“Born in the Gilded age, the age of steam and gingerbread Gothic, Truman had lived to see a time of lost certainties and rocket trips to the moon. The arc of his life spanned more change in the world than in any prior period in history. A man of nineteenth-century background, he had had to face many of the most difficult decisions of the unimaginably different twentieth century. A son of rural, inland America, raised only a generation removed from the frontier and imbued with the old Jeffersonian ideal of a rural democracy, he had had to assume command of the most powerful industrial nation on earth at the very moment when that power, in combination with stunning advances in science and technology, had become an unparalleled force in the world. The responsibilities he bore were like those of no other president before him, and he more than met the test.
“Ambitious by nature, he was never torn by ambition, never tried to appear as something he was not. He stood for common sense, common decency. . . . He held to the old guidelines: work hard, do your best, speak the truth, assume no airs, trust in God, have no fear. Yet he was not and had never been a simply, ordinary man. The homely attributes, the Missouri wit, the warmth of his friendship, the genuineness of Harry Truman, however appealing, were outweighed by the larger qualities that made him a figure of world stature, both a great and good man, and a great American president.” [p 991]
McCullough does not hide Truman’s flaws either. There were clumsy mistakes, wrong-headed decisions, misplaced loyalty in his stubborn refusal to condemn old friends who were shown to be crooks. He had outbursts of temper that belied his usual kindness and made him seem a “little” man, yet he was never really small-minded. His decisions could be extremely unpopular. At times his approval rating as President was truly dismal, down as low as 26%, and then only six months later it would be nearly 70%. He was a complicated man, and one of the most interesting traits that McCullough covers very clearly is Truman’s ability to grow under pressure to meet any crisis, of which he had many to handle, especially that first year of being President.
McCullough quotes historian Eric Sevareid on the last page, who said, “I am not sure he was right about the atomic bomb, or even Korea. But remembering him reminds people what a man in that office ought to be like. It’s character, just character. He stands like a rock in memory now.” [p 992] In this book, published in 1992, setting Truman’s character against the character of later presidents was McCullough’s unspoken lesson in caution during election years, a lesson the American people seem to need even more now than ever.
Finally, I love this quote: “He was the kind of president the founding fathers had in mind for the country. He came directly from the people. He was America. In his time, in his experience, from small town to farm to World War in far-0ff France in 1918; from financial failure after the war to the world of big-city machine politics to the revolutionary years of the New Deal in Washington to the surge of American power during still another terrible World War, he had taken part in the great chronicle of American life as might have a character in a novel. There was something almost allegorical about it all: The Man of Independence and His Odyssey.” [991-992]
Truman does seem to me to be a larger-than-life character now. I have gained appreciation and admiration for him. We need these fundamentally decent characters in public life, no matter what their politics.
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A note about the negative critics: in response to the charge that McCullough too clearly liked Truman and wasn’t hard enough on him for his controversial decisions, I don’t want to read a long and detailed biography written by an author who doesn’t like his subject. As another reviewer said, McCullough’s attitude toward his subject made it more enjoyable to read. Leave it to the newspaper columnists to give us the unrelentingly negative viewpoint. McCullough does not shy away from the controversy at all. It’s there if you are reading with any attention.
My attitude toward literary critics is parallel to that of Piers Anthony who defined critic as "cri tic: a strident parasite". Piers delighted in puns and made them a major part of every story that he wrote. It is easy for people to decry Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb, but the casualty estimates for the invasion of the Japanese main islands were more than a million American dead and 2-4 million wounded and up to 10 million Japanese dead. With those losses expected, it is not hard to see why he took the action that he did. The fact that Dad would probably have been involved in the invasion and might have been killed makes it even more easy to agree with what was done.
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