ON POLITICAL BOOKS: Mild About Harry

...For the first 45 years of this century, idealism was a vibrant force, and for 28 of those 45 years, we had inspiring leaders-Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR...

...Some day I hope to meet you...

...One of the truly transforming changes in American history began the year Truman became president...

...But my most severe indictment of Truman is that he inflicted the first wound in the slow death of liberal idealism in America that began in 1945...

...Hume: I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert...

...In the 1945-46 theater season, a splendid revival of Pygmalion survived only a few months, despite great performances by Gertrude Lawrence as Eliza and Melville Cooper as Doolittle, while a decade later My Fair Lady reigned as the smash hit of the era...

...Here’s McCollough’s again uncritical description of how the days were spent: He basked in the sun with members of his staff, listened to music on the phonograph, took an afternoon nap, played poker on the porch every night, and started off each day with a shot of bourbon before his walk...

...As 1949 began, he was no longer handcuffed by a Republican Congress...

...These actions were crucial in creating the climate of conformity that dominated the fifties, and they did permanent damage to the civil and foreign services by greatly heightening the customary caution of the bureaucrat...

...Liberals, as a result, deserted him and tried in the spring of 1948 to persuade Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Democrat that year...

...Yet mass access to college also subtly devalued the bachelor’s degree, and cultural taste began to replace that degree as a way of proving class...

...Today, sadly, that kind of oversight is almost a lost art...

...He often seemed embarrassing...

...Westbrook] Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman beside you...

...The Truman Committee demonstrated through its constructive criticism of wartime defense spending that Congress can oversee other branches of government...

...So did he seize the moment and move with bold resolution to get liberal programs enacted...

...When you write such poppycock as was in the back section of the paper you work for, it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work...

...The answer provided by McCullough, who is unaware of the negative implication of what he is saying: “The first six months of the new term were a breather for Truman...

...Indeed, liberalism had been proposed as a 1948 campaign strategy by the famous Clifford memorandum (now revealed to have originally been drafted by Jim Rowe...

...But another factor that contributed to the popularity of My Fair Lady was that its underlying message-that style could be acquiredwas enthusiastically embraced by a public that was now eager to hear it...

...But he should have tried...

...Mild About Harry How Truman ushered in the end of liberal idealism by Charles Peters David McCullough’s highly readable new biography* pays proper respect to Harry Tru- man’s greatest achievements, beginning with the Truman Committee, where, as a senator, he proved it possible for Congress to effectively monitor government programs, and continuing through the high points of his presidency: the Marshall Plan, Point Four, the Berlin airlift, desegregation of the armed forces, recognition of Israel, resistance to aggression in South Korea, and the firing of MacArthur...

...And I can still remember how excited I, who had been prepared to vote for Wallace earlier in the campaign, became during October and how intensely I was rooting for Truman to win on election night when the pundits were predicting a Dewey victory...

...Truman considered himself “a plain man,” which was the way most Americans thought of themselves in 1945...

...However admirable Harry Truman was in many ways, this is a test that h,e failed...

...The most telling test of Truman’s liberalism was what he did with his triumph...

...The staff all enjoyed themselves, as did the 30-odd reporters who usually made the trips and had little to do but enjoy themselves...

...It recommended special appeals to groups such as farmers, labor unions, blacks, Catholics, Italians, and Jews...

...It could be argued that, because there were quite a few Dixiecrats in Truman’s congressional majority, he would have had difficulty getting a legislative program passed...

...So did he seize the moment and move with bold resolution to get liberal programs enacted...

...This was part his fault, part the people’s...

...McCullough also acknowledges Truman’s negatives, but he does so-and this is his book’s main deChnrles Pelers is ediror-in-chiefojTheW ashington Monthly...

...In the late forties, the popularity of The New Yorker, which taught lessons in taste, soared, as did the appeal of similarly enriching trips through Europe...

...He was also guilty of a shoot-from-the-lip carelessness, as when he declared during the Korean War that he thought the use of the atomic bomb could be left to the discretion of the military commanders in the field...

...Truman’s wise decision to supply Sovietblockaded Berlin through the air, instead of confronting strong Soviet ground forces, ranks along with Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a landmark example of how to be resolute without going to war...

...But, taken as a whole, the letter is so sadly distant from the language of a Churchill or a DeGaulle or a Roosevelt that one can understand how it troubled even those indifferent to social slatus...

...He managed to survive as personally incorruptible by winking at the shenanigans of others...

...I>avid IMcCullough...

...He also nominated two justices to the Supreme Court, Fred Vinson andTom Clark, who became part of the majority that upheld in the Dennis case the imprisonment of American Communist Party leaders simply for teaching and advocating Marxist doctrine-a decision that, for me, marks the low point in the history of the First Amendment...

...Perhaps the most infamous illustration of this indifference was his letter to The Washington Post’s music critic, Paul Hume, after Hume wrote an unflattering review of a recital at Constitution Hall by Truman’s daughter, Margaret, who was then attempting a career on the concert stage: Mr...

...As 1949 began, he was no longer handcuffed by a Republican Congress...

...Millions who would otherwise have been unable to afford to do so acquired college degrees...

...In the fall of 1945, veterans swarmed to the nation’s universities to take advantage of the GI Bill...

...The answer provided by McCullough, who is unaware of the negative implication of what he is saying: “The first six months of the new term were a breather for Truman...

...In private, he called blacks “niggers” and referred to civil rights advocate Hubert Humphrey as “a crackpot...

...Of these, the two that have been most underappreciated are the Truman Committee and the Berlin airlift...

...It may have been the intellectual godfather of the interest-group liberalism that was to be the curse of the Democratic Party for the next several decades...

...I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an ‘eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.’ It seems to me you are a frustrated old man [Hume was 341 who wishes he could have been successful...

...Truman’s administration was also characterized by cronyism (Harry Vaughan and Donald Dawson were unhappy examples), by terrible judgment in the appointment of such cabinet members as Louis Johnson as secretary of defense.and J. Howard McGrath as attorney general, and by a too-easy tolerance of corruption that probably was the result of Truman’s adjustment to his role in the Pendergast machine in Kansas City early in his political life...

...Plain truth If there is a lesson to be learned from the leadership of Harry Truman, it is that there is nothing wrong with having a plain man as president...

...It was only during the final month of the 1948 campaign that Truman’s message was passionately liberal and he really captured the hearts of the noncommunist left...

...With respect to civil rights, for example, he sought a plank for his platform that was “mild and ambiguous enough to mollify” segregationists...

...My favorite example of this change is the contrast between the popularity of two Broadway productions...

...The most telling test of fiuman’s liberadism was what he did with his triumph in the 1948 campaign...

...Simon and Schusler, 830...

...Truman’s cynicism was not the only factor in his failure to inspire...

...But developments were underway that would cause many of them to identify with the upper classes and to begin to see their president as the father whose social lapses are excruciating to his adolescent children, who aspire to higher society...

...Harry monster The truth is that Truman was generally not a crusader for liberal causes...

...Harry Truman indisputably lacked style...

...While Truman was a lovable man who will forever stand out among our presidents for his humanity and courage, he made many mistakes, some of them whoppers...

...I’rumn: A fliogruphy...

...On the domestic scene, Truman, although not by any means a Joe McCarthy, instituted unduly restrictive classification and loyalty programs in the federal government...

...fect-with little explanation of I heir significance, either at the time or in the broader context of history...

...He had Democratic majorities in both houses...

...Instead of twisting arms on Capitol Hill, in March he flew off to Key West for ano1:her “working vacation,” which was truly Reaganesque since he had already rested in the Keys just after the fall election -and doesn’t seem to have returned to the White House until May...

...In the 45 years since, we’ve had only the period between 1961 and 1965, when the New Frontier and the Great Society briefly revived a spirit of generosity and hope before that spirit was crushed by Vietnam and Watergate...

...He had Democratic majorities in both houses...

...When that effort failed, many then supported the third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace...

...The music of Lerner and Loewe was certainly part of the explanation...

...When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below...

...Ordinarily critical columnists, like The New Republic’s TRB and The New Yorker’s Richard Rovere, said kind things about him...

...Not trying proved that his campaign rhetoric had been cynical, a liberalism adopted not out of conviction but out of the desire to be reelected...

...Truman’s administration also misjudged China’s threats that it would enter the Korean War if the United States crossed the 38th parallel and approached the Yalu River...

...The spirit poured into this letter represents precisely what made Truman lovable, and considered in that light, some of the language is forgivable...

...I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry...

...It is a test Abraham Lincoln passed...

...Indeed, after watching the taste-makes-l:lass game reach its ultimate absurdity in the vanities of the eighties, even the snobs have to admit that there is much that is attractive about the prospect of a plain-man president...

...By excluding South Korea from a defense perimeter he announced in 1949, his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, may have signaled the North Koreans that they could invade South Korea...

...In fact, he seemed to scorn it...

...This radically elevated the educational level of the American people and it provided a passport into the middle of the middle class for many who otherwise would have been doomed to the lower rungs...

...But we also need for him to be someone who refuses to appeal to our selfishness, who instead summons the best that is within us with words that touch our souls...