Harry Truman (3 page)
Authors: Margaret Truman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography/Presidents & Heads of State
For two solid minutes, the convention hall was drowned in total pandemonium as the delegates roared their support of this daring move. Even liberal columnist Max Lerner, who had been writing “this has been the Convention of the vacuum - the only ruling passion of empty men is the feat of looking foolish,” did an abrupt about-face and reported: “It was a great speech for a great occasion, and as I listened I found myself applauding. . . .”
The following day my father brought himself up to date with more notes on his desk calendar:
Arrived in Washington at the White House at 5:30 a.m., my usual getting up time. But I go to bed at 6:00 and listen to the news. Sleep until 9:15, order breakfast and go to the office at 10:00.
I called a special session of the Congress. My, how the opposition screams. I’m going to attempt to make them meet their platform promises before the election. That’s according to the “kept” press and the opposition leadership “cheap politics.” I wonder what “expensive politics” will be like! We’ll see.
The following day he was even more pleased by the reaction he was getting:
Editorials, columns and cartoons are gasping and wondering.
None of the smart folks thought I would call the Congress. I called em for July 26th; turnip day at home.
Dewey synthetically milks cows and pitches hay for the cameras just as that other faker Teddy Roosevelt did - but he never heard of “turnip day.”
I don’t believe the USA wants any more fakers - Teddy and Franklin are enough. So I’m going to make a common sense intellectually honest campaign. It will be a novelty - and it will win.
While he was standing the Republicans and their publicity men on their ears, my father had to continue coping with the horrendous world situation. On July 19, 1948, he made the following notes on a meeting with Secretary of State George Marshall and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal:
Have quite a day. See some politicos. A meeting with General Marshall and Jim Forrestal on Berlin and the Russian situation. Marshall states the facts and the condition with which we are faced. I’d made the decision ten days ago to
stay in Berlin.
Jim wants to hedge - he always does. He’s constantly sending me alibi memos, which I return with directions and the facts.
We’ll stay in Berlin - come what may.
Royal Draper & Jim Forrestal come in later. I have to listen to a rehash of what I know already and reiterate my “stay in Berlin” decision. I don’t pass the buck, nor do I alibi out of any decision I make.
Fighting as he was to keep the world from blowing itself up, there were times when my father found the situation almost unbearable. On July 10, he poured out his feelings in a hitherto unpublished letter to Winston Churchill. The great British leader, out of office, had written him a letter wishing him well in the election and voicing his fear that the Kremlin might begin a war in the autumn. “I greatly admire your conduct of international affairs in Europe during your tenure of the most powerful office in the world. I only wish I could have been more help,” Churchill wrote.
Here is Dad’s reply:
My dear Winston:
I was deeply touched by your good letter of June 7. I am going through a terrible political “trial by fire.” Too bad it must happen at this time.
Your great country and mine are founded on the fact that the people have the right to express themselves on their leaders, no matter what the crisis.
Your note accompanying “The Gathering Storm” is highly appreciated, and I have made it a part of the book.
We are in the midst of grave and trying times. You can look with satisfaction upon your great contribution to the overthrow of Nazism & Fascism in the world. “Communism” - so called, is our next great problem. I hope we can solve it without the “blood and tears” the other two cost.
May God bless and protect you
Ever sincerely your friend
Harry Truman
On this same crowded July 19, Dad had to play another important presidential role - the ceremonial presence at solemn occasions: “Went to Pershing’s funeral in the marble amphitheater in Arlington. The hottest damn place this side of hell and Bolivar, Mo. An impressive ceremony. This is the fifth time I prepared to attend the General’s funeral. . . .”
The reference to Bolivar was inspired by a recent visit we had made to that little town in southwest Missouri, to assist the president of Venezuela in dedicating a statue of the great South American liberator after whom it is named, Simón Bolívar. It was a scorching July day, and we practically melted. In spite of the heat, General Pershing’s funeral was one ceremony that my father would not have missed, no matter what was happening elsewhere. There were few Americans he revered more than General of the Armies John J. Pershing, whom Dad called “my old commander.” He had served under him in World War I, and he knew what Pershing had achieved, against terrible odds. One of the first things Dad did, in the hectic days after he became President, was pay a call on the General, in his room at Walter Reed Hospital.
My father ended his notes to himself on July 19 with a personal lament. Mother and I had returned to Missouri, leaving him alone in the White House: “Bess & Margaret went to Mo. at 7:30 EDT, 6:30 God’s time. I sure hated to see them go. Came back to the great white jail and read the papers, some history, and then wrote this. It is hot and humid and lonely. Why in hell does anybody want to be a head of state? Damned if I know.”
Dad’s only escape from this pressure was the yacht
Williamsburg.
On July 26 he wrote to his sister Mary: “I went down the river on the yacht Friday at noon and slept almost around the clock. I sure needed it. And I’ll need some more before November.”
Still in a gloomy mood, he added:
It’s all so futile. Dewey, Wallace, the cockeyed Southerners and then if I win - which I’m afraid I will - I’ll probably have a Russian war on my hands. Two wars are enough for anybody and I’ve had two.
I go to Congress tomorrow and read them a message requesting price control, housing and a lot of other necessary things and I’ll in all probability get nothing. But I’ve got to try.
The weather is fine here. I hope it’s not too hot there. I’ll be home Sunday to vote on Tuesday.
Then back here to Congress for the balance of August. And then the campaign and the ballyhoo and Nov. 2 will be here in a hurry and my troubles will be over or just beginning however you look at it. But we’ll win anyway.
Two days later, my father wrote me a letter. I was busy trying to lose weight in Missouri by gardening and painting the kitchen pantry. He combined this knowledge and his worries over Congress in his letter:
Dear Margie: - I was highly pleased to get your nice letter. And more than glad to get the telegram from you and your mother about the message to Congress.
You seem to have been slaving away at your paint job and your garden. I am hoping to see an excellent result in each instance. I shall expect to be able to pick a nice bouquet from the garden when I come home Sunday and I shall hope to be able to see myself in those slick pantry walls!
I am somewhat exhausted myself getting ready for this terrible Congress. They are in the most awful turmoil any Congress, I can remember, ever has been. Some of them want to quit right away some of them want to give the Dixiecrats a chance to filibuster and the Majority are very anxious to put the Pres in the hole if they can manage it.
It will take a few days for the message to sink in completely.
In the meantime I shall take it easy and let ‘em sweat.
On July 31, Dad flew to New York to make a speech. There he saw the first proof that he had knocked some of the defeatism out of the Democratic Party. He noted it on his calendar in the following words: “Great reception in N.Y. O’Dwyer, mayor of N.Y., met me for
the first time!
He’s either been sick, out of town or too busy before. It’s good sign because he’s a bandwagon boy.”
Unfortunately, the same day my father flew on to Missouri to vote in the Democratic primary. There his spirits plunged again. The Democratic Party in his home state, and even in his home county, was in terrible shape. He noted glumly on his calendar: “Saw Rufus Burrus, candidate for Congress in the 4th Mo Cong district which I had way in 1933 set up for myself. Didn’t get it. Went to the Senate instead - and became President. Some change I’d say. Rufus has not a chance.”
The local politicians had let Dad down badly. Instead of capitalizing on the prestige of having a Missouri man in the White House, they had “taken to cutting each other’s throats and mine too [he noted in his calendar]. My brother Vivian . . . told me all about the situation politically, in my home county. I don’t see how it can be so bad - but it is.”
My father voted and flew back to Washington. Very few pro-Truman Democrats fared well in the Missouri primary. From the White House, he wrote to his sister Mary: “The election in Missouri was disappointing but I still hope we can carry the state in the fall.” He was consoled by the Tennessee elections, in which Boss Ed Crump of Memphis had been beaten badly. Crump was one of the first Democratic leaders to come out against Dad, earlier in 1948. “Old Man Crump received a well deserved beating in Tennessee,” Dad wrote. “He has always been against me. Even in 1944, that delegation never did make my nomination [as vice president] unanimous. So I’m not sorry for him.”
Then he turned to the special session of Congress which was accomplishing nothing. The Republicans were too busy fulminating against the idea of the special session, as a “last hysterical gasp of an expiring administration.”
Although Dad expected them to do nothing, he had sent them a legislative package crammed with vitally needed bills on control of inflation, housing, on civil rights, aid to education, and similar national problems. He asked for an increase in the minimum wage, a meaningful national health program, an extension of Social Security coverage, and funds to bring cheap electricity to the rural parts of the nation. He would have welcomed action on any or all of these recommendations, and his disgust is evident in the comment he made to his sister:
My special session has turned out to be a dud as I was sure it would. They are just fooling around doing nothing as I expected. It is a crying shame for them to act like that when the country so sorely needs action.
When Congress adjourned on August 12, my father was able to denounce their performance as a “do-nothing” session of a “do-nothing” Congress. Dad told his sister:
The Congress ran off and left everything just as I expected they would do and now they are trying to blame
me
because they did nothing. I just don’t believe people can be fooled that easily.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day work of the presidency had to be done. Apologizing to his sister Mary on August 18 because he hadn’t written to her, Dad explained:
My writing hand doesn’t work as well as it used. Signing documents and memos at the rate of 600 to a thousand a day has worn down my control to some extent. But I do as best I can.
Most of the time, Dad was philosophical about it. On September 2 he told his sister:
I’ve had as usual a very hectic week, seeing customers [his word for White House visitors], writing speeches, signing documents and making decisions, national and international. But there’s no use crying about it. I’m here and the job has to be done.
Then, in the teeth of statements from pollsters and pundits that he did not have a chance, he calmly prophesied victory:
It looks now like another four years of slavery. I’d be much better off personally if we lose the election but I fear that the country would go to hell and I have to try to prevent that.
The Republicans may have supplied us with plenty of political ammunition, but one thing they did not supply was that equally vital ingredient for political campaigns -money. For a while, it did not look as if the Democrats were going to do very much in that department either. The lack of money in the party war chest was literally terrifying. Not until September 14, three days before we started our first major campaign tour, did the Democrats even have a finance chairman. Colonel Louis A. Johnson, former Assistant Secretary of War, took on the thankless job and proceeded to accomplish miracles.
The first major crisis came on Labor Day, when we went to Detroit to make the traditional kickoff speech in Cadillac Square. Typically, Dad managed to convert it into a mini-whistle-stop tour going up and back, beginning with speeches in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at 8:15 a.m., and ending with another rear platform performance in Toledo, Ohio, at 11:55 p.m. Everywhere, people were astonished by the crowds - there were 25,000 in Republican Grand Rapids in spite of a heavy downpour. But the speech in Cadillac Square was the heart of the trip. It was aimed at working men, not just in Detroit but throughout the United States on a national radio hookup. On Saturday morning Oscar Chapman, who was handling the advance planning for the campaign, was coolly informed by radio network executives that they wanted to see the $50,000 fee by the end of the day or they were going to cancel the Monday broadcast. The local Detroit labor unions did not have that much cash on hand, and only a frantic appeal by Chapman to Governor Roy J. Turner of Oklahoma raised the money from wealthy Democrats in that state. Thus, Dad was able to go ahead with a speech that galvanized numerous lukewarm labor leaders, such as AFL president William Green, CIO president Philip Murray, and Teamsters’ president Daniel Tobin - three who had been conspicuously absent from the Democratic National Convention.
There were times when my father had to step in and do his own fundraising. In mid-September, as we were packing to board the campaign train for our first national swing, party treasurer Louis Johnson called a group of wealthy Democrats to the White House and Dad got up on a chair in the Red Room to inform them that if they did not come through with $25,000, the “Truman Special” would not get beyond Pittsburgh. Two men immediately pledged $10,000, and that is how we got rolling.