the economy, believing that they were bound to cause serious distortions and produce unintended results. On the other hand, this experiment with economy-wide controls during peacetime would write a new chapter in the recurring tug-of-war between the American commitment to a market-led economy and political pressures for some kind of government intervention, and I was strongly tempted to be part of the action. In the end, I succumbed to a rationale that underpins more decisions than many of us would admit, telling myself that there would be a Price Commission with or without me, and if I was on it I could at least try to reduce the problems it caused for the economy.

  The Price Commission first met a scant ten days before the expiration of the wage-price freeze, and we buckled down to designing standards, regulations, and procedures for a program whose ground rules both the president and Secretary Connally had deliberately left vague. We agreed that decisions would have to be made on a case-by-case basis, but it quickly became clear that such reviews would completely swamp a commission composed of part-timers. Bowing to practicality, we soon decided that the full commission would establish rules, definitions, and exceptions but delegate case-by-case decision making to either the senior staff or, in special cases, the commission's chairman.

  Despite this delegation of authority, which subjected us to criticism from legislators, who accused us of shirking our responsibilities, we were overwhelmed. We had not anticipated the myriad questions of definition, coverage, exceptions, and adjustments that would arise in making decisions for an economy as complex as ours.

  No sooner did we promulgate a decision than the need for exceptions or exemptions arose. And we had to be constantly alert to the law of unintended consequences, like the disappearance of chickens from supermarket shelves when farmers decided that buying chicken feed, a “raw material” whose price was not controlled, to nourish birds that would have to be sold at controlled prices was a losing proposition.

  The seven of us struggled with these issues closeted in a small, stuffy, windowless room for long hours at a stretch. Yet we maintained an overall atmosphere of collegiality while wending our way through this thicket of decision making. Only occasionally did things become tense, as when Bob Lanzillotti, a scrappy, assertive economist who was dean of the University of Florida's business school, suggested that I recuse myself from a decision regarding IBM. Knowing that my father had been a consultant to the company and had sold it a couple of minor computer patents (he had insisted that the basic concept of the “von Neumann architecture” that underlay the new generation of computers, developed under the auspices of the US Army, belonged in the public domain), Lanzillotti assumed that I must own IBM stock. In fact, my father, to my later regret, had chosen to take payment in cash rather than stock, and I had never owned a single share of IBM.

  Many of the Price Commission's votes were unanimous. Differences soon emerged, though, on how to weight the two sides of a difficult trade-off between making our program strict enough to meet the goal announced for Phase 2 and at the same time flexible enough to avoid severe disruptions. My own belief that the first rule of any government controls program should be to do the economy as little harm as possible put me firmly on the side of flexibility, but the group as a whole often broke three to three on decisions in which this trade-off was particularly crucial. Jack Grayson maintained the impartiality expected of a chairman during these discussions, but he did vote to break a tie when necessary, and almost always threw the decision in the direction I favored.

  These arguments over pricing suddenly faded into insignificance in my mind when, soon after Christmas, I got a call from someone in the personnel office of the White House, asking me if I would be willing to be nominated as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. I would be filling the vacancy created when Paul McCracken resigned at the end of 1971 to return to the University of Michigan and Herb Stein moved into the chairmanship. Without my knowing it, my appointment had been under discussion for several weeks, first suggested by McCracken and then formally put forward by Stein and George Shultz, still director of the Office of Management and Budget but soon to become secretary of the treasury.

  Wow! Here I was being offered a chance to leap from the Price Commission's increasingly tedious wrangling over arcane details into a role that was focused on the big issues affecting the United States and even the global economies. Yet that call from the White House threw me into the most painful emotional turmoil of my adult life. Never before had professional opportunity collided so sharply and painfully with my commitment to my family. For someone as personally ambitious and eager to make a difference in the world of policy as I was, being a presidentially appointed member of the CEA charged with advising the president and reporting to the Congress on economic policy was literally my dream job. And its pull was even stronger because decisions on the wage-price control program and negotiations on the reform of the international monetary system, the two areas where I had the greatest interest and expertise
, were sure to be front and center during 1972.

  I returned to earth with a thud as I thought about the practical obstacles to my taking the job. Bob and I had just returned to the University of Pittsburgh from sabbatical leaves—normally granted once every seven years—and Malcolm and Laura had just returned to the schools and lives we had disrupted by taking them to Washington the year before. Although I would probably be granted another year off because of the prominence of the position I would fill, Bob was chairman of the English department, not a job from which he could take a leave of uncertain duration. After having expressed so volubly my anxieties about the progress of his career during the early years of our marriage, how could I now ask him to relinquish the chairmanship of a large department for an unpaid leave of absence? And, with children aged twelve and eight, the idea of being a commuting mother away from them most of the time was unthinkable.

  No amount of agonizing resulted in a solution to my dilemma. So after crying into my pillow for several nights, beset by the fear that my father's dire predictions about the penalties I would pay for early marriage might be coming true, I told Bob one Friday that I would call the White House personnel office on Monday morning to express my regret at being unable to let my name be put forward. He was as torn as I was; he shared fully my delight at this tailor-made opportunity, and he knew how much I would be sacrificing if I turned it down. I would be giving up not only a year or two of full involvement in issues of national policy about which I cared deeply but also a stepping-stone to who knew what future career opportunities.

  Years later Bob told me that he had already decided in his own mind that my career should take precedence over his in family decision making, and I'm still touched to the core by the depth of unselfishness this courageous decision entailed. But his efforts to find a workable compromise had so far come up as empty-handed as mine, and our discussion was cut short when he had to go off to chair the monthly Friday afternoon meeting of the English Department.

  The resolution of our dilemma came from an unexpected source. Bob came home from the lengthy departmental meeting spluttering with anger and frustration. There was one particular professor in the department, an Australian named Jim Simmons, with greasy hair, bad teeth, and a strong body odor, who took pride in matching his behavior to his appearance, being as contrarian and unpleasant as possible in every situation. Apparently his talents had been in full swing that afternoon, turning the meeting into a shambles. After muttering imprecations against Simmons for several minutes, Bob said, “To hell with the chairmanship! Let's go to Washington.” Filled with gratitude and relief, I accepted the offer.

  The White House logs preserved on the infamous Nixon audiotapes, which I read thirty-five years after the fact, summarize several discussions between him and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, regarding my appointment.11 My appearance, my age (I was thirty-six, which would make me, at that time, the youngest person ever appointed to the council), my intelligence, my academic qualifications, my performance on the staff of the CEA and the Price Commission, and the breakthrough importance of appointing the first woman to this high position were all reviewed.12 There were also several references to my father, his brilliance as a mathematician, the comparison of him to Einstein, and his relationship with me.13

  Someone on the White House staff had done a thorough job of research. Not only my father and me but also my husband and our children had come under scrutiny. Bob's first book, on a seventeenth-century playwright, was mentioned, in connection with the possibility of offering him a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), so that he could work on his current book (on George Bernard Shaw) while I was working at the council.14 Our children's intelligence was also up for discussion,15 as I had expressed an interest in their attending the highly regarded Sidwell Friends School in Washington. Haldeman voiced some misgivings about the “liberal intellectualism” he had observed at the school, where his son was a student, but said that he would nonetheless ask either Secretary of State William Rogers or his wife to call the school and put in a good word for the Whitman children's admission at midyear.16 No stone was left unturned, either with regard to what advantages I might bring to the administration or what wheels might have to be greased to enable me to come.

  The NEH did indeed offer Bob a research grant, and either secretary Rogers or his wife called Sidwell Friends, which invited Malcolm to come in for an interview. But, as it turned out, the seventh grade was already a couple of pupils over the maximum, and the teachers were adamant in their refusal to add yet another. The headmaster was profusely apologetic, but the decision stood. When I later returned to teaching, my many foreign students were incredulous that a school head would have refused a request from the secretary of state at the behest of the teachers. My response, delivered with some pride, was “welcome to America.”

  The president and Haldeman also discussed the public relations aspects of my appointment, with which they clearly intended to make as much hay as possible. Arrangements were being made for a press conference, along with a photo session, at which the president would announce my appointment, mentioning its significance and calling attention to the presence of other women at high levels in his administration.17 Details such as the timing of the announcement, who would be invited to attend, and the potential press coverage were all discussed.18 One of Haldeman's assistants even gave the president a cute story to tell about my father's response to a small boy who asked him a question about mathematics—Nixon the micromanager left nothing to chance.19

  The upshot of this planning was that I was called on the afternoon of January 27 and asked to come to the White House at 10:00 a.m. the following morning for an announcement in the Oval Office. With almost no time to get ready, I planned to take a very early morning plane from Pittsburgh. But in the late afternoon snow began to fall more and more heavily, and by evening the airport was alternately open and closed. Bob and I grew increasingly worried as the evening wore on, until finally I said, “Why don't I take a Greyhound bus? They always get through, whatever the weather.”

  A city long-distance bus terminal at 11:00 p.m. is never a prepossessing sight, but at least I felt secure that the four-hour trip to Washington would leave me plenty of time to spare, if not to catch much sleep. As it turned out, the bus to Washington was late pulling in; a woman traveling alone with her small child had just had an epileptic seizure. By the time an ambulance had been called and the woman and child taken away, the bus was even later, but there was still a comfortable cushion of time.

  There was time, that is, until the bus broke down in the Allegheny Mountains, just halfway between Pittsburgh and Washington. None of the driver's ministrations, aided by would-be helpful passengers, could get it going again. At one point, a state policeman stopped by, lights flashing, to see what was happening. I thought about telling him of my predicament and asking for his help. But then, looking around at my fellow passengers, the soldiers in various stages of inebriation and the little old ladies with string bags, it occurred to me that if I tried to explain to the officer how important it was that I be on time for my meeting with the president of the United States in the Oval Office at ten o'clock that morning, he might well call another ambulance to haul me off to the nearest psychiatric ward. Eventually the bus sputtered to life and finished the trip. I arrived just in time to rush into the CEA offices to change from jeans into a dress and repair my disheveled hair and makeup. I was in the midst of these preparations when Herb Stein knocked on the door to tell me that the president had postponed the event until the next day. Oh, well, at least I could get some sleep.

  When my meeting with the president did take place, he began a rather awkward conversation by commenting on my father, his genius, and his contributions to the nation. He added that, of course, what my father thought and wrote about was way over his head. I replied that he and I certainly had that in common. Only after this stilted little colloquy did the conversation turn to my own prospectiv
e appointment and my qualifications for it.

  Although I knew nothing at that time about the White House planning that had preceded the president's announcement of my nomination, the fact that the press's interest was focused more on my gender than my qualifications became immediately apparent. Almost every article that came out of the press conference had the words “woman” or “first woman” in the headline. The president did have the grace to say that I had been chosen due to my “intellectual ability of the first magnitude,”20 and I was grateful for an editorial in the Detroit News, which opined that it was my qualifications, rather than my gender, that made me “an outstanding selection.”21

  More typical, though, was the article in the Wall Street Journal, which began by stating, “President Nixon is trying another surprise weapon in his effort to enliven the economy—feminine charm,” and went on to describe me as “wearing an emerald-green, deeply slit skirt.”22 This condescending tone infuriated me, and soon after I joined the CEA I invited the reporter, Richard Janssen, to lunch to chide him for his handling of the story. He insisted he had only been trying to introduce a little levity but said ruefully that he had already been chastened by the angry reactions of several of his female colleagues in the Washington press corps. Janssen was an excellent reporter, and we ultimately became friends, but I never let him forget his sexist introduction of me to the Journal's readers.