| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America. By Brian Lewis Crispell. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. xx, 234 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8203-2103-6.)

Among historians, George Smathers is usually remembered as an opportunist who defeated the incumbent senator Claude Pepper in Florida's 1950 Democratic primary by red-baiting and racial appeals. He is also recalled as a close friend of John F. Kennedy. 1

     Brian Lewis Crispell has written a brief, sympathetic biography that attempts to place Smathers in the context of the former GIs who played such an important role in the early Cold War era's politics. He also wants to prove that Smathers was a serious legislator, not a mere playboy, as he has often been portrayed. 2

      Smathers, son of a prominent Miami lawyer, was athletic, handsome, and charming. A marine in World War II, he, like many returning veterans, believed American power was limitless. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, he soon began to think about running for the Senate. 3

     Crispell defends Smathers's tactics in Florida's senatorial primary. He concedes that Smathers was "opportunistic" but only in the sense that he took advantage of Senator Pepper's own vulnerabilities, especially his continuing calls for patience with the Soviet Union. It was an opportunism based on "sincere ideological differences, not character flaws." Crispell also justifies Smathers's questioning of Pepper's vote for the Fair Employment Practices Commission as "legitimate and necessary." . . .

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