Harry Truman: "Give 'em Hell Harry" or "Dirty Harry"?

In recent years, Harry Truman has been elevated to near sainthood in the Pantheon of Past Presidents. He was called "Give-em-hell" Harry, but he might also have been called "Dirty Harry", given his association with the Tom Pendergast Machine in Kansas City. True, he made the tough decisions, but did he reflect on them, or was it more like "shooting from the hip"? His main adviser after becoming President appears to have been James Byrnes. More of a confidante and crony than anything else.

I will not get into the second-guessing game about the decision to drop the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My take on it has been that Truman made the the decision because the weapons were available and perhaps necessary to use, but that he did not grasp the gravity and enormity of his decision as we ushered in the Nuclear Age. He got us into the Korean War without a Declaration of War from Congress, calling it a Police Action. True, he did rein in MacArthur, for which we owe him an eternal debt of gratitude. His picks for the Supreme Court were based more on cronyism than anything else.

And he was anything but bipartisan! While campaigning in Texas for John F. Kennedy in 1960, he said

"Tricky Dicky Nixon is cut from the same cloth
In a blistering telegram GOP chairman Thruston Morton called on Jack Kennedy "to disown Truman's attack and to apologize to the American people." Kennedy replied with his usual wit, saying "Mr. Truman has his methods of expressing things . . . They are not my style, but I really don't think there's anything that I could say to cause him, at 76, to change his particular speaking manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don't think I can."

After Richard Nixon was elected President, in 1969 he presented a Steinway piano to the Truman Library that had been in the White House when Truman was president. Nixon sat down and played a few bars of "The Missouri Waltz", which according to one onlooker, Truman, was not so happy with.

It is true that he did not "cash in" on his presidency as, say, Gerald Ford did. But is that such a sin? Certainly much better than cashing in while being President! And speaking of cash, how would Truman have fared, say, in the selection process of FDR's running mate, in our current money-driven campaign era? Where Party conventions are often nothing more than drawn out coronations. (Well maybe not for the Democrats this year!) I for one am not a fan of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act. (As even John McCain seems not to be anymore.) If a rich person can spend as much money as he wants on his own campaign, why can't he spend as much as he wants on someone else's? The field of "dark horse" candidates has been driven from the stables!

To be sure, Truman was the real deal, though not immune to photo-ops. I remember seeing an old newsreel of him fishing in a boat, albeit wearing a suit and tie in those pre-Eddie Bauer days. (think Al Gore, John Kerry, Mitt Romney) . This down-home image helped him in his campaign against Dewey in 1948; many people think that what really helped sink Dewey was the famous quip by Alice Longworth (Teddy Roosevelt's daughter), asking how the Republicans could nominate a man who looked like the groom on a wedding cake?