The special summer book review supplement of the Washington Post (June 14, 2009) contained a review by Christopher Buckley of a post-presidency auto trip by Harry and Bess Truman (Matthew Algeo, Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure). Truman was succeeded in the White House in January, 1953 by Dwight Eisenhower. Truman had a 22% approval rating which had caused him not to seek another term (the term limitation Amendment did not apply to Truman). The military stalemate in Korea and the consequent financial burdens had caused him to lose the temporary popularity which had led to his re-election against New York Governor, Thomas E. Dewey, in 1948. Truman had been an accidental vice-president and president.
FDR, in order to gain enough convention delegates for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, accepted the speaker of the House, John Nance Garner, as vice-presidential candidate. As the 1940 Democratic convention loomed, Garner was displaced for his old-fashion image and his doubts about the president seeking a third term. The secretary of agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, became FDR’s running–mate and Wallace became vice-president in January, 1941. Wallace’s family in Iowa had been leaders in American agriculture, but Henry also was involved in mystic groups and policies supporting the Soviet Union. The unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (with strong Communist ties) became very influential in Democratic politics and pushed for Wallace. (It was during the New Deal that so many Soviet spies entered US government service.)
With the beginning of US intervention in World War II, FDR appointed Wallace to chair the economic mobilization commission. But Wallace did not perform well and others were charged with the job. The ailing FDR had appointed as “deputy president” the former South Carolina senator and sitting Supreme Court justice, James F. Byrnes. Byrnes left the Court for the White House where he organized the US administration for victory. Wallace was sent on long missions abroad. I recall the one comic book my parents subscribed to for my brother and me,True Comics, had features on the visits to the Soviet Union by Vice-President Wallace and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt where their pictures spoke of the superiority of Communism giving minorities opportunities unlike the US. (The comic had featured an article on the brilliance of Soviet Marshall Timoshenko on the Ukrainian Front, and the next year Stalin executed him as a secret Nazi agent.)
In the November 1942 mid-term elections the Republican Party’s critique of FDR’s foreign policy gave the Republicans gains in the Senate and House where they came within five votes of control of the House of Representatives. With the 1944 presidential election and FDR’s declining health, Wallace could not be continued as vice-president despite his strong left support. The obvious choice was Jimmy Byrnes. But Byrnes had been born a Catholic in South Carolina but could not have had a local political future if he had not become a Protestant. The leaders of the northern states where Catholics were the dominant political force felt it would be hard to sell a former Catholic. The leaders turned to Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri who chaired a senate committee that investigated the failures or corruption of war contracts. Truman defeated Thomas Dewey’s vice-presidential running mate, Honest John Bricker, Governor of Ohio.
Truman’s earlier success had been as an officer in World War I and as a veteran. He did not do well in business and was elected to county offices by the Kansas City, MO machine of the Pendergasts. They ran a wide-open city which contributed to America’s musical heritage of Ragtime and Jazz. When the US Navy’s shore patrol in 1917 closed down New Orleans’ entertainment neighborhood, Storeyville, to protect the US sailors, the musicians moved upriver, especially to Pendergasts’ Kansas, City, Missouri.
Truman was nominated by the Pendergasts to the US Senate in 1934 where he was mainly in the background. When he emerged as successor of FDR in April, 1945 he sought to remedy the decision at the Democratic convention and appointed Jimmy Byrnes as secretary of state. They participated in the Potsdam Conference and Byrnes sought to conclude treaties to end World War II. They sent General George C. Marshall, former army chief of staff, to China to seek to integrate Mao’s communists into the nationalist government of Chiang. Truman’s advisors continued to seek a ‘Third Way’ solution in China including the communists which was not realistic and thus kept in US government persons who went over the edge in helping the communist cause (this is the background to the McCarthy investigations of the State Department).
In November 1946, the Republicans re-gained control of the House and Senate for the first time since the New Deal. Senator Robert A. Taft (Ohio) became the pace-setter in the Congress which was elected due to the continuation of economic controls by Truman. The Taft-Hartley Act, which permitted states to opt out of federal labor restrictions (Right to Work) was a central piece of legislation. To seek to regain public approval Truman replaced Byrnes as secretary of state with General George Marshall. (Byrnes later was elected governor of South Carolina on an anti-Truman platform which prepared the way for the election to the senate of Strom Thurman.)
Truman was re-elected president in 1948 against all predictions. The continued confusion in his China policy preceded the Korean War in June, 1950 when Truman sent the US forces into Japan commanded by General of the Army Douglas McArthurm, into Korea, as well as the US navy in the Taiwan Straits and a US military mission to Hanoi to assist the French. Senator Taft and Republican legislators challenged Truman’s unilateral military actions with UN support (Russia boycotted the security council because it did not seat the People’s Republic of China) without the authorization of the US Congress. The November 1950, mid-term elections saw a revival of the Republican Party. Four senior Democratic senate leaders were defeated as well as many in the House. Senator Robert A. Taft had a resounding re-election in Ohio.
After McArthur’s military successes, Communist Chinese armies invaded Korea and a stalemate was created along the original boundary at the 38th parallel. General McArthur proposed a more active response to the Chinese and wrote to the Republican leader in the House, the former House Speaker, Joe Martin. Truman responded by relieving McArthur of his command.
McArthur returned in triumph presenting his farewell address to the joint session of Congress. The McArthur parade on New York’s Fifth Ave. was one of the largest, and he addressed many of the state legislatures. It ensured the decline in Truman’s popularity.
When Truman returned to Independence, MO, his income dropped as there was no presidential pension then. He received his monthly check as a World War I veteran. In the summer of 1953, Harry and Bess Truman drove east to deliver an address in Philadelphia. They stopped at motels along the way. His address criticized the Eisenhower administration and the secretary of defense, GM’s former chairman, Charlie Wilson for reductions of the military budget with the ending of Korean combat.
Copyright © 2010 The Atlas Network.
Developed by The Liberty Lab