One of the main sticking points—though not the only one—was presidential influence over the agency. Historian Jessica Wang explains that at the heart of the divide were competing approaches to technocracy, which split politicians and scientists. Bush’s proposed NSF leadership consisted of a committee of scientists, who would then select their director. The president could select the members of the committee but would have little influence over agency priorities.
By contrast, Kilgore and his allies wanted the NSF director to be a presidential appointment.
“Liberal and progressive-left scientists hoped to build a healthier relationship between science and society than that offered by either the national security state or Bush’s elite-driven conception of science policy,” Wang writes. They wanted the goals of the agency to stem from a democratic political will, and Presidential control was their method for achieving that.
Bush has been seen by contemporaries and historians as wanting to insulate science from politics. For his part, Bush stated in a 1947 Congressional testimony that “[t]he Foundation should…be fully responsible to the people, and this means to the Congress of the United States.” He argued that the agency should be subject to normal Executive procedures, aside from a select few regulations that he feared might inhibit the funding activity at the heart of its mission.
In the end, the president would determine the future of the NSF. When Bush finished Science: The Endless Frontier, he delivered it to the Executive Office as planned. But FDR had died earlier in the year, and The Endless Frontier landed on Harry Truman’s desk, where it received a colder response than Bush expected. In a paper describing Bush’s personal political network, Johnny Miri suggests that FDR’s death likely cost Bush his political influence. He’d already damaged his relationship with Kilgore, and he wasn’t on great terms with Truman or his administration, some members of which expressed skepticism at The Endless Frontier. In 1947, Republicans had a congressional majority for the first time in over a decade and passed a Bush-friendly version of the NSF bill. But it was up to Truman to sign it.
On the advice of future NASA administrator James Webb and colleagues, Truman vetoed the bill. His administration wanted more presidential control over the NSF. Two more bills trickled through committees, until eventually Truman signed the final NSF bill in 1950.