The Lessons Of Harry Truman's Enduring Legacy

Truman home in Independence, Missouri, yesterday.

My mother often spoke of the day President Roosevelt died.
It was a day she never forgot.
She was hanging curtains with my aunt in a small row home in Camden, New Jersey when the news came over the radio that FDR has suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in Warms Springs, Georgia. My mother was on a stepstool and she had to steady herself.
"What are we gonna do, now?" she thought.
The man who was deified by many Americans was mortal after all.
And his death left a great void.
FDR was the Sun King. And many people thought the sun would never set.
The new President, Harry Truman was virtually unknown to the vast majority of Americans.
Truman was not a man of great stature. He wasn't particularly compelling. He wasn't a great speaker. And he certainly wasn't what we think of today when we talk about "charisma." In 1945 he had little or no public persona.
In the months immediately following FDR's death this one-time Missouri farmer and haberdasher who never attended college had to face some of the most momentous events of the 20th century and make some of the toughest decisions of any President ever.
Truman accepted the burden.
He never flinched.
He made the decisions; made the tough calls.
He didn't carp, he didn't complain, he didn't blame his problems on anyone else.
Truman was accustomed to being underestimated or dismissed by intellectuals or mocked by elites.
But he knew who he was.
He had the common sense of a farmer, the discretion of a good poker player, the shrewd, inquiring mind of a voracious reader, the instincts of a cat and the unquestioned love of country that characterizes a soldier who has seen war and terror, life and death close up.
Though he was only elected President once (in an upset in 1948) Truman effectively served two terms in office.
The fall of Hitler. The atomic bomb. The fall of Japan. The rebuilding of Europe. The Berlin airlift. The rise of Communism. Recognition of the State of Israel. The Cold War. McCarthyism. The emergence of America's new consumer economy. The development of NATO. The Korean War.
All these and more marked Truman's time in office.
The crises of the times and the burdens of the office took their toll.
When he left the Presidency in 1953 polls pegged Truman's popularity at less than 30 percent.
Succeeded in office by a charismatic, certified American hero, Truman quietly returned to his home in Independence, Missouri.
There, Harry and Bess Truman lived out the rest of their lives in a white clapboard house on the corner of a tree-lined street. Up the road, Truman maintained an office at the Truman Library and Museum where he often greeted visitors -- both famous and not-so-famous.
Today, historians routinely rank Harry Truman among our top five or ten Presidents.
Harry Truman's modest midwest upbringing pre-dated the Age of Ego. Nonetheless, Truman confided to friends that he worked hard not to let the trappings of Washington and the presidency go to his head.
He remained grounded in and guided by the small town values of Independence which he often called "the greatest town anywhere."
If he cared about his legacy or his ranking, Truman certainly didn't show it.
"All I want from history," he said "is the truth."
Photo copyright 2010 by Dan Cirucci.