Trump Names A Politician To Lead The IRS, The First In More Than 80 Years

The IRS will soon be led by “one of the premier auctioneers in the country” if President-elect Trump, describing his choice for commissioner in a post on Truth Social, gets his way. More importantly, former Republican Rep. Billy Long would be the first real politician to head the agency in more than 80 years. That would be a break from recent tradition.

Since World War II, presidents have usually chosen tax experts to lead the IRS, tapping lawyers and a few accountants. More recently, some business leaders and experienced government administrators have gotten the job.

But once upon a time, politicos were a popular choice. To be clear, many commissioners, including recent ones, have been active in party politics. But there’s a difference between being a tax expert with political connections and a politician who ends up leading the tax agency.

The last real pol to head the IRS was Robert E. Hannegan, who took office when the Service was still a bureau. When he was named commissioner in late 1943, Hannegan brought a modicum of relevant experience to the job, having served as collector of internal revenue for the Eastern District of Missouri for about a year.

But Hannegan’s path to power didn’t begin in the Bureau of Internal Revenue field office. Rather, he got his start as a Democratic ward boss in St. Louis. His tenure in the collector’s office certainly bolstered his nomination as commissioner. But everyone understood why Hannegan was getting the commissioner job: He was one of then-Sen. Harry Truman’s most important political allies.

St. Louis Roots

Hannegan was born in St. Louis in 1903, the son of a local police captain. As a child and young adult, he was an accomplished athlete, joining baseball, football, basketball, track, and swimming teams. In fact, after receiving his LLB from St. Louis University in 1925, he spent three years playing professional football and minor league baseball.

Over the years, Hannegan was the subject of numerous admiring profiles in both the local and national press. Most emphasized his athletic prowess, his genial nature, and his ample political experience.

“He’s six feet, one inch in height, weighs a thrifty two hundred and five pounds, is as healthy as a prize bull,” reported The Miami Herald. “He’s an organizer, isn’t he? He remembers names and faces; if there is anything he likes better than meeting people it is meeting more people, and he could charm a turtle into giving up its shell.”

Even while dabbling in professional sports, Hannegan had started his legal career in St. Louis. By the early 1930s, he had earned a reputation as a hardworking, well connected young lawyer — the perfect launchpad for a successful political career. In 1933, at the tender age of 29, he was named chair of the Democratic City Committee of St. Louis. In that post, he forged a close political alliance with the city’s mayor, Bernard F. Dickmann.

Something else important happened to Hannegan in 1933: He met Truman. Then serving as presiding judge in Jackson County, Missouri, Truman was on the rise. In 1934 Hannegan helped him mount a successful statewide campaign for Senate. It was the first of many political favors that Hannegan would do for Truman.

Truman himself was quick to acknowledge Hannegan’s help. Years later, he told an audience that Hannegan “had something to do with getting me into these spots where I am now, and I don’t know whether to spank him or thank him.”

Indeed, it’s arguable that Hannegan’s greatest contribution came in 1940, when he rescued Truman’s political career. The freshman senator faced a serious challenge to his reelection; Missouri’s preeminent Democratic boss (and Truman patron) Tom Pendergast had been convicted of income tax evasion in 1939, and Truman’s reputation was sullied by association. Indeed, critics were fond of calling him “the senator from Pendergast.”

Hannegan moved quickly to contain the damage, and most observers (both contemporary and historiographical) credit him for Truman’s narrow victory in both the Democratic primary and the general election.

Having dodged a bullet, Truman won plaudits in his second term for leading a high-profile Senate investigation of waste, fraud, and inefficiency in World War II defense contracting. His reputation burnished, Truman was in a good spot to reward Hannegan for his loyalty. And by 1941, Hannegan needed the help.

Truman Lends a Hand

In the same year that Truman won reelection, Missouri voters had put a Republican in the governor’s mansion. Democrats weren’t accustomed to losing big elections in Missouri, and party leaders challenged the results. More to the point, the Democratic majority in the state legislature refused to seat the new governor until the state’s Supreme Court demanded it.

The effort to “steal” the 1940 gubernatorial election proved to be a disaster for the Democratic bosses. In particular, it decimated the party’s powerful St. Louis machine headed by Hannegan and Mayor Dickmann. Both found themselves looking for work in 1941.

Hannegan returned to his legal practice, but Truman was keen to resuscitate his ally’s political career. In 1942 Truman and his fellow Missouri senator, Bennett Clark, urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to appoint Hannegan as collector of internal revenue in St. Louis. Hannegan was ostensibly cool to the idea. “The retired political boss wanted no part of the post because he was making much more money at his law practice,” The New York Times later reported.

Moreover, local newspapers in St. Louis mounted a “crusade” to stop Hannegan’s nomination, casting it as the worst sort of cronyism. One paper described it as an exercise in “disgraceful plum-passing.” Another called it “an affront to thousands.”

Truman was undeterred. “Hannegan carried St. Louis three times for the president and me,” Truman declared. “If he is not nominated there will be no collector at St. Louis.”

The Senate eventually confirmed Hannegan, who continued to tell friends that he didn’t want the job. But the vociferous opposition to his nomination actually changed his mind. “When the St. Louis newspapers attacked him editorially, he decided to take the post,” The New York Times explained.

Hannegan quickly set about reforming the collector’s office, which was scoring poorly in Treasury’s evaluation of field offices. “By the time Mr. Hannegan had been Internal Revenue Collector for eight months, the rating of the office had been changed from the worst in the country to the best,” noted the Times.

High on Hannegan’s list of changes for the collector’s office was a new commitment to civility and customer service. “People don’t like to pay taxes,” Hannegan told his employees, “so let’s collect them with a smile. When they call up about a problem, be interested.”

Not everyone was charmed by Hannegan; critics continued to view him as a politician first and a civil servant only second. Indeed, during the great internal revenue scandal of the early 1950s (an episode that brought wholesale reform to the agency, including the abolition of the presidentially appointed collectors offices), critics described Hannegan’s first tax appointment as a blatant effort to rescue the Democratic establishment in Missouri — and keep the state out of GOP hands. “Advancement of Hannegan to an important national post was a means of bringing credit to the discredited machine,” The New Republic asserted in 1951.

But such critics were few and far between, at least while Hannegan was on the political ascent. Most observers hailed his performance in the collector’s office. “He turned out to be a crackerjack collector of internal revenue,” gushed columnist Drew Pearson in a 1945 profile. “One reason he worked so hard was because of the way the newspapers attacked his appointment. He was first on the job in the morning and last to leave at night.”

Time magazine was equally effusive. “Collector Bob Hannegan tried to make tax-paying as painless as possible,” the magazine reported. “He eliminated long waiting lines, instructed his clerks in the rudiments of courtesy.” Time also alluded to Hannegan’s lack of experience, and his valiant efforts to correct for it. “He went to night school to study taxation,” the magazine noted.

After barely a year on the job, Hannegan was tapped for a promotion. Guy Helvering, commissioner of internal revenue since 1933, was ready to move on. (Roosevelt would soon make him a federal district court judge in Kansas.) Helvering suggested Hannegan as his replacement, and other high-ranking Bureau of Internal Revenue officials agreed (including intelligence unit chief Elmer Irey and Assistant Commissioner George Schoeneman).

Roosevelt nominated Hannegan to be commissioner, prompting another round of complaints about his political background. “When word of his appointment leaked out, there was a sour political reaction,” reported Pearson. “Roosevelt was accused of putting a ward heeler in as tax commissioner.”

Still, Hannegan won unanimous confirmation from the Senate. But he was bitter. “Hannegan battled through his confirmation fight in the Senate, but after he won, he wanted to quit,” Pearson wrote. “He told Senator Truman that he had been vindicated and that he didn’t want the job anyway.” But he agreed to stay for at least a year.

Once in office, Hannegan set about reforming the agency, albeit in modest terms. Importing his agenda from the St. Louis collector’s office, he put a heavy emphasis on politeness and customer service. “The Internal Revenue department has decided to put a little sugar coating on its ‘requests’ for income tax filings,” reported the Reno Gazette-Journal on Christmas Day, 1943. “All letters sent out by the Bureau must ‘reflect a friendly and personal tone.’”

To many observers, this seemed like a strong start. In Hannegan’s obituary, The New York Times was once again effusive. “He was more than an ordinary success in this job. He followed out the successful formula he had used as a district collector of Internal Revenue back in Missouri, holding that government employees must show the taxpayer cooperation and courtesy. He must have shown them his own example, because he was looked upon as the best commissioner of internal revenue the country had ever had.”

Strong words, especially given Hannegan’s short stay in the commissioner’s office; sworn in on October 9, 1943, he resigned on January 22, 1944. To this day, his three months and 14 days in office remain the shortest tenure of any commissioner in IRS history.

Hannegan left the Bureau of Internal Revenue to join the Democratic National Committee, marking a return to his political roots. Roosevelt had offered the DNC chair to Truman, but the senator proposed Hannegan instead. Hannegan resigned his post at the bureau and began planning FDR’s 1944 reelection campaign.

Hannegan’s most important achievement as DNC chair was also one of his greatest gifts to Truman. With FDR undecided on whom to choose as a running mate, Hannegan managed to beat back challengers. His success guaranteed Truman the No. 2 slot — and, as many observers understood at the time, probably guaranteed that he would inherit the presidency from an ailing FDR. (Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than three months into his fourth term.)

As it happened, Hannegan had his own health worries. In late 1946, he was hospitalized for a serious and persistent heart condition. Over the next year, he spent months recuperating in Miami Beach, Florida, attended by his wife and nurse.

In the fall of 1947, Hannegan resigned his DNC post and his cabinet position as postmaster general. (It was common for the post office job to be given to the chair of the president’s party, and Truman had given Hannegan the job in 1945.) But health wasn’t the only reason Hannegan chose to leave public life: Many of his fellow Democrats blamed him for the party’s shellacking in the 1946 midterms.

The end of Hannegan’s career was fitting. From the start, his rise to national prominence had been linked to his political acumen. Even his appointment to the nation’s top tax job was rooted in his friendship with Truman rather than any particular expertise as an administrator, let alone a tax specialist. When Hannegan’s political skills failed him, it brought an end to his government career.