Aug

5

Lauren Bacall and Harry TrumanHarry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.

The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.

When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.

After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There were no Secret Service following them.

When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."

Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."

As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.

Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale. (Illinois )

Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!

I say dig him up and clone him!

Stefan Jovanovich respectfully disagrees:

TrumanThis is the worst kind of hagiography; almost all of its facts are fictions. Truman was, in fact, the first modern President to "work" his retirement as a public celebrity. The drive back to Missouri was the most carefully publicized "private" trip ever taken by a President in American history; it was the promo for the damn book! He did have Secret Service protection; after the assassination attempt at Blair House, anything else would have been absurd. Truman was not offered board seats because he was the President who had threatened to nationalize the U.S. steel industry and had (unsuccessfully) vetoed Taft-Hartley; in the days when corporations were still run by business people, not lawyers, and government contracts were as much a nuisance as an advantage, having "that man" on a Board would have cost businesses real customers and not gained them any advantages. (Even defense contracting was closed to Truman: McDonnell-Douglas already had Stuart Symington in the Senate and no Navy contractor would have touched Truman; the admirals were never going to forgive him for trying to give the Air Force ALL the airplanes.) Truman was hardly bashful about using his influence; he got his daughter Margaret a publisher, and he was absolutely shameless about book proposals. (He was appalled to learn from my Dad that he was actually expected to write the American history text book that he proposed.) Truman collected money from public speaking from public speaking (something no other former President had done); he just was clever enough to use the dodge of having the money contributed to the Presidential Library (also a first). Truman was an artful politician; part of his con from his early days was that he was a simple, thrifty man. If you were the bagman for the Prendergast machine in Kansas City, it would have just been plain dumb to play it any other way. I admired our current populist President for his ability to work the same game; what has been disappointing is to see him fail to heed Truman's example of ostentatious thriftiness in the matter of public vacations (Truman "only" vacationed at the Naval Base in Key West - oh, the suffering!). It has always bewildered me how conservatives can rant endlessly about poor Franklin Roosevelt's "losing" eastern Europe at Yalta, even though the Soviet Army had already occupied all the countries that it later held behind the Iron Curtain. Yet, at the same time, those same conservatives (and all liberals) manage to give Truman a pass for failing to support our ally in China. The consequence of that lovely bit of progressive diplomacy was a third of a century of Asian wars and the loss of more than 100,000 American lives. Thanks, Harry.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search