US Presidents For Dummies

by Marcus Stadelmann

  Furious, the Republicans and southern Democrats formed a coalition to block Truman’s programs. Truman decided to act unilaterally in the areas he could. As president, he was in control of the U.S. armed forces. He issued an executive order, number 9981, which desegregated the U.S. military. Discrimination against blacks serving in the U.S. military finally came to an end.

  In the 1946 election, backlash from Truman’s policies gave the Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress — the first time since 1928. This majority proceeded to stifle Truman’s reforms for the next two years.

  Fighting labor

  In 1946, labor unrest broke out in the United States. From locomotive engineers to telephone mechanics, everybody seemed to be on strike. By the summer of 1946, national transportation and phone service came to a halt.

  Truman didn’t respond to the labor strikes. The Republican Congress decided to show him up by passing the Taft-Hartley Act, which was designed to dramatically weaken unions in the country. Truman, a union supporter, was outraged and vetoed the bill. Undeterred, the Republican Congress, with the support of southern Democrats, overrode Truman’s veto. The act stood.

  The Taft-Hartley Act stipulated the following:

  The closed shop, which demanded that you had to be a union member to work in certain industries, was outlawed.

  Secondary strikes, where a union went on strike on behalf of another union, became illegal.

  Unions could no longer contribute money to political campaigns.

  Courts could now block strikes that jeopardized national safety.

  Overall, the act greatly weakened unions in the United States. It also led to the start of their decline.

  In 1947, Harry Truman became the first president to give a State of the Union address on television. He was also the first president to address the NAACP (National Association For the Advancement of Colored People) since its inception in 1910.

  Facing opposition in 1948

  Despite his great successes in foreign policy, Truman was not a shoo-in for reelection in 1948. His domestic programs alienated the southern wing of the Democratic Party, which organized its own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats opposed civil rights and ran their own candidate for the presidency, South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. Truman’s anti-communist policies and perceived enmity to unions (Truman had called out the army to operate the nation’s railroads in May 1948, after unions had shut it down) encouraged Roosevelt’s former vice president, Henry Wallace, to form the pro-union Progressive party and run against Truman.

  In the summer of 1948, the Democratic Party was split into three factions: the Progressives on the left, the Dixiecrats on the right, and Truman somewhere in the middle. The Republican Party was unified, nominating Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York, for president. Dewey had done well against Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, and he was now the frontrunner.

  The Dixiecrat candidate in 1948 was Strom Thurmond, who is now a Republican senator from South Carolina. He turned 99 years old in December, 2001, but expects to finish his term, which goes until January 2003. When he turns 100, he will be the first senator in U.S. history to serve in the Senate at that age.

  Defeating Dewey in 1948

  Truman received the Democratic presidential nomination, but everybody expected him to lose the election in 1948. Boy, did he prove the pundits wrong.

  Truman called a special session of the Republican-controlled Congress as a political ploy. When the Republican Congress didn’t accomplish anything, Truman had his campaign issue, and he attacked the Republicans as a do-nothing party. He toured the United States by train, beginning his famous whistle stop tour. He stopped everywhere, giving up to 16 speeches a day.

  Truman gained extra support when the Soviet Union endorsed Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. The endorsement killed Wallace’s candidacy and sent his supporters to Truman.

  When the election results came in, Truman had unexpectedly, but decisively, won by more than two million votes. He received 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189. The Dixiecrats carried most of the southern states.

  During the 1948 campaign, Truman enjoyed telling the following story: “In the middle of the speech, some big voice up in the corner hollered out, ‘Give ’em hell, Harry!’ Well, I never gave anybody hell — I just told the truth on these fellows and they thought it was hell.”

  Hating His Second Term

  Truman’s second term was not nearly as successful as his first one. It was dominated by foreign policy issues and a war in Korea. The year 1949 brought one of Truman’s major successes and a dismal failure.

  First, at Truman’s urging, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in Europe. Truman designed the organization to help contain the Soviet Union in Europe. With NATO, Soviet expansionism could successfully be curtailed within the continent. The idea behind NATO was similar to the idea behind the United Nations. Both organizations used the concept of collective security. This concept stated that an attack on any member equaled an attack on all members. Thus, if the Soviet Union attacked Italy, a NATO member, it would have to fight all the other NATO members, including the United States. The concept, in turn, ruled out an attack on any NATO member by the Soviet Union.

  Losing China to communism

  In 1945, a communist uprising started in China. The pro-western government of China found itself all alone. None of the major western powers supported it. Great Britain was broke, France was fighting in Indochina, and Truman didn’t consider China to be that important — his first priority was Europe. The Soviets helped their communist brethren, and by 1949, the communists were in power.

  The remaining members of the pro-western government fled to Formosa and established what today is known as Taiwan. The Truman administration received the blame for not helping the anti-communist forces and thus losing China. Communist China then came to hound Truman later on in his presidency, when the United States got involved with China in Korea.

  The loss of China to communism also encouraged right-wing Republicans to charge that Truman’s administration was full of communists. Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin spent his whole political career trying to track down communists in the State Department. His accusations weren’t substantiated, but they led to Congress passing the Internal Security Act in 1947, which made it illegal “to combine, conspire, or agree with any other person to perform any act which would substantially contribute to . . . the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship.” The government could jail communists in the United States and refuse entrance to any member of a totalitarian — namely communist — organization.

  Fighting in Korea

  In 1950, the Korean War broke out. Truman, haunted by the disaster in China, sent U.S. troops to defend South Korea and ignored warnings from the Chinese, who asked the United States not to invade North Korea.

  However, General Douglas MacArthur did just that, which prompted China to enter the war on the North Korean side. The Chinese helped stop the advance of the United States. By 1951, the pre-war borders were restored, and the war dragged on for two more years with neither side being able to advance much.

  General MacArthur, who was in charge of the U.S. and United Nations forces in Korea, wanted to extend the war into China, but Truman refused. When MacArthur publicly criticized the president, Truman promptly fired him, ending MacArthur’s long military career. Truman had the following to say: “I fired MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

  Succeeding at home

  The 1948 elections gave Truman a Democratically controlled Congress. So he again pursued his Fair Deal legislation (see “Reforming the Country,” earlier in this chapter). He was more successful in passing the legislation during his second term. Major proposals that passed Congres
s included

  The minimum wage was increased.

  Social Security coverage was increased.

  The Public Housing Bill, providing federal money to construct public housing all over the country, was passed.

  At the same time, southern Democrats and Republicans rejected Truman’s civil rights agenda. Congress refused to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, which Truman so despised, and which had weakened unions severely.

  Truman’s major domestic crisis in his second term occurred in 1952. Steel workers were ready to strike, and Truman had to make a tough decision. He was pro-union, but the country was fighting in Korea and needed steel for the war effort. So he announced that the federal government would seize the steel mills to ensure continued production. This strategy alienated unions and management alike. The Supreme Court later declared his actions unconstitutional.

  The Korean conflict

  At the end of World War II, Japan was forced out of Korea, a country it had occupied since 1910. Korea was divided into a communist North Korea and a pro-western South Korea. An unpopular military dictator ran South Korea. The North Korean communist dictator, with Soviet encouragement, launched an attack on South Korea in 1950.

  The United Nations condemned the North Korean attack and voted to punish North Korea. Fifteen United Nations members sent troops to support South Korea. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of all U.S. and United Nations forces. Western troops fought back the communist forces and pushed them back into North Korea.

  The conflict ultimately resulted in a stalemate — the situation in Korea returned to what it had been after the Japanese left after WWII.

  Ceding to Stevenson

  By the spring of 1952, Truman knew that his presidency was over. He was fairly unpopular with the U.S. public. In addition, the Republicans had found an unbeatable candidate in General Dwight D. Eisenhower. So instead of going out in defeat, Truman decided that he was done. He announced his retirement and supported the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson.

  When Truman left office, his presidency seemed to be a failure. Comments such as “To err is Truman” were popular. It took time for his reputation to recover.

  Truman stayed active in politics. He supported and campaigned for the Democratic presidential nominees in 1956, 1960, and 1964.

  Truman didn’t think much of his Republican successors, as the following quotes demonstrate:

  The trouble with Eisenhower is he’s just a coward. He hasn’t got any backbone at all.

  Nixon is a shifty-eyed g------ liar, and people know it. He’s one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

  Truman’s greatest political triumph came in the 1960s when President Johnson put much of his Fair Deal policies, rejected by Congress in the 1940s, into place.

  After retiring from politics, Truman wrote his memoirs and toured the country, giving speeches at many colleges. Truman died in 1972 at the age of 88.

  Chapter 18

  Liking Ike: Dwight David Eisenhower

  In This Chapter

  Serving his country

  Retiring from his military career

  Becoming president

  D wight David Eisenhower is one of the most beloved presidents in U.S. history. He presided over the booming economy of the golden 1950s when times were good. He ended the war in Korea, prevented the Soviet Union from expanding, and stood up for U.S. rights in regard to U.S. allies. Later in his presidency, he became the godfather of U.S. nuclear military might. At home, Eisenhower built the U.S. interstate highway system and started the long process of desegregation. He was a moderate who appealed to a broad range of U.S. citizens. His political legacy is one of comprise and bargaining.

  Eisenhower’s Early Military Career

  Eisenhower graduated from West Point military academy in 1915. After World War I (WWI) broke out, Eisenhower went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to train a tank corps. After World War I ended, Eisenhower became a career soldier. He was transferred to Camp Meade, Maryland, where he met his lifelong friend, George Patton. Next, in 1922, Eisenhower went to Panama to serve under General Conner, an expert on U.S. military history. Conner renewed Eisenhower’s interest in the topic of U.S. military history and encouraged him to attend the Command and Generals Staff School in Kansas. Eisenhower attended the school and graduated first in his class in 1926. He continued his studies at the Army War College, from which he graduated in 1929.

  In 1932, Eisenhower became an aide to General Douglas MacArthur. He went with MacArthur to the Philippines to prepare the island for a possible Japanese attack. In the Philippines, Eisenhower organized his first military unit. He trained native Filipinos and prepared them for independence. (The Philippines, at this point, was still controlled by the United States.). His unit fought with distinction when the Japanese attacked. In 1939, Eisenhower returned to the United States.

  A true hero

  David Dwight Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas in 1890. He was named for his father, David Jacob Eisenhower. To avoid confusion, Eisenhower was called by his middle name. The name stuck, and he eventually became Dwight David Eisenhower.

  Eisenhower’s family moved to Kansas when he was 1 year old. His parents ran a small farm. His father worked in a local creamery to help supplement the family income. The family was so poor that young Eisenhower had to wear his mother’s shoes for a time, because his parents couldn’t afford shoes for him.

  Eisenhower went to local schools, where he excelled in athletics. He had a hot temper, and he was constantly involved in fights. He loved military history: He was constantly reading about battles. His interest in reading about military battles upset his mother, a pacifist, so much that she took his books away from him. His family was too poor to pay for college. Eisenhower entered West Point in 1911, after finding out that he could attend for free if he passed the entrance exams. Ironically, one of the greatest soldiers in U.S. history started his military career merely to get a free education.

  At West Point, Eisenhower was an average student who graduated 61st out of a class of 164. After graduation, Eisenhower went to San Antonio to start his career in the military. In San Antonio, he met Marie “Mamie” Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

  Getting ready for World War II

  In 1939, WWII broke out in Europe when Germany attacked Poland. The United States slowly became involved in the conflict (see Chapter 16). Eisenhower continued to train troops. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was chosen to head the War Plans Division, which put him in charge of planning all U.S. military operations. Eisenhower supported the successful “Europe First” strategy. He believed that it was essential to defeat Germany first, before the United States turned against Japan. Franklin Roosevelt agreed, placing Eisenhower in charge of European operations.

  Eisenhower went to Great Britain to organize the Allied offensive against Germany. Eisenhower was ready to invade and liberate France from German control, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill objected and instead argued for an invasion of North Africa. Eisenhower disagreed with Churchill, but he followed his orders. The invasion of North Africa turned into a disaster at first, when German forces defeated Eisenhower’s troops. It took months for the Allies to recover and finally drive German forces out of North Africa.

  Next came the invasion of Italy. Again, Eisenhower disagreed with his superiors and argued against the attack. Eisenhower was right to disagree with his superiors — they should have listened to him. The Allied forces didn’t gain control of Italy until Germany surrendered in 1945.

  Liberating France

  In December 1943, Eisenhower finally received the command he wanted. He was put in charge of “Operation Overlord,” the invasion of France. As supreme commander of all Allied forces, Eisenhower controlled over 150,000 troops and thousands of aircraft and tanks.

  To succeed, Eisenhower had to take a gamble. The Ge
rmans expected him to attack in northeastern France. German fortifications were heavy there, and the Allies would have had a tough fight on their hands. But Eisenhower changed plans at the last minute and attacked at Normandy. To fool the Germans, Eisenhower had the Allied Air Force attack the northeastern part of France: He wanted the Germans to believe that he was about to attack there. His gamble paid off. On June 6, 1944, the invasion of France, or D-Day, started at Normandy. By September 1944, Allied forces had liberated France. Eisenhower was an international hero.

  Finishing off Germany

  After the successful invasion of France, Eisenhower became a five-star general — the highest rank in the army. He didn’t have time to celebrate. Germany launched its final offensive of World War II (WWII) in December 1944. It took Eisenhower three months to stop the attack and go back on the offensive. He entered southern Germany in March 1945. The German military surrendered to Eisenhower on May 7, 1945, ending the war in Europe.

  Britain wanted Eisenhower to attack the German capital of Berlin before Soviet troops could reach it. Eisenhower refused. He knew that an attack on Berlin would kill thousands of U.S. soldiers. More importantly, the Yalta agreement had already divided the German capital into four zones of occupation. So he would have had to sacrifice thousands of U.S. lives and then give the Soviets their zone. Instead of acting, he sat back and let the Soviets attack and conquer Berlin. The Soviet Union lost over 100,000 men in the attack.