U.S. Congress: The New Deal and Cold War Years
Hale was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-eighth and seven succeeding U.S. Congresses (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1959).
In the war-time election of 1942, Hale used his support for Roosevelt's foreign policy to unseat Congessman James C. Oliver, who was a pre-war isolationist, in the Republican primary. In the general election, however, Hale was called a "disciple of hate" by his opponent, former Democratic Governor of Maine Louis J. Brann, because of an article he'd written for Harper's magazine in 1936 entitled "I Too Hate Roosevelt" and criticizing the New Deal. Brann went so far as to claim that a Hale victory would "please Hitler". Hale started his own congressional service with equally alarmist rhetoric, telling an audience in Oct. 1942 that they could expect Roosevelt to "abolish Congress" within the next four years.
During the early Cold War Hale supported the formation and role of the United Nations but was otherwise on the right wing of the Republican Party during the Truman administration. In 1950 he said of Sen. Joseph McCarthy that "people should give him credit for what he is trying to do instead of carping on his methods", a position opposite to that of his Maine Republican colleague Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, and early critic of McCarthyism. He also defended Gen. Douglas MacArthur when he was fired by Truman, claiming MacArthur "has always been right" about the "Far Eastern situation", and introduced a resolution to impeach Truman after the president nationalized steel mills in 1952. On the other hand, he advised against the use of atomic bombs in the Korean War while his more liberal colleague Sen. Smith joined right-wing Maine Sen. Owen Brewster in sanctioning their use against Communist China "if necessary".
Hale's last election victory, in 1956, saw him winning by only 29 votes out of over 100,000 cast. His Democratic Party opponent was James C. Oliver, who, as a Republican, Hale had unseated for the same congressional seat in 1942. Oliver ran against Hale again in 1958 and this time won back the seat he'd occupied 26 years before. Hale afterwards resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C., where he died November 30, 1976. He was interred in Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, Maine.
Read more about this topic: Robert Hale (Maine Politician)
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