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“When Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945 and Harry Truman took his place, it was as if the star of the show had left and his role had been taken by a spear-carrier from the mob scene.” (The Truman Merry-Go-Round. Robert S. Allen and William V. Shannon. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1950). “The Truman myth makers . . . find it difficult to concede that a man of mediocre mind, ordinary personality, and second-rate talents should be President . . . Limited is the word for Harry Truman. He has a limited perception of the problems at hand, a limited imagination, and a sharply limited sense of personal initiative.” (The Truman Merry-Go-Round. Robert S. Allen and William V. Shannon. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1950). “The utter contempt and disregard which . . . Roosevelt and Truman have shown for the Constitution during the past 20 years and the damage done to that great Document of Human Freedom by their ignoble, fiendish, and illegal conduct has resulted in a usurpation of the liberties of the American people . . .” (An Era of Infamy. Robert Littleton. Cleveland, 1952, p. 127). “It is a matter of personality. This colorlessness of Truman, this wavering quality like a television image not quite in focus, has repeatedly weakened his ability to dramatize great, resounding issues which flowed from postwar events. One constantly felt that the issues were there; it was the leader who was lacking.” (Richard L. Strout, The New Republic, April 5, 1948, p. 11). “Sympathy for the President was universal but not intense; in three years at the White House he has never raised enough fanatical warmth to boil an egg.” (Strout, The New Republic, April 5, 1948, p. 1). “With all Truman’s mistakes and ineptitudes . . . Truman’s position now is a good deal like that of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who managed to alienate almost everybody in a remarkably short time, some for good reason.” (The New Republic, March 8, 1948, p. 3). “. . . it is still possible and desirable to work for progressive policies and measures within the Democratic Party, despite Truman’s patent stupidity and the militarization and Wall Streetization of the government.” (Victor S. Yarros, The New Republic, January 19, 1948, p. 15). “It is by one of those wild accidents of history that at the world’s greatest crisis we find in the world’s biggest job today a man who has said repeatedly that he has never wanted the job, and that he hates it, and that he would rather be anywhere than in the White House, where he is. There have been leaders in the past who have had greatness thrust on them by circumstance, but never surely one who wore the mantle of great office so uneasily.” (Max Lerner, Actions and Passions: Notes on the Multiple Revolution of Our Time, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949, pp. 219-220). “The Republican strategists, always shrewd at exploiting a weakness — however blind they may be to the larger reaches of policy — have exploited this one to the hilt. Wherever you go the air is thick with stories, jokes, and legendary — some genial and some vicious — but all having their common theme the inadequacy for his office of the insecure and wistful man who would rather be piano-player than President.” (Max Lerner, Actions and Passions: Notes on the Multiple Revolution of Our Time, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949, p. 220). “One would have to go back to Munich to recall a sell-out as cynical, as bedraggled, as contemptible . . . A man has to have a genius for blundering to have done so complete a job of stripping himself of the support of so many varied groups.” (statement by Max Lerner, quotation taken from Jules Abels, Out of The Jaws of Victory, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1959, pp. 18-19). Quotes compiled by Sushila Nayak. Thanks to Andy Plenge for his transcription help. Institute for Policy Studies Home Page
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Harry
S Truman Harry Truman was the only president of the 20th century who did not attend college, although he spent two years in a Kansas law school. Nevertheless, in this informally educated and mostly self-taught man there was an inner security and determination which seemed to allow him to discount failure and humiliation. Like other American politicians he was underestimated; in the case of Thomas E. Dewey, Truman's major opponent for the presidency in 1948, his refusal to take Truman seriously was politically fatal. Truman had become Franklin Roosevelt's vice presidential candidate in 1944 because of deep cleavages in the Democratic party. Truman had distinguished himself in the Senate as the chairman of a committee which investigated war profiteering. He had served less than a month as VP when he was informed of the death of President. Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's vice president in his third term, did not mount a campaign to save his place on the ticket; he was out of the country as Roosevelt's personal emissary for much of the period leading up to the 1944 Democratic convention. During that period, three other names surfaced. Roosevelt said that he would be delighted to have Wallace on the ticket but it was the decision of the convention. He had given three names, Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court, Senator Harry Truman, and James F. Byrnes. The Catholic church hierarchy was opposed to Wallace on the grounds that he was too radical. Traditional Democrats were also concerned about Wallace, whose strength rested with organized labor and younger New Dealers. In a clever maneuver, Roosevelt was asked to write a letter to the convention detailing his choices. He had placed Truman's name second to Justice Douglas but Truman's name appeared first. On the second ballot Truman was nominated over strong opposition from Wallace's supporters who attempted to stampede the convention. The chair of the convention, Sam Rayburn, adjourned the convention to the following day, refusing to recognize Senator Claude Pepper who wanted to move for an immediate nominating vote for vice president. As a result of Rayburn's decision, Truman, who came from the border state of Missouri, became the candidate. Truman began life in May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, sixty one years to the day before the second world war in Europe ended. There was nothing in Truman's childhood to suggest evidence of future greatness. He was nearsighted. He played the piano well, but by no means was he a prodigy. Missouri entered the Union as a slave state and so it was not surprising that his parents had favored the Confederate cause. In school he did well but did not sparkle, although he showed himself from early childhood to be an voracious and omnivorous reader. After graduation from Independence high school, he undertook a series of odd jobs ranging from mailroom clerk to bank clerk to work on the family farm. Like so many others, his life revolved around a small town existence punctuated by dreams of escape and glory which came from readings and the American dream of success. The first world war gave Truman his first taste of leadership, possibility and escape from the rooted but narrow life of his childhood. Truman rose to the rank of major and was the leader of an artillery battery in France. He displayed coolness and courage under German fire and rallied his own troops at a moment when they had lost heart. After the war, Truman married Elizabeth "Bess" Wallace in 1919 which by all accounts was a successful marriage marred later only by her dislike for the limelight of being a president's wife in the White House. As an entrepreneur, Truman showed little talent. He tried his hand at a haberdashery business which failed in the 1921-22 recession. His partner in this venture later played a role in his presidency; Jacobson urged Truman to recognize Israel which he did over the objection of the Department of State. Truman's start in American politics came through Boss Thomas Pendergast who ran the Democratic party in Missouri. Pendergast supported Truman for local offices including county judge and commissioner which were important to the Democratic party for they involved the letting of contracts for roads, bonds issues and other public facilities such as hospitals and schools. While claims were made about the corrupt nature of the Pendergast machine in terms of payoffs, frauds and contracts there was nothing which ever pointed to Truman as being anything but a man of integrity. Nevertheless, he was a machine politician and he knew that his success in politics was dependent on the Pendergast machine. But by 1935 Truman began to have a modest independent base as a leader of the local Democratic party. He had come to the attention of New Dealers as well and served to find jobs for the unemployed. In 1935, Truman got his chance to run for the Senate. He followed the lead of the Roosevelt administration in economic policy and supported anti-lynching legislation. His most important efforts revolved around his investigations of war profiteers which endeared him to many New Dealers and laid the basis for animosity between him and big business. As a senator, and before the formal entrance by the United States, Truman had first welcomed the war between Germany and the Soviet Union claiming that the Nazis and communists should destroy each other which would then save the United States much trouble. It is not difficult to imagine the thoughts that ran through Truman's mind when he was sworn in as president on April 12, 1945. He was succeeding a master politician and world statesman who had little time for Truman before his death. The world war was coming to a close, but the question of the shape of the world politically was still unknown. Truman claimed he did not know about the existence of the atomic bomb. Nor did he know what the character of the United Nations Organization was to be to secure the peace. He had to deal with a gifted cabinet loyal to Roosevelt and allied military leaders who dictated the life and death of whole armies and populations in the midst of war. Now they were expected to bend to his will as their commander in chief. He once described his situation as if the entire sky fell on top of him. Truman faced two momentous decisions between April 13, 1945, the day after Roosevelt died, and the first week of August, 1945. The first was whether to use the atomic bomb. Not using the weapons at hand would have been a presidential decision of supreme moral courage. The second was the official attitude towards a victorious but deeply suspicious wartime ally, the Soviet Union. Whether the bombs were needed to end the war in Japan with a minimun of casualities is what Franklin Roosevelt would have called an "iffy" statement, since the Japanese had made attempts to negotiate a peace on several different occasions during the spring and summer of 1945, with the fundamental stipulation that they get to keep the imperial house and the emperor; terms agreed to after the bombs were dropped. The use of the weapons set the world, and especially the United States, on a course which accepted the double role of nuclear and then thermonuclear weapons -- that of deterrent and strategic and tactical weapon of war. Truman ordered the end of lend lease to the Soviets and accepted Winston Churchill's view of the world, which was laid out in an important speech in Fulton, Missouri, that an iron curtain had descended on East Europe and the Soviet Union, requiring a new alliance of the British, the United States and other western states. Truman pressed for the Marshall plan to rebuild West Europe, although it was rejected by East European states and the Soviet Union because it would have had to fit into the emerging international system which was framed by capitalist assumptions. The Marshall plan spurred West Europe to extraordinary heights of economic recovery. Truman changed the character of peacetime United States with claims that it had to be prepared to fight communism throughout the world. As a result of the National Security Act of 1947 and the Atomic Energy act, the character of American life changed and the building blocks were set for a national security state which emphasized world commitments, anticommunism, secrecy and an unequalled military. From 1945 to the election of 1948, Truman's own party doubted his qualifications and complained that he was not up to the job. Liberals hoped for Dwight Eisenhower as their candidate in 1948. Left new dealers looked to Henry Wallace as their standard bearer after Wallace was pushed out of the cabinet in a dispute over foreign policy with the South Carolinian, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who pressed a hard line with the Soviet Union. Southern conservatives sought solace in states rights, the perpetuation of segregation, and Strom Thurmond who ran as the "Dixiecrat" candidate in 1948. Truman's first years were especially difficult and he appeared especially vulnerable. A wave of strikes gripped the nation as workers whose wages were frozen during the war sought pay hikes. Republicans pressed for an end to price control. Millions of servicemen were returning home to a world which they insisted would not be a repeat of the depression period. In 1946, the Democrats lost control of Congress and it was taken for granted that Truman would lose the presidency in 1948. Pundits and pollsters alike saw Truman's campaign task as impossible. Nevertheless, he won election in his own right, campaigning on the program that the New Deal had to be completed with his own Fair Deal. His program included extending social security benefits and raising the minimum wage. He was convincing in his attacks on Republicans, arguing that they wanted to repeal the New Deal. He claimed that the 80th congress, dominated by the Republicans, was a "Do Nothing" congress without any feeling for workers or unions. As part of his election strategy he isolated Wallace as being too friendly with the Soviet Union and a utopian dreamer. His Attorney General, Tom Clark brought indictments for conspiracy to overthrow the government against pro-Wallace communist party leaders at the time of Henry Wallace's Progessive Party convention. Truman distinguished himself from Thurmond by making clear that a more activist civil rights program was necessary. This appealed to liberals who might otherwise have voted for Wallace. He also supported a national health insurance program. Truman won an impressive victory in the electoral college. Truman's full term beginning in 1949 was one dominated by great events and decisions which continued to frame American thinking for well over a generation. He sponsored programs of economic development called Point 4 as a means of bettering the lot of poor people in poor areas of the world. This was carried out as a means of containing communism. Similarly, President Truman ordered American armed forces into battle against the North Korean attempt to unify Korea under its leadership. The war itself was bloody, causing the death of two million Koreans and tens of thousands of American troops. The Chinese entered the war against US-led UN forces when General MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel, the post world war two dividing line between North and South Korea. The MacArthur strategy at Inchon resulted in a stunning victory against the North Koreans. He pressed the attack across the parallel and doubted that the Chinese would enter. When they did, the course of the war changed. MacArthur was relieved of his command for countermanding Truman's orders not to cross the parallel, although the record on this question is ambiguous at best, for so long as he seemed successful the Joint Chiefs and Truman were in support of his actions. The Korean war and the mood of insecurity plus scientific and bureaucratic momentum reinforced President Truman's decision to make the hydrogen bomb after the Soviets detonated their atomic bomb. The US tested its H bomb in October 1952 in the Pacific on the Marshall islands which the US held under a UN trusteeship. These decisions secured the next phase of nuclear weapons development and an arms race. Like the period at the end of the first world war when the United States went through a red scare, the Truman post war period also reflected similar social and political insecurity in a far more virulent form. Through a series of executive orders, Truman laid the basis for loyalty oaths and investigations to fire security "risks" from the federal government. This program, which preceded Republican party attacks, was mild compared to the attacks of Senator Joseph McCarthy who insisted that the Department of State was riddled with communists and that General George Marshall was also a traitor. Indeed, Congress had passed the McCarran act which was a modern version of the Sedition act. It called for registration of all communists. Truman vetoed this bill but he was overriden. A number of security trials occurred during this period including the Rosenberg case, in which a husband and wife, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were found guilty of stealing atomic bomb secrets for the Soviet Union. The other case concerned Alger Hiss, who was accused of perjury because he said he did not know Whittaker Chambers, a former communist who claimed that Hiss was a spy. The issue around Hiss was complicated by the fact that he was thought to be the quintessential New Dealer who had helped to design the United Nations and in fact was its first acting Secretary-General. Just as he had said in 1945 that, if necessary, he would send the army to dig coal and take over the mines under his national emergency powers, in 1952 President Truman sought the seizure of the steel mills claiming that the Korean war made it necessary to do so, even without congressional authority. Truman lost in the Supreme Court. Truman decided not to run for re-election in 1952, and reluctantly supported Adlai Stevenson who sought to keep his distance from Truman and his administration during his campaign against Dwight Eisenhower, the war hero, who announced that he would go to Korea leaving voters with the inference that he would end the war. The Republican rhetorical charge against the Democrats was Communism, Korea and corruption. The citizenry was ready to retire the Democratic party from a 20 year reign in the White House. Truman returned to Independence, Missouri. He backed Stuart Symington over Stevenson for the 1956 run and in 1960 supported Averell Harriman over Stevenson and Kennedy, claiming that Kennedy was not ready for the presidency. Truman died December 26, 1972, of congestive heart failure.
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