Harry Truman

by Margaret Truman

  The most painful part of this episode was the attacks made on my father by some members of the press, and by the public relations men of the steel companies. He was accused of plotting to seize the nation’s newspapers and radio stations, and set up a dictatorship. The steel companies filled newspapers and magazines with ads picturing the battle as the test of whether our free enterprise system will survive. For someone who had spent much of his time in public office attempting to prevent the greedy members of the business community from destroying free enterprise, this was hard to take. Even more galling was the talk of dictatorship to a man who revered the office of the presidency and the Constitution of the United States as deeply as Dad has revered them, from boyhood.

  My father’s second decision concerned the disposition of the offshore oil resources of the nation. Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada had introduced a resolution which attempted to convey to three states the rights to $100 billion worth of oil. Even before the bill reached Dad’s desk, he announced, “I intend to stand up and fight to protect the people’s interest in this matter.” On May 29, 1952, he vetoed the bill. In his message he pointed out that during his first months as President, he had issued an Executive Order claiming federal jurisdiction over all the mineral resources of the continental shelf, which extends 150 miles or more off the coast of our country.

  Even the traditional three-mile limit could not be claimed by the states, Dad noted, because the rights to these lands were obtained by the federal government through a letter which Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had written in 1793. Scathingly, Dad condemned this “free gift of immensely valuable resources which belong to the entire nation, to the states which happen to be located nearest to them.” The political repercussions, in Texas particularly, were grim. Many leading Democrats openly bolted the party. But my father never wavered from his conviction he had acted rightly on behalf of all the people by refusing to kowtow to a minority of oil barons.

  By now, the political campaign was really heating up. General Eisenhower asked permission to resign from NATO and become a candidate. My father brought him home immediately. I will not be so naïve as to claim Harry S. Truman, the quintessential Democrat, did not begin to regard Ike with a slightly jaundiced eye, from the moment he announced he was a Republican. Nevertheless, I think a conversation, on which Dad made notes several weeks after Ike had come to the White House to give the President his last report on NATO, is worthy of some historical interest.

  They got into a discussion of Point Four, and Ike made it clear he thought little of the program. What did he think was the answer to the world’s economic problems? Dad asked.

  “Birth control,” Ike said.

  “Do me a favor,” Dad said.

  “I’ll be glad to, if I can,” Ike said.

  “Go make a speech on birth control in Boston, Brooklyn, Detroit and Chicago.”

  These were, of course, strongholds of the Catholic Church, and in 1952, any politician who made such a speech in any one of these places would be committing instant suicide.

  Ike did not get the point at all. “He is not as intelligent as I thought,” Dad wrote. “Evidently his staff has furnished the intelligence.”

  As they parted, Ike expressed considerable resentment over some rather nasty comments which certain segments of the press had already begun making about his candidacy. The General had thought he was going to get the Republican nomination on a platter. But Senator Taft had other ideas, and Ike found himself in the middle of a dogfight for delegates. Senator Taft had plenty of newspaper support, and Ike suddenly had become the target of numerous uncomplimentary remarks. Dad grinned. “Ike,” he said, “I suggest you go right down to the office of the Republican National Committee and ask them to equip you with an elephant hide about an inch thick. You’re going to need it.”

  Meanwhile, the President’s wandering daughter took off again. With my best friend Drucie Snyder Horton for company, I headed for Europe aboard the S.S. United States on her maiden voyage. My trip during the previous summer was “official” - which meant I had to stay at embassies and consulates. This time, I insisted on making it as unofficial as a President’s daughter can manage it. I still had Secret Service men on my trail, and there would, I knew, be receptions and welcomes wherever we went. But otherwise we would be relatively free agents.

  Dad was just a little worried about having us on the loose in Europe. We tend to get a little giddy when we are together, and we were adept at being silly. To make sure everything went well, I was ordered to report to the State Department to pick up my passport from no less than Dean Acheson. He had obviously been told to give me a little lecture on how to behave, lest the dignity of the United States be impaired. “Now remember, don’t upset any apple carts,” he said, pointing those formidable eyebrows at me.

  In the same spirit, I told him I would behave myself according to my understanding of the word. “If that’s not good enough for you, that’s too bad,” I said.

  This did not exactly reassure the Secretary of State. Our session down at Foggy Bottom that day explains the touch of acid humor in our relationship which persisted until his death.

  While I was in London, I got an amusing letter from Mother. She was very put out by a silly newspaper story that her grandfather’s relatives were waiting to greet me in Ireland. The story claimed Grandfather Wallace had been born there.

  The White House,

  July 4, 1952

  (It seems like Sunday

  with Dad at home)

  Dear Marg -

  Fred Vinson and Dad and I are going to the baseball game this afternoon. Double header! I haven’t seen one in years. “Mama” Vinson said she wouldn’t sit on a hard seat that long.

  The thing about your grandfather Wallace being born in Ireland is popping up again and I want it settled, once and for all. You will probably have an excellent opportunity to do it in Dublin at a press conference. His name was David Willock Wallace and he was born in Independence, Mo. His father was Benjamin Franklin Wallace and he was born in Green County, Ky. There has never been a “Robert” (as quoted in the papers) in the entire family history. The current story is that I am the daughter of “Robert” and that he still lives somewhere in Ireland. I’m sick and tired of it. . . .

  Mother

  Mother wrote this letter from the White House. We had finally moved back into the Great White Jail in the spring of 1952. Dad was in the middle of coping with the steel strike and had very little time to enjoy the round of parties and receptions which began immediately after we moved in. As a housekeeper, Mother thoroughly enjoyed her new surroundings. The place was painted and papered and decorated down to the most minute details. Personally, I found it more hotel-like than ever.

  The first part of the European trip was a delight. We had lunch with Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in Buckingham Palace, toured Ireland and Scotland, oohed at a Dior showing in Paris, aahed up the Grindelwald in Switzerland, heard The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg, and penetrated the Iron Curtain to tour Berlin. I wanted to see Potsdam, but I was sadly informed it was out of the question. It was in Communist territory, and the cold war was very frigid at that point.

  We left Berlin at night on the so-called HiCog (for High Commissioner of Germany) train. I noticed our official escort, Sam Rieber, the deputy high commissioner for Germany, was very nervous. He was smoking cigarettes by the pack. At 2:00 a.m., Drucie and I were still sitting up, talking, when the train came to a grinding halt. Suddenly it was surrounded by Russian soldiers. Sam Rieber turned pale. He later admitted he worried a year off his life that night. But the Russians turned out to have no interest in anything as spectacular as kidnapping the President’s daughter. They were just playing their old game of harassment on the Berlin railroad. Unwittingly, they did us a favor. They had stopped the train in the suburbs of Potsdam, and from our windows we could see the moonlit walls and roof of the Cecilienhof Palace where my father had met with Marshal Stalin and Churchil
l.

  Everything about our trip was idyllic until we arrived in Sweden. There I discovered that all the angry things Dad said about the hostile American press were mere understatements compared to the fabrications which the Swedish press began to concoct. First, there was a rumor I was in love with Governor Adlai Stevenson. I denied this emphatically. Next the Swedish reporters went from imaginary gossip to fabrication of a nonexistent incident. I returned from a tour of City Hall to discover three of the most important papers in Stockholm were carrying a vivid tale of how my Secret Service agents had “roughed up” newsmen and photographers who wanted to take a picture of me. The story was replete with sneering remarks, such as “Miss Truman is in no danger of her life here - if she does not plan to sing!”

  All this was intensely irritating, but what really infuriated me was the reaction of our ambassador, W. Walton Butterworth, and his fellow diplomats in the American Embassy. Instead of categorically denying the story, they proceeded to attempt to back up the Swedish accusation and practically draw up an indictment of my Secret Service men.

  I waited ten days to write a letter to Dad, hoping I would calm down a little. But the one I wrote was still a scorcher. I told him how Butterworth began apologizing to the Swedish Foreign Office and anyone else who would listen, without even bothering to ask me about the so-called incident.

  He had the chance to stop the editorial in the first place, but when the editor realized Butterworth was so dense, he saw a chance to embarrass the United States and the man running for reelection as Prime Minister. It’s funny because the P.M. is not particularly pro-Russian and the two things don’t go together. The press man at the embassy was also totally inadequate. Fortunately, the Secret Service boys kept their heads or it would have been much worse. Butterworth wanted them to apologize, which would have been ridiculous. . . . I hate to bother you with this but I have never seen firsthand before a man in high position try to put the blame on the little man who couldn’t fight back, namely the Secret Service boys.

  To my amazement, when I returned home I discovered Secretary of State Acheson and everyone else in the State Department defended Ambassador Butterworth’s behavior. For the first time, I got a look at how closely they stick together down in Foggy Bottom. It made me understand why my father never stopped wishing someone would shake up the State Department.

  One mission I did accomplish successfully for Dad was to bring home from England a bottle of Truman’s beer. Dad often teased Cousin Ethel, our family historian, about the fact that Truman’s Beer and Ale is one of the biggest and best-known breweries in England. Cousin Ethel always winced every time she heard the family name associated with the liquor business. The next time Dad went home to Independence, he strolled over to the Noland house and gave Cousin Ethel this sample of the handiwork of the English Trumans. Obviously Dad never forgot one of Mamma Truman’s favorite sayings, “Being too good is apt to be uninteresting,”

  I ended my letter from Sweden with some advice Dad didn’t need. “Give it to ‘em on September 1st and show everybody who’s still on top and in control of the situation.”

  By this time, the presidential campaign was on its way. The Republicans did exactly what Dad predicted they would do in his Jefferson-Jackson Day speech. They abandoned bipartisanship in foreign policy completely and conjured up the black-is-white story that “Korea was born at Yalta.” General MacArthur gave the keynote address at their convention, predictably blaming the Democrats for everything in sight. Herbert Hoover cried out against “our bewildered statesmanship” and John Foster Dulles declared, in the foreign policy plank of the Republican platform, that the Democrats had “lost the peace.” Dad was blamed for allowing Russia to absorb Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and China. For a final whopper, Dulles, the negotiator of the Japanese treaty and a constant companion of Democratic officials in the State Department declared, “In the main, the Republican Party has been ignored and its participation not even invited.” Arthur Vandenberg must have spun in his grave on that one.

  Dad was not in the least surprised by Dulles’s political tactics. At one point during 1948, Dulles returned home from a conference with the Russians in Paris and did not even bother to pay a courtesy call at the White House. Instead, he went directly to Albany to report to the man he thought was going to be the next President - Thomas E. Dewey. Not a few of Dad’s aides were outraged by this snub and urged him to fire Dulles forthwith. But Dad felt his foreign policy was more important than his personal pride, and he passed over the insult in silence.

  He got a modicum of revenge in 1949, when Dulles ran against Herbert Lehman in an off-year election for the seat of the late Senator Robert Wagner. Dulles paid a call on Dad before the campaign began, and they got into a friendly discussion of who was going to win the election. Dad told him he thought Senator Lehman would win because he knew how to talk to the average man in New York. “You’ll get off on a high international plane,” Dad said joshingly. “You’ve been making millions for the big fellows so long you don’t know what people really think or what they’re like.” ( Dulles had been a very successful Wall Street lawyer.)

  He declined to take Dad’s advice and campaigned precisely as Dad had predicted he would - making large oracular statements like his mentor, Dewey. Lehman trounced him easily. The following day, Dad got a telegram that read: “YOU WIN. JOHN FOSTER DULLES.”

  Among the Republican campaign promises in 1952 were even bigger whoppers than the speechmakers told at their convention. They said they would repudiate the Yalta agreements and secure the “genuine independence” of peoples who had become Communist captives. How silly these claims looked later.

  One of the stars of the Republican convention was Senator Joe McCarthy, who was introduced as “Wisconsin’s fighting Marine.” Ike should have seen the trouble coming his way when Joe called Douglas MacArthur “the greatest American that was ever born.” He also said my father had started the Korean War for “publicity purposes” and urged everyone to study his “documents” in the Exhibition Hall which proved the government was still infested by Communists. They proved nothing, of course. They were just his usual gobbledygook.

  These tactics aroused my father’s deep concern and made him all the more uneasy, because, right up to the eve of the Democratic Convention, Adlai Stevenson was still playing Hamlet. He even begged the Illinois delegation not to put his name in nomination.

  On July 24, three days after the convention opened, my father, who had stayed in Washington worrying about Korea and other problems, got a phone call from Stevenson. He asked if it would embarrass him if he allowed his name to be placed in nomination. Dad hit the ceiling. He told Stevenson in very blunt terms what he thought about his indecision. “I have been trying since January to get you to say that. Why would it embarrass me?”

  Stevenson did not realize how close my father had come to not supporting him. About two weeks before the convention, Alben Barkley asked Dad if he would support him for the presidency. Although he still felt the “Veep” was too old for the job, my father said yes, largely because none of the other candidates aroused any enthusiasm in him. But when Barkley went to Chicago to line up delegates, he found the influential labor leaders at the convention unanimously opposed to him. On the day the convention opened, he called Dad and dejectedly informed him he was going to withdraw, and this freed my father from his obligation - which he would have regarded as irrevocable - to support the vice president. Barkley was so painfully disappointed that Dad telephoned the Democratic Chairman, Frank McKinney, and urged him to give the Veep the consolation of a farewell speech. He did so, and on the morning of July 23, Barkley gave one of his greatest talks, full of that wonderful humor and ridicule of Republicans and their pompous ways that by now had become his trademark.

  Meanwhile, the convention was plunging toward chaos. Senator Kefauver, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Harriman, and Governor Stevenson all had blocs of supporters and none seemed capable
of building up a majority. Visions of earlier Democratic Conventions, where discord had torn the party apart, began haunting my father. He decided to intervene powerfully on Stevenson’s behalf. He telephoned the man who was sitting in for him on the Missouri delegation, Tom Gavin, and told him to spread the word the President was behind Stevenson. But the governor of Illinois was still having trouble mustering majority support when Dad’s plane landed at Midway Airport in Chicago on July 25.

  My father had a political ace which he was now prepared to play. When Averell Harriman discussed making the race, Dad had told him his candidacy had his approval - but not his backing - quite a different thing in party politics. He also wanted him to agree to one thing. If the convention was deadlocked, he would help him nominate the strongest candidate. My father made it clear that in his opinion this was Adlai Stevenson. Averell, a good party man, had agreed.

  Now Dad told Charlie Murphy to find Harriman and order him to withdraw in Stevenson’s favor. Harriman, knowing my father was in town and foreseeing the request, withdrew even before Charlie reached him. The addition of Harriman’s 121 delegates sent Stevenson stock soaring, and he was elected on the next ballot. Dad took him out on the platform and introduced him, declaring: “You have nominated a winner, and I am going to take off my coat and do everything I can to help him win.”

  This is exactly what he did. But the campaign was doomed almost from the start by Stevenson’s poor political judgment. No one liked Stevenson more than the Trumans. Even after he lost, my father regarded him as a great spokesman for the Democratic Party. But the governor lacked the will and the force to win a presidential campaign. Among his many mistakes, the greatest one he made was his attempt to run as a new species of independent Democrat, with very little interest in defending the record of the Democratic administration he was hoping to succeed. He even let Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy, and the other purveyors of the Communists-in-government big lie put him on the defensive. Equally galling to Dad was Stevenson’s admission that there was “a mess in Washington” that he would clean up. Thus, he capitulated to two of the worst Republican smears. From an organizational point of view, the campaign was an even worse fiasco. Stevenson set up his own headquarters in Springfield, and there was little liaison between his people and the White House.