By Edwin Cooney
Today, Monday, May 8th, 2017, marks the 133rd anniversary of former President Harry S (“for nothin”) Truman’s birth. Yep, everyone loves Harry these days, but they didn’t used to. During the early days of his administration (from that Thursday, April 12th, 1945 when the death of FDR thrust Truman into the presidency, through the 1946 congressional elections that brought the GOP back into control of Congress), his problem was that he wasn’t Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Between 1947 and the 1948 presidential election that he wasn’t supposed to win, his problem was that he wasn’t Dwight D. Eisenhower whom both Democrats and Republicans coveted. Between his startling and historic Presidential victory and inauguration on Thursday, January 20th, 1949 and Sunday, June 25th, 1950, President Truman’s problem was that he lost China when the Communists took that beleaguered nation on Saturday, October 1st, 1949, and he “of course” allowed the Russians to explode its first atomic bomb that fall. Harry was slow, inept, and naive about the advance and danger of world communism. Between Sunday, June 25th, 1950 and Inauguration Day 1953 when Ike finally took over, President Harry Truman was a buddy of the Pendergast gang of Kansas City, Missouri and an indecisive Commander-in-Chief in Korea. He had the gall to fire General Douglas MacArthur, a man of proven patriotic passion, military professionalism, and all-American pride. Additionally, according to the 1952 GOP campaign, he was primarily responsible for the ill deeds of crooks, political cronies, and the triumph of godless world Communism. As he bade the nation farewell in January 1953, it was popular to change the phrase “to err is human” into “to err is Truman.”
I never heard a civil word about Harry Truman, particularly from Republicans, until… the 1976 campaign. President Gerald R. Ford, like President Harry Truman, was behind during the fall campaign. Old Harry, through a combination of tenacity and guts, beat Dewey in the fall by 2.2 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes. In 1976, Republicans were determined to beat that upstart, Jimmy Carter, and so, suddenly, Harry Truman became a GOP hero. Having passed away on December 26th, 1972, Harry Truman missed the GOP Truman “love fest,” but he’d have understood it. After all, it was plain old American politics. Suddenly, Republicans loved the man they once hated, bitterly hated, because their man Jerry needed to achieve like Harry. Even more ironic, 1948 was the year Jerry Ford won the first of his 13 straight congressional elections in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District. You can be sure of two other things. Neither Jerry nor his fellow Republicans, in Michigan or nationally, had anything good to say about Harry Truman that fall and they despaired at the Truman triumph. So, you ask, what’s the point of all this?
In last week’s musing, I pointed out how, when I was growing up, people inevitably insisted that they vote for the man and not the party. Hence, a war hero named Ike, and young, handsome Jack, could force party hacks to get behind their candidacies for their own election and political protection. By choosing Ike Eisenhower and, just eight years later, vigorous Jack Kennedy, the presumption of the existence of free and independent voters was sustained in the American mind.
Then, during the 1960s, the twin marauders of political assassination and unsolicited war changed everything. Youthful Americans who were unhappy considered assassination and war to be the products of party and congressional hacks. Bosses had to be controlled. Thus, beginning in 1969, party and congressional leaders began to tear the structural guts out of politics, city and regional, state and national. Open primaries and caucuses took the place of party hacks. Quotas of women, ethnic groups and other underrepresented groups were called to man the watchtower of political freedom of choice. As things progressed, maximum opportunity for choice became more important than duty and responsibility when it came to decision-making. Even worse, political ideology replaced knowledge and experience. Back in 1964, the conservatives sought to gain control of the GOP, but the vast majority of voters voted for Lyndon Johnson largely because he represented the legacy of Jack Kennedy, an ideological moderate, not a liberal.
Politics, due to its natural fickleness, is, like medicine’s most powerful drugs, a dangerous tool vulnerable to misuses by voters and candidates alike. Today, stripped of its genuine independence and loaded with the false pretenses of both Liberalism and Conservatism, the body politic is on the verge of being drowned by the ultra rich. Only the ultra rich possess the resources to manipulate people beyond the capacity of the lawgiver. Thus, in 2016 we saw unfettered wealth destroy the traditionally financed and experienced Republican party.
As I see it, America is closer to political anarchy today than ever before. However repelled some of us may feel toward President Trump, the fact is that we, the free men and women of the United States, have made the president’s economic, political, structural and social prerogatives lawful whether or not we voted for him. We invariably nurture our own grievances and undervalue he grievances of others. Finally, in our tendency toward self-righteousness, we over-advertise our own wisdom and patriotism. The causes we champion in politics, too often unnecessarily and I think arrogantly, cheapen other’s legitimate aspirations. The question is: how do we put the genie back in America’s magic political lamp? When will we be confident and free enough to elect a president who all can respect however we might disagree with that leader? The answer is that we probably can’t until most of us at least come to grips with the following realities:
(1.) Instead of solving our problems, we’ve institutionalized the tools needed to solve them for personal livelihood and corporate profit. This includes the church, the press, social service agencies, law enforcement agencies, consumer protection agencies and projects, medicine, and what Ike once called “the military industrial establishment” designed to protect our freedom which ultimately is up to us to secure.
(2.) We demonize both the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the uneducated and the scholarly with equal contempt rather than putting them in proper perspective.
(3.) Despite pockets of poverty and want within our borders, we as a people are more comfortable than we even need to be. We’re literally a hothouse society that tends to prescribe that people and groups which don’t include us sacrifice their benefits and prerogatives so we don’t have to.
(4.) We happily spend more for entertainment and entertainers than we do for vital professionals. This may be because no one requires us to establish a market for entertainers while our mutual security and prosperity require that we construct and maintain public institutions.
The above tendencies doesn’t make us, or even our leaders, unworthy of a peaceful and prosperous future, but failure to require such establishments would make such a future less likely.
Harry Truman was far from a perfect leader. After all, he was the only human being ever to drop an atomic bomb. However, his humanity, his determination to tackle, in an intelligent way, complicated domestic and international problems caused his natural political foes to want to duplicate his success after his death.
Of course, as wise and forthright as Harry Truman was, not everyone liked him, especially when their own hopes and demands got in the way during his administration. However, in 1948, he demonstrated that on his own, without the benefit of the rich man’s banks, and the prognostication of political polls, he could win at least their political respect. He spoke simply as he criss-crossed America’s landscape 69 years ago this fall, saying:
“I’m Harry S. Truman. I work for the government and I’m out to keep my job… and I’m going to do that on the second day of November.”
As for “S” standing for nothing, that’s exactly so. He might have received the full name of the paternal uncle for whom he was named, Harrison S. Young, or after his maternal grandfather, Solomon Young, or the middle name of his paternal grandfather Anderson Shipp Truman. The Trumans, to the delight of Harry’s political detractors, finally decided to let the “S” represent all three people. Ah, “S for nothin’ Truman” - how delicious! Sadly for them, it never bothered Harry!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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