In Close Touch, But Not Commanded

Or, a New Deal Democrat describes a Delaware Senator as … unbought?

In the course of researching the political history of the Securities Act of 1933, I encountered a rather surprising description of a Delaware politician. In 1959, “Dean” James M. Landis, one of the aides primarily responsible for drafting the bill and shepherding it through Congress, published a close account of his experience getting this critical New Deal legislation off the drawing board and into the law books.

His article is a brief but quite detailed play-by-play of the political process – an Aaron Sorkin narrative, but with substance – and includes a number of deft character sketches of the various politicos and operators he dealt with as he hustled the most important federal financial regulation ever written over the finish line.

At the moment of high drama of his narrative (the House-Senate bill reconciliation conference meetings) he characterizes Senator John G. Townsend, Jr. (R-DE) this way:

“The tenseness of the first day’s session became relieved as [Rep. Sam] Rayburn made it plain that any suggestion of any Senator would receive the most careful consideration. A goodly number of suggestions came from Senator Townsend of Delaware, a Republican, who was in close touch with the financial world but who under no circumstances would take their suggestions as commands or as ideas to hold on to in the face of a compelling argument to the contrary.” [emphasis mine]

~James M. Landis, “Legislative History of the Securities Act of 1933,” George Washington Law Review 28, no. 1 (1959): 45-46

FDR’s man on the ground, a Felix Frankfurter student and Louis Brandeis protégé, a future chair of the SEC, Landis was impressed with how uncorrupted a Delaware Senator was by corporate financiers. As far as I know, that makes Townsend the first – and perhaps only – senator thusly described (certainly that differentiates him from other Delaware (state) senators who share his name…)

In short: history is full of surprises!

And ironies, too: the latest neoliberal salvo aimed at fatally wounding the New Deal regulatory state – and specifically, to gut the Securities Act of 1933 that Townsend helped design – was co-sponsored by none other than Delaware’s own Rep. Sarah McBride. As Rep. McBride’s personal PR page notes, this attack on financial transparency and good government is “Her First Bill in Congress.”