Judging Truman
Ferrell, Robert H.
Judging Truman OFFTHE RECORD: THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HARRY S. TRUMAN edited by Robert H. Ferrell Harper & Row. 448 pp. $15. Rarely has a public figure undergone a more dramatic metamorphosis in...
...Certainly the old cliches will not work: Harry Truman was no simple, ordinary man...
...From the start, Truman had a keen awareness of who and what he was...
...Then he could lead a Cabinet meeting, instructing his agency heads in their roles and their obligation to carry out his orders...
...Above all, Truman had what Harry McPherson, a Johnson aide, aptly described as the sense "of being established within himself...
...Truman acknowledged that at the outset he was handicapped by insufficient knowledge of both foreign and domestic policies...
...Truman knew himself...
...FDR, he complained, "was always careful to see that no credit went to anyone else...
...I wonder," he asks in Off the Record, "how far Moses would have gone if he'd taken a poll in Egypt...
...He consistently defended the dropping of the nuclear weapon as the humane, efficient alternative to invasion...
...It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts," Truman wrote in 1954...
...Congress rebuffed his recommendations...
...Truman nevertheless remained serenely confident of his course and equally confident that history would vindicate him...
...By 1974 we had the spectacle of Gerald Ford, another "accidental" President, laboring mightily to identify with Truman...
...He 'blamed Roosevelt's inability to delegate responsibility...
...He worked to the limits of his abilities, knowing that he had worked hard and had done all that was required...
...Jones wanted to know whether he had made it before he died...
...the Supreme Court thwarted his seizure of the steel mills...
...The objective is the thing, not personal aggrandizement...
...Underneath, in smaller type, there was another line: "Hell, I even miss Harry...
...Truman was concerned with determining and accomplishing avowed objectives, and he was willing to share credit...
...Superbly annotated and arranged by Robert H. Ferrell, Off the Record should delight those same audiences who have enjoyed Merle Miller's oral biographies of Truman and Johnson...
...No, Truman replied, "He made it just now...
...Understandably, there was some confusion and contradiction in the transition following Franklin Roosevelt's death, yet Truman himself was not overwhelmed by events and certainly he was in command...
...Truman's famed contempt for the fickleness of polls just might be deserved...
...Stanley I. Kutter (Stanley 1. Kutler is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison...
...And within the past few years, we have had a small flood of popular and scholarly accounts of the Truman Presidency, all largely favorable...
...time also lends itself to mellowing and nostalgia...
...It takes a lifetime of the hardest kind of work and study to become a successful politician," Truman wrote— a refreshing, instructive thought when we consider our recent "non-political," "outsider" choices...
...By the end of John F. Kennedy's first year in the Presidency, bumperstickers appeared, reading: "I miss Ike...
...This new collection of Truman's private papers—diary entries, memoranda, family letters, and even unsent letters comparable to the unforgettable one he dispatched to a music critic who had the audacity to belittle his daughter Margaret—at least sharpens our understanding of how he conducted his office...
...In general, that is the way Truman conducted his Presidency and eventually how he has been perceived...
...Truman could patiently listen to a pompous former Senatorial colleague read a four-page letter prescribing how the country, should be run...
...It is difficult to imagine Nixon or Carter ever becoming neo-folk idols or elder statesmen admired for their candor and integrity...
...What would Jesus Christ have preached if he'd taken a poll in Israel...
...After less than two days in the White House, he informed Jesse Jones that "the President" had made a certain appointment...
...In the twilight of his Presidency, he was like a caged animal, tormented and taunted on all sides...
...He took immense pride in being a politician— that is, a leader and a public servant...
...Rarely has a public figure undergone a more dramatic metamorphosis in popular respect than Harry S. Truman...
...More likely, they reflected public bewilderment and frustration with the flow of events rather than any deep, visceral hostility toward the man himself...
...Too bad...
...James F.] Byrnes and [Bernard] Baruch also have that complex...
...enemies and allies alike frustrated his efforts for a negotiated end to the Korean War, and scandals and corruption tainted some executive branch officials...
...Truman's diary accounts of the Potsdam Conference in 1945 recently have been published elsewhere, and they are included in this volume...
...Their manipulation of policy and never-ending quest for popular acceptance betrayed vacillation and weakness, resulting eventually in public contempt and repudiation...
...All Roosevelts want the personal aggrandizement...
...Certainly time offers perspective...
...Like the proverbial phoenix, Truman's rise in public esteem has been phenomenal...
...How can we account for this change...
...In that sense, attitudes toward Truman differed qualitatively from attitudes toward Nixon and Carter...
...The man and his writing were as one: clear, direct, forceful, and largely devoid of pretense...
...It also was a time of decision, for after hearing the news of the successful atomic explosion at Ala-mogordo, he and Secretary of War Henry Stimson agreed that the bomb would be used against Japan...
...A month earlier, however, Truman noted in his diary that he would have to decide between an invasion or continued bombing and blockading of Japan...
...It is right and wrong and leadership—men with fortitude, honesty and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world...
...As we learn more of the man himself, and as we study his record more closely, Truman's historical reputation grows ever more solid—as he always believed it would...
...But in the early 1950s, his apparent popularity plummeted to what became the standard all-time low until Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter revised the charts...
...Perhaps the polls exaggerated Truman's unpopularity...
...Potsdam was Truman's time of innocence, in his own terms...
...Here, however, we have much more revealed, particularly that strong, inner confidence rather than the familiar public image of feistiness and cockiness...
...He was an enormously satisfied, fulfilled man in both his public and private lives...
Vol. 45 • March 1981 • No. 3
