Published: May 10, 2008 12:06 am            

Time’s’ been good to Harry Truman

Thursday marked the 124th birthday of Harry S Truman (no period after S since the S did not stand for any particular name).

Truman, born in Lamar, Mo., in 1884, died on Dec. 26, 1972, in Independence, Mo.

Lamar, Mo., is only 50 miles from Oklahoma’s common border with the state of Missouri.

“Give ‘em hell, Harry!” was a signature slogan attached to the man from Missouri.

“I don’t give them hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s hell,” was Truman’s notable reply to the original give ‘em hell yell, made by a Truman supporter at a whistlestop while Truman was on the campaign trail in 1948. The phrase thereafter became a lifelong slogan for Truman.

If you’re one to examine polls — say, Gallup polls — analyze them and take them very seriously, then you will perhaps be surprised to learn Harry Truman was the most unpopular President of the United States in the modern era — at least since polls by Mr. George Gallup have been taken, which has been since the 1930s. Truman’s popular approval rating when he left presidential office in 1953 was a measly 22 percent. According to the Gallup polls, Truman’s approval rating was even lower than Richard Nixon’s was right before he resigned the presidency due to pressure and controversy created from the Watergate scandal.

It’s interesting to contemplate how time does indeed seem to heal all wounds. In the five and half decades since Harry Truman retired from the presidency, his stock has increased considerably. According to the Truman Presidential Library website, Truman has never rated lower than 9th on the poll of greatest U.S. presidents of all time.

History has been good to the Truman presidential legacy. After more mature contemplation of Truman’s eight years in the White House, historians and political commentators tend to shine a more favorable light on Truman as president — a job he inherited from wildly popular president Franklin D. Roosevelt, following Roosevelt’s fatal stroke just three months into his fourth and final term as president. So Harry Truman, the humble haberdasher, farmer and field artillery officer from Missouri, served almost a whole term of Roosevelt’s and was then elected in his own right in 1948. Truman decided not to run again in 1952, a smart choice since he had very little chance of winning a re-election against retired General Dwight D. Eisenhower, another barefoot small town boy from the Midwest — from Abilene, Kan., specifically.

Truman’s decision not to run again for president in 1952, in the face of the lowest popular approval rating since the poll was taken, has all the conviction of a smart-mouthed kid who “decides” not to fight with the bigger, stronger kid he has just verbally insulted on the playground. Lyndon Johnson used the same basic decision-making calculation as Truman when Johnson opted against running for re-election in 1968, amid ever rising popular acrimony over the Vietnam War.

During Truman’s eight years as president, he established the Truman Doctrine, which was “U.S. willingness to provide military aid to countries resisting communist insurgencies,” according to the Truman Library website. Pres. Truman first manifested his doctrine in Greece, by supporting Greece with military aid against the Communist insurgents attacking them via Turkey.

Truman ordered the only two nuclear strikes in world history, against Japan on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, decisions which forced the Japanese into surrender, ending World War 2.

Truman engineered the Marshall Plan, which “sought to revive the economy of the nations of Europe in the hope that communism would not thrive in the midst of prosperity,” states the Truman Library site.

Truman also approved the famous Berlin Airlift, which began in June 1948, which was a peaceful means of whipping the Soviets in response to their blockade of Berlin.

Also during his eight years as president. Truman oversaw the postwar re-sectioning of Europe during the Potsdam Conference and oversaw the foundings of the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

What poked Truman in the eye were his handling of the Korean War and his dismissal of General Douglas McArthur as military commander in Korea.

It’s also interesting to note our current president, George W. Bush, has stagnated at 28 percent public approval, one percent lower than his father, George H.W. Bush, when the elder Bush left office in 1993.

Perhaps the passage of time and historical analysis will be generous to the two Bushes, as well.

Time does indeed appear to heal all wounds.



Kinnamon is online/special projects editor of the News and Eagle. You may reach him at davidk@enidnews.com