SIX MONTHS OF MR. TRUMAN
Six Months Of Mr. Truman HARRY S. TRUMAN has now served six months as President of the United States. The Progressive's balance-sheet shows a number of substantial entries on the credit side, and...
...Miller...
...Roosevelt had committed us to agreements reached at secret conferences abroad whose details were not known to the new President...
...Many of his judgments on pending or proposed legislation in the domestic field were sound and showed a courageous willingness to buck the Tory faction of his own party...
...Another major proposal in the President's message to Congress was the Full Employment Bill, but here the Administration was silent when the Senate butchered the bill— with the approval of some of its professed sponsors...
...Some of his appointments were excellent...
...Truman entered the White House at an extraordinarily difficult time...
...Calling this practice "bad taste," Mr...
...His longing to prove that his rise from haberdashery clerk to President of the United States has not interfered with his being a "regular fellow" is certainly not objectionable in itself, but does lead to some curious conduct for a President...
...Long neglected domestic problems had reached perilous proportions...
...The whole thing, he said, was "just a little blow-up" for which a "few selfish men" were responsible...
...A good example of what we're driving at was available last week...
...The Federal establishment was battered by internal wrangling and incredibly inept management...
...There is no more reason why a newscast should be interrupted by a plug-ugly than that such ads should be inserted in the middle of news stories or editorials in a newspaper," declared Mr...
...Let's hope that this campaign continues either until the radio cleans up its own mess or the government, at the insistence of the harried listener, steps in to do the job...
...Truman made no effort to fight for the original bill in the House of Representatives until after the Democratic-dominated House Ways and Means Committee had voted to pigeon-hole the measure...
...It is too early to close the books and render a final accounting, but we feel strongly that the President must begin at once to show the industry, courage, and purposefulness which made him so appealing a figure as chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee and as President in his first weeks in office if he is to measure up to the tremendous job he has inherited...
...Durr recently charged that programs of great national importance are being shoved off the air or carried at hours when they won't be heard in order to present commercial programs...
...In his inauguration address Mr...
...Truman shoots from the hip too often— without taking careful aim...
...But perhaps the most telling blow recently struck was by Justin Miller, newly installed president of the National Association of Broadcasters...
...This is obviously nonsense, of course, and unworthy of a President of the United States in the midst of one of the most, critical periods of our history...
...In the field of foreign policy, he displayed a firmness in dealing with the stab-and-grab tactics of our Allies and a heartening recognition of the need for appealing to the people of Japan over the heads of the military clique which had enslaved them...
...Clifford Durr, also a member of the Commission, is striking some hard blows in the campaign to clean up radio...
...THIS, in greatly abbreviated form, is the credit side of the ledger...
...He has surrounded himself with Missouri cronies who are "good guys" and loyal friends, but men with extremely limited backgrounds and little or no experience in government...
...Miller warned the broadcasters to exercise self-discipline before outside authority steps in...
...Truman talked crisply and dealt decisively...
...Radio's Plug-Uglies THE cheap, often vulgar, commercialism which characterizes many of the radio programs— especially the news broadcasts—is under well-justified attack...
...Truman acted most strangely in the case of the Kilgore unemployment compensation bill to provide unemployment benefits of $25 a week for 26 weeks...
...The FCC chairman has quite rightly taken the position that an airlane is a privilege granted by the people for rendering public service, not for get-rich-quick schemes which are too often offensive to radio listeners...
...But most important of all is the absence of a clear-cut direction, a basic program of action, and' a willingness to slug it out with the opposition for such principles as the President has publicly committed himself...
...The debit column has been filling up rapidly of late...
...Truman has been and can be a bigger and abler man than the man who tossed off that statement...
...There's a limit to the American people's capacity for listening to windy exhortations to buy pills and scalp tonic as a price for hearing the news...
...Miller cut loose with a blast at the "nauseating plug-uglies" which the radio stations so frequently intersperse in news reports...
...Running through most of the debit items is a single, simple note: the lack of a carefully thought-out and clearly-integrated program for both domestic and foreign affairs...
...The Federal Communications Commission has taken the lead in the effort to abate these indignities to the eardrums...
...Back from a barnstorming trip to the South and Middle West, the President airily dismissed the labor-management crisis in the nation as "our little troubles...
...Subsequently, Mr...
...He sometimes issues statements on vital subjects without adequate study of the issues involved...
...The war in Europe was racing toward an end, bringing a host of reconversion problems, while there was still a war to be won in the Pacific...
...The Progressive's balance-sheet shows a number of substantial entries on the credit side, and almost as many—most of them recorded in the past month or two—in the debit column...
...Chairman Paul Porter has told the radio networks in no uncertain terms that they are on probation pending the time they clean up their own houses...
...In his first few months in the Presidency, Mr...
...The measure was number one on a program he submitted to Congress, but he gave the Tories in his own party a chance to wiggle out by allowing a confidential memorandum to reach them saying that the basic provisions in the bill were only "desirable," not "essential...
...The Progressive pointed out editorially two weeks ago that Mr...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 42
