Harry Truman (56 page)

Dad’s knowledge of military history frequently amazed many people. Joe Feeney, the genial ex-navy captain who became the White House congressional liaison man in 1949, had majored in history in college, and he loved to draw Dad into conversations on their mutually favorite subject. Two others who invariably joined the conversation - I should add that most of this talking was done at Key West; there simply wasn’t time in the White House - were Charlie Ross and Bill Hassett, both very well-read gentlemen.

One night, the four of them began discussing the great military battles of history. Charlie and Bill began disagreeing quite vehemently on who did what and why. “There’s only one way to settle this,” Dad said, and called for four settings of silverware. He placed them on the table and proceeded to give a step-by-step narration of the fourteen major battles of world history, starting with Hannibal’s victory at Cannae. As they were going to bed that night, Joe Feeney said, “Mr. President, I never enjoyed anything so much. My father-in-law was a newspaper editor, but he was a great disciple of religious history. One night I listened to him for a couple of hours while he went over the thirty-six forms of religion, who the founders were, that sort of thing.”

Dad’s eyes brightened. “You know I’ve been doing some studying on religious history,” he said. “Tomorrow morning down at the beach we’ll talk about it.”

As promised, the next morning Dad took Joe with him for the five or six block walk to the private beach where he swam at Key West. They sat on the sea wall, and for two hours he discussed religious history with the same kind of detail he had lavished on the fourteen great battles.

“Mr. Truman was so far ahead of the professors I had in history,” Joe says, “that there was simply no comparison.”

George Elsey made a similar comment to me. “When I first became an aide, I must confess I was a little condescending about the President’s supposed expertise in history. After all, I had majored in history at Princeton and Harvard.” George smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I soon found out that he was one of the most thoroughly informed men, historically, that I have ever met. When I made a historical reference or comparison, he not only agreed with me, but his comments very quickly made it clear that he was familiar with all the details.”

Although I have been repeatedly exposed to Dad’s prowess in history, there are still times when even I am a little staggered by the depth of his knowledge. For instance, I was going through his letter file for the year 1948 and came across a note he dashed off to a New Yorker, commenting on a newspaper editorial which had compared Henry Wallace to the Greek demagogue, Alcibiades. Dad disagreed. “Aeschines is the person Henry most resembles. Of course, when Alcibiades went over to the enemy, that is Sparta, he followed a line that Henry is now following. It is a most difficult thing these days to find reporters and editors who know anything about Ancient History.”

Aeschines was a Greek politician who argued that it was hopeless for democratic Athens to oppose the power of militaristic Macedonia, and recommended surrender to them.

Dad’s expertise in history was something he brought to the presidency. In his seven and three-quarters years in the White House, he became an expert on many other matters as well. A good example of this aspect of his presidency was the debate over interest rates between the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department. John Snyder favored one approach, and he made a forthright presentation of his case. But as usual Dad insisted on hearing every conceivable point of view on the subject. He sent for every top monetary man in the country to come to Washington to talk with him. Among them was that quintessential Republican, Winthrop Aldrich, chairman of the Chase National Bank. Joe Feeney made a special trip to New York to persuade Aldrich to come to Washington. He very grumpily agreed, after warning Joe in advance he was on the side of the Federal Reserve Board.

Aldrich came in about ten o’clock one night for a fifteen-minute talk. Joe Feeney and four or five other aides were so intrigued by the potential clash of personalities between him and Dad that they lingered in the outer office, waiting to see what would happen. Fifteen minutes passed and no Aldrich. Thirty minutes, and still no Aldrich. An hour and a half elapsed before he finally emerged, looking a little dazed. “You know, gentlemen,” he said to Joe Feeney and the other aides, “it’s no wonder that he’s the President. He’s a better banker than I am.”

For six weeks, Dad talked this way to bankers and tax experts and economic advisers from as far away as California. Finally, he ruled in favor of the Federal Reserve Board. Joe Feeney cannot help sounding a little bitter when he looks back on the press reaction to the decision. “Every newspaper in the country said it was made in a twenty-minute discussion, and that John Snyder would probably resign that day, which was ridiculous.”

Dad was always willing to experiment with new approaches to old problems. But unlike Presidents who have succeeded him, he found little use for the so-called political intellectuals from our universities, who have since become such a force - not a very positive one, in my opinion - on the Washington scene. George Elsey tells an amusing story about one attempt to use these theoretical gentlemen early in 1950. A social psychologist with a great professional reputation had known George in his student days at Princeton, and he took advantage of this acquaintance to make numerous suggestions about Dad’s speeches, aimed at increasing their persuasive powers. George finally got tired of corresponding with him and invited him to come down to Washington and participate in the actual writing of a presidential speech.

The invitation was eagerly accepted, and the theorist was soon in the White House, talking about inductive reasoning and similar jargon of his trade. “I introduced him to my fellow speechwriters Dave Bell and Dave Lloyd, both of whom knew of him by reputation,” George says. “The speech was not a particularly sensitive one and there were no questions of security or other matters to bother us. So we invited the professor to have dinner with us that evening and work with us on the speech.”

At 4:30 a.m., the professor walked out of the White House and returned to Princeton. He was never heard from again.

Even though his senatorial years were growing distant by 1949, my father still remained in close touch with the personalities and prejudices of most leading senators and congressmen. He continued to put up with their prima donna complexes, their idiosyncrasies, and their prejudices. (If you think I am exaggerating, let me reveal to you that when the Big Four - the Speaker of the House, the majority leader of the House, the president pro tem of the Senate, the majority leader of the Senate - came to Dad’s office for their weekly meeting, they frequently got into an argument over who should go in first.) Most important, Dad maintained his friendship with senators on both sides of the aisle. Along with Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, he was friendly with Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Senator William Langer of North Dakota, both outspoken Republicans. While he used Joe Feeney for day-to-day liaison, Dad did a great deal of cajoling and arm twisting himself. “He could pick up a phone and talk to ninety percent of the people in the Senate any time of the day or night,” Joe Feeney says. “Even some of his worst enemies - as far as the newspapers were concerned. When we were trying to push a bill through, we got suggestions from everyone, but it was hard to beat the President. He was really a fine professor in human chemistry. He generally knew where to go; if he couldn’t go direct, he generally knew how to get there.”

Even Joe Feeney, with his daily contacts on the Hill, was seldom ahead of Dad in judging how a senator would vote. One of the big battles of the second term was over the displaced persons bill. It aroused the forces of bigotry and reaction almost as viciously as the Communists-in-government agitation. Dad was fighting to get into the United States people who were languishing in refugee camps, five years after the war was over. Their own countries refused to take them back, or they could not return to their homelands because the Communists would kill them. In the course of this battle, Joe Feeney came to Dad and told him excitedly he had just persuaded a particular Eastern Democratic senator to switch his vote to the administration’s side. Dad shook his head and said, “You’d better go back and talk with him again.”

Joe did so, and returned to tell Dad flatly that he was wrong. The senator had promised once more to vote in favor of the bill.

“Joe,” Dad said, “you and I had better go over and have a dip in the pool.”

They went for a swim, and Dad gave him a very quiet lecture which began: “Now I want to tell you something. Politics is a very unusual game. You have to know the background of each senator and you have to know the reason why he’s in the Senate.”

The following day the vote was taken, and I regret to say we lost. Joe glumly called in the results, and Dad said, “I’ll make a bet with you, your friend wasn’t with us.”

“You’re sure right,” Joe said mournfully.

Dad also kept in close touch with public spokesmen outside of Congress. One of these was Walter White, the head of the NAACP. Another was Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago. He rarely went to Chicago without having a private meeting with him. Another churchman with whom he was close was Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. Dad not only liked him but enjoyed him as a character of the first order. One time, when Dad was in Boston, he called Cardinal Cushing and told him he would like to come for a visit. He assumed it would be private and off the record as usual. When he arrived at the Cardinal’s residence, escorted by Matt Connelly and Joe Feeney, there was a brass band out front and a brigade of Knights of Columbus with plumed hats. Dad got out of the car and said, “You know, this is the quietest reception I have ever had.”

During these early months of the second term, Myron C. Taylor, the President’s personal representative to the Vatican, resigned and Dad was faced with the problem of finding a replacement for this politically sensitive post. Monsignor Tiernan, Dad’s old regimental chaplain, was retiring from the army after long service and was having a checkup at Walter Reed Hospital. Dad went over to see him and propositioned him, Baptist style. “Padre,” he said, “I need someone to get at the Pope through the back door and I think you are the one to do it.”

“I don’t want that job,” said Monsignor Tiernan. “I’m through working.”

Another man with whom Dad conferred at the opening of the second term was Herbert Hoover. He had drawn him out of retirement to do an exhaustive study of the government, and recommend a sweeping reorganization to improve the efficiency of the executive branch. Hoover was deeply touched by this recognition, and he and Dad soon became close friends. One day, in a rush of emotion, he said, “Mr. President, I think you have added ten years to my life by giving me this job.”

On August 10, 1949, Dad sent the former President the following telegram:

During the summer of 1949, I had a delightful opportunity to even a score with Dad - a little bit, anyway. After all those years of being lectured and accused about my non-letter-writing, I was relaxing in Independence when I got a non-letter from him - a mere postcard. I promptly went out and bought a local postcard, a glossy full-color photograph of our house. The caption read: “Independence, Missouri - Summer White House.” It went on to tell how this spacious mid-Victorian home was built about eighty years ago by Mrs. Truman’s grandfather, George Porterfield Gates. “The house has fourteen rooms and has been completely remodeled and redecorated to meet the requirements of the President and his family.” Beside that bit of baloney I wrote: “And I know who did it! Me!” (This was a tribute to a recent outburst of energy on my part which involved painting the kitchen.) Beneath this bravado, I wrote: “Passed through here on my way from Kansas City to Grandview and stopped by this historic spot. . . . The X marks the room of its most famous resident. You send me cards, all you get is a card.”

Guess whose room I marked with an X?

The chief reason Dad’s optimism soared in these first eighteen months of his second term was the smooth operation of the White House and the various agencies he had created to assist the President in policy forming and decision making. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Council of Economic Advisers - all of these things did not exist when my father became President. Along with all his other problems, he had to tackle the job of organizing the White House to enable the United States to assume the leadership of the free world.

Best of all, the White House staff was operating with efficiency and loyalty and a minimum of palace guard tactics. There was one man who was most responsible for this phenomenon, in the opinion of almost every ex-aide with whom I have talked while preparing this book. He was Charles S. Murphy, the steady, genial lawyer from North Carolina. Everything began to mesh beautifully from the day Charlie arrived on the scene, early in 1947. He shared Dad’s calm, persistent approach to problems, and his awareness that they could not be solved by a slogan. Not only was his advice invaluable, thanks to his years as counsel to the Senate, but he was also a speechwriter of extraordinary talent.

Charlie, who is a modest man, insists the President deserves most of the credit for the way the White House was run. The key to making the gears mesh was the morning staff meeting which usually took place at 9:30 a.m. It lasted thirty minutes and was attended by some ten or twelve staff members. On his desk, Dad had a file with slots marked with the name of each man. He would look through this and hand the various men papers from their respective slots. Then each man was given a chance to speak. Current problems were discussed, appointments were arranged, and by the time the meeting was over, thirty minutes later, everyone knew what was going on in everybody else’s bailiwick. “There was always time for some humor in these meetings,” Charlie says. “And notwithstanding the fact that we all felt somewhat as if we were living in the eye of a hurricane, these staff meetings were usually relaxed. In fact, as I look back, I think they may have been the most relaxed periods that most of us enjoyed during the day.”