America Needs You, Harry Truman

The buck stopped here -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Who was Harry Truman? He was the scrappy, outspoken 33rd President of the U.S. hailing from Missouri. He served with distinction in WW I as a battery commander and then as Colonel. His experience in the Great War served to advance his later political career. He had only been Vice President for 3 months when FDR died at the start of his fourth term, with WW II still going on. Truman was considered by many to be a rube, a hillbilly and wet-behind-the ears. He was (and probably by his own admission) not quite ready for prime time when the weight of a very troubled world was dumped in his lap.

When you look at the giant political tectonic plate shifts that were happening from 1945 thru 1953, you have to feel for anyone trying to manage any part of it. Here are just some of things Truman had to confront starting day one as President: the Cold War, union unrest, wage price control issues, race relations, restoration of Europe, Korea, Allied powers safe-keeping, use of atomic weaponry and recognition of both Israel and Pakistan. Any one of these could be a major stumbling block and a couple of them were for Truman.

Here is the Truman plus column: He vetoed Taft-Hartley (ant-labor law, though veto was overridden), desegregated the armed forces, started the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, initiated NATO, and recognized Israel as a new nation. His minus column should be considered in the context of the times: he initiated loyalty checks to search out communism in the federal government, initiated the Truman Doctrine to contain communism and tried to nationalize the steel industry when a strike threatened to interfere with the Korean War effort. (The seizure was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court). He fired General Douglas MacArthur when it looked like MacArthur might violate a delicate truce and bring the Soviets into the Korean War conflict. This single action gave Truman his lowest approval ratings and calls for his impeachment; in retrospect it seems altogether reasonable that he didn't want the Korean conflict to escalate into WW III. Truman also took a hit to his ratings when he approved the dropping of the Atom bomb on Japan in 1945. In retrospect it probably did bring the war to a quicker end -- the Dresden firebombings in Germany did similar scale damage but took much longer and cost more American lives.

In 2008, many of the GOP faithful have likened W. Bush to Truman -- a straight shooter that makes difficult-but-accurate decisions under duress. Truman's plate was very full -- he probably had more monolithic decisions in his two terms than later Presidents would encounter, including W. Bush. Truman's actions were never myopic or arrogant -- he was an earnest man trying to do a good job. The greatest critique mounted against him (for firing MacArthur) seems narrow and partisan now -- it probably kept us out of a 3rd world war. Truman's greatest malfeasance was surely his McCarthyist red-hunting but that was more a sign of the times. It was more a reaction to a national hysteria than anything else. If you do the grand tally of harm versus good, Truman comes across very positive -- he basically helped to organize the free world in a time of amazing transitions. For W. Bush, the tally of his deeds would be in the red for so many things – he borrowed trouble (Iraq) and fiddled while Rome burned (derivatives crash, gasoline prices). New Orleans never got cleaned up and Osama is still at large. In the final analysis, Chicago’s song from the 70’s is very prescient – American Needs You, Harry Truman.

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