Robert Cunningham Humphreys - Always Attack

Always Attack

Throughout the Eisenhower years in the White House, Humphreys strived to improve the public relations of the president and his administration. It was his belief that the basic strategy in politics should always be to attack. In a 1953 memo to Leonard Hall, Humphreys stated that “it would be a political mistake for this administration to rely solely on its achievements”; instead “political warfare must be waged by selling our philosophy, our achievements, our kind of government against the alternative.”

At the close of the administration, in 1960, President Eisenhower appointed Humphreys to head the staff of the newly formed National Cultural Center project. Humphreys had a lifelong interest in the performing arts, especially classical music. At one period in his career, while working for INS, he wrote a column which reviewed the latest classical albums and he personally owned all the technically advanced equipment in sound recording. Humphreys remained with the ambitious Cultural Center project for a single year until the fund-raising machinery bogged down and came to a complete standstill.