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Truman Defeats Dewey

Aug 25, 2008
By .
Books, Politics & Current Events

It's getting close to sixty years ago that Harry Truman, who at the time (and after he won) enjoyed popular approval close to that of George W. Bush, won reelection in 1948. History, which has 20/20 hindsight, has since vindicated Truman, whose forceful (yet measured) response to Soviet aggression prevented further encroachment of Stalinism in Europe, made South Korea and Japan places where Starcraft-playing otaku can protest against America's token military presence, and in general provided the template by which post-FDR Presidents should be judged, at least in foreign policy. He also, without fanfare, integrated the military, an astonishing feat of courage and good sense for a racist from a segregated state.

Truman's major failures, at least as I read them, were the creation of the American national security state (really a continuance of FDR's policies), allowing Mao to take over China (not that he could have done much to stop it given the ineptitude of the Kuomintang), setting the precedent for less successful American adventures in places like Vietnam and Iraq, in the hands of Presidents (and cabinets – Truman had George Marshall and Dean Acheson) less skillful than his own, and his attempt to nationalize the steel industry. While I personally consider these to be failures, I agree with the consensus and consider Truman the best President of the past century.

In remembrance of those days, Truman's almost hometown paper, the Kansas City Star, is reproducing its coverage of the 1948 election, in real time. It promises to be a fascinating reading experience. McCain fans (not that their man is a Harry Truman) should take heart from this, while Obama fans (not that their man is a Harry Truman) should consider Truman's victory even more carefully.

On the same note, while we're obsessing over Obama's vague association as the charitable board token lawyer with a terrorist (when I attend charitable board meetings as the token lawyer, and I do, I'm sort of ashamed to admit I have to struggle to remember some of their names, but none of them know about this blog), or that McCain doesn't know how many houses his wife owns, consider the Star's review of a new book by the former FBI agent in charge of Kansas City on the history of the Kansas City mob, which owned city political boss Tom Pendergast, who owned Missouri Senator and Vice President Harry Truman, right up until the day FDR died, at which point everyone owned Truman.

For perspective. Ayers, Johnson, Hagee, and Keating are small potatoes compared to a Tom Pendergast.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

6 Comments
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6 Comments

  1. tgb  •  Aug 25, 2008 @4:47 pm

    In the last 60 years we've gone from Truman through Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Dubya. What can we conclude from this?

    Darwin was wrong.

  2. tgb  •  Aug 25, 2008 @6:56 pm

    For some reason it got left out, but the previous comment was shamelessly stolen from Mort Sahl.

  3. Chris H  •  Aug 26, 2008 @5:07 am

    Patrick, I'll happily grant you Missouri as a segregationist state that to this day struggles maybe more than any other state in the union with a nasty, unspoken undercurrent of racism….

    …but I'm going to need a cite on Truman himself as a racist, especially after Harry had done some living and gotten some education. David McCullough certainly didn't seem to see it in his biography.

  4. Patrick  •  Aug 26, 2008 @1:07 pm

    David McCullough did see it. Look up Truman's comments about Jews in the same biography. I more or less grant the one with the other. I also allow for the times, which makes Truman's action all the more remarkable in my view.

  5. Chris H  •  Aug 26, 2008 @2:08 pm

    I grant that he had a colorful way of referring to people–Jews, Italians, Germans, Truman had a word for all of them. But the language he used (captured mostly for posterity in letters to Bess) were written either during his army life in WWI or while under the thumb of the Pendergast machine. I suppose it represents a form of racism, although it seems more a racism of ignorance (which I'm more forgiving of than some) than actual hatred.

    By the time 1940 rolled around, Truman was already clear of that and heading down a path towards the early civil rights movement.

  6. Patrick  •  Aug 26, 2008 @2:19 pm

    I think we're on the same page, Chris.

    My favorite Truman story (vividly set forth in McCullough's biography, which is almost Boswellesque in its greatness) is his challenging the music critic who took a cheap shot at his daughter Margaret's piano recital (for political reasons) to a fistfight. Apart from LBJ, he was the last President who entered and left the office a human being.