Well I finally finished
Truman, David McCullough's 8 million page biography of Harry S. Truman, our finest president ever! (I read the copy from the Cosgrove Library at Harry S. Truman College, natch!)
Now I don't tend to read a lot of biography or history in book form, so my first comment is wow! Besides learning a lot about Truman, I just had a very good brush up on my American and World history from about 1900-1960. I found Truman's early years to be the most fascinating. These years covered his life as the good son of hardscrabble Kansas City-area farmers; his early, aborted career as a bank-teller; his forced return to farming; his decision to fight in World War I and his rapid rise through the military to Captain of Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery; his return to civilian life and failed attempts as a haberdasher; and his late-in-life entry to politics, working with the Pendergast Democratic machine, which controlled politics in western Missouri. Truman through these years is, in my terms, "good company," by which I mean he's a very interesting and likable character, driven by his ideals, who is nice to have around when I'm eating dinner, riding the train, and otherwise reading alone.
The next two-thirds of the book deal with his Senate career, his selection as running-mate to the nearly dead Roosevelt in the 1944 elections (a selection that he very sincerely opposed!), and his presidency. Also a good read. Here's what I learned:
-Harry Truman, on the farm, enjoyed the pigs, and had a favorite pig named Carry Nation.
-Bess Truman, moving into a post-Roosevelt White House, was unhappy with the quality of Old Fashioneds being served by White House staff, until the bartender, after some failed attempts, finally poured straight bourbon over ice and served it plain. "Now *that's* how we drink an Old Fashioned in Missouri," Mrs. President was heard to remark. [I'm sure I'm misquoting that, but you get the idea.]
-Harry Truman also drank plenty of bourbon, and liked to stay up late playing poker in a tattered old bathrobe.
-Truman believed in the personal touch, responding personally to thousands of well-wishes after his assassination attempt [by Puerto Rican nationalists. Truman, incidentally, fully supported Puerto Rican self-determination.]
-Harry Truman had no talent for making money, and turned to a political career more or less out of desperation. Even as an administrative judge and U.S. Senator, he barely kept afloat: during re-election for U.S. Senate, banks foreclosed on the family farm! After the presidency, he and Bess retired, as planned, to the family home in Missouri, but even if they had wanted to stay in Washington, it doesn't look like they could have afforded to. He made, and lost, a great deal of money selling rights to his memoirs, and then hiring out the work; most of his financial security late in life came from selling the family farm [which had been re-acquired shortly into his second Senate term]!
-Harry Truman did make the ultimate decision to drop the [atomic] bomb [on Hiroshima and Nagasaki], but under the circumstances, it was more of a non-decision. *Everybody* agreed that this was the best and the right thing to do. It ended the war 6 months or a year earlier, saving not only American lives (which Truman, as president, and survivor of some of the worst trench warfare the world has ever seen, was sincerely obligated to do), but the lives of many, many Japanese soldiers as well.
-The rest of his presidency was more or less dedicated to developing a foreign policy by which no atomic weapon need ever be deployed. The Marshall Plan (to rebuild Europe) and the Truman Doctrine (of Soviet/communist containment) are exactly what got us into the Cold War - and what won it. Meanwhile, a soviet takeover of Greece, Turkey, S. Korea, and more were averted, without the use of nuclear force.
-Gen. MacArthur, and many Americans, were proponents of using nuclear force up and down the Chinese coast during the Korean conflict. Truman would have no such talk. Gen. MacArthur was fired. Constitutionally, civilian command of the armed forces was maintained. Truman seems to have uniquely understood the magnitude of nuclear warfare, and how it changed foreign relations and military objectives forever.
And then there was his domestic policy! A staunch supporter of the New Deal and equal civil rights! Health! Education! Welfare! "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" was the battle cry of his re-election campaign against moderate Republican Thomas Dewey in the 1948 campaign that Truman, according to all of the major media and every major poll, was supposed to lose in a landslide. My favorite part of this campaign is that, after receiving the Democratic nomination at about 2:00 in the morning, a week after the Republicans nominated Dewey at their convention and hobbled together their progressive/moderate platform, Truman immediately called an emergency session of Congress back to order, and demanded the Republican majority to make good on their promises of progressive/moderate legislation *right now* - not next year, after the presidential election! Of course the Republicans got nothing progressive done, because they were a bunch of Wall Street conservatives led by Bob Taft, and they were only running Dewey as a popular front. Truman called their bluff, and ran the "whistle-stop" campaign that got out the farm vote in every state, and consequently wound up winning the popular vote by a nice margin, and the electoral vote by a huge landslide. (Oh, also, he won even though the Democratic Party was split *three* ways that year: East Coast liberal Democrat Wallace ran a spolier campaign, and Strom Thurmond and other southern racists split with the Democratic Party over civil rights and ran on the so-called Dixiecrat platform. So all you Al Gore whiners can please shut up about my votes for Ralph Nader! Give 'Em Hell, Harry!)
Okay, that's enough. Go read up on Truman. I love the guy. I'm gonna get a damn Harry Truman tattoo!
