My Days with Harry Truman Read online

  Mrs. Truman finished her drink and went out to the kitchen to find out about lunch. Margaret followed her, asking if there was anything she could do to help. Truman and I were alone. His eyes immediately went to the headlines. As if he were continuing our conversation of the previous night, he said, “As for that son of a bitch, someone should have shot him 20 years ago!”

  Like General MacArthur, de Gaulle was guilty of what Truman called “grandstanding.” Again, the emotion was linked to the presidency. Truman believed no political or military leader should identify himself with his office.

  “Whenever I acted as President Truman,” he told me one night, “I expected to be treated with respect - not because Harry Truman deserved it but because the presidency deserved it.”

  When I saw Truman in 1970, he and his presidency were in a sort of historical limbo.When he left office in 1952, the casualties and frustrations of the Korean War had plunged his popularity poll ratings into the 20-percent range. Little had been written about him in more than a decade, and in academe, many historians were blaming him for starting the Cold War.

  Today, with communism in collapse all over the world, it is far more evident that the policy of containment Truman initiated against the Soviet empire was the most potent political decision of the last 60 years. The thriving free economies of Europe and Asia are the products of his devotion to freedom and democracy.

  On our last day together, Truman summed up his presidency. “When I was on the campaign trail in 1948, I saw a tombstone in Arizona that read: ‘Here lies Joe Doakes. He done his damnedest.’ That was the way I did the job. I’m going to let the historians decide how I came out.”

  Harry S Truman was published in the fall of 1972 and was a huge success. The New York Times serialized it and sold the excerpts to dozens of other newspapers. Life magazine published a condensation. The book was number one on the best seller list from the day it reached the bookstores. It stayed there, selling thousands of copies a week, until President Truman died unexpectedly of the complications of old age in late December. Newspapers and news magazines published long obituaries and television stations ran films summarizing his career and achievements. There is little doubt that the book had launched a revival of his presidential reputation. Today he is regularly listed among the top 10 greatest presidents.

  I was in Seattle, Washington, working on a magazine article when an Army major called me with the sad news of the president’s death and told me Mrs. Truman was inviting me to the funeral.I explained I was travelling with my wife and four children; we had planned to spend Christmas in Seattle. Could he find rooms for us in nearby Kansas City or in Independence? In five minutes the major called back to inform me that he had reserved rooms for all of us, and that Mrs. Truman had also invited the entire family to the funeral. We were among the 250 leaders of the nation and the world who participated in the deeply moving services in the auditorium of the Truman Presidential Library. My wife, daughter, and three sons still consider it one of the most memorable moments of their lives. As do I.

  I never saw Mrs. Truman again, but we remained friends in the mail. I sent her copies of my new books, and she invariably responded with a lively letter. Margaret and I became close friends and collaborated on several other books. After Mrs.Truman died in 1982, Margaret asked me to help her research and write a biography. She insisted on calling it Bess Wallace Truman to emphasize that Bess’s life was a fascinating individual story, never before told in detail. The book revealed Bess’s intense interest in politics and her seldom publicized career as her husband’s confidential advisor. It became a bestseller.

  My friendship with Margaret continued until her death in 2008. My wife Alice and I enjoyed getting together with Margaret and her husband, Clifton Daniel, the former managing editor of The New York Times. What did we talk about? What else but politics? Margaret had strong opinionson presidents and prime ministers, which she voiced with the assurance one acquires from spending seven and a half years in the White House.

  Looking back on those days with the president and his first lady, I slowly realized they were a turning point in my life as an American historian and novelist. Having grown up in Jersey City, which was run by an Irish-American political boss named Frank Hague, with my father as one of his right hand men, I had long felt a certain uneasiness about my credentials as an American. I always thought of myself as something of an outsider. Mr. Truman had emerged from years of participation in the Kansas City Pendergast machine – but that did not prevent him from plunging into American politics at the highest level, with no holds barred convictions, thanks to what he learned from studying American history. I felt liberated - and inspired - to do the same thing as a writer.

  Not a little of my view of the nation’s past has been shaped by Harry Truman’s conviction that the presidency, not Congress, was the crucial office around which so much of our history revolved. For me his conduct of this great office remains a model which other presidents – indeed all of us - can and should ponder.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Thomas Fleming is one of the most distinguished and productive historians and novelists of our time. He has written 20 nonfiction books that have won prizes and praise from critics and fellow historians, many with a special focus on the American Revolution. He has also written 23 novels, many of them bestsellers, which explore the lives of men and women in vivid narratives that range from the raw America of the 1730s to the superpower that confronted World War II and endured Korea and Vietnam.

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by New Word City, Inc., 2011

  www.NewWordCity.com

  © Thomas Fleming

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-61230-048-1

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