Harry S. Truman was present during the creation of many key institutions that still shape both American and global politics. Did he make history or simply endure it?
Americans today seem to believe that we live in especially exhausting political times. But the rhythms of our moment—pandemic, protest, pandemic, election, insurrection, pandemic, invasion of Ukraine—have nothing on the Truman era. Between April, 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death thrust Harry S. Truman into office, and January, 1953, when Truman handed the Presidency to Dwight D.
Frank mostly wants us to side with Truman, whose Everyman pragmatism often put him at odds with men who thought that they were better than he was and who sought to give him advice. If there was ever a time when the so-called liberal establishment had real force, it was in the nineteen-forties, as a fast-expanding executive branch brought thousands of credentialled know-it-alls to Washington. Sometimes to his detriment, often to his credit, Truman did not fit in.
Frank’s book describes press conferences in which Truman managed to say precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time. In 1946, for instance, he nearly turned the Cold War hot by championing Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech—which was delivered in Fulton, Missouri—without thinking through the implications. Stalin interpreted Churchill’s words as “a call to war with the Soviet Union.” Truman had to scramble to explain that this was not, in fact, what the United States wanted.
The early Cold War found its domestic analogue in McCarthyism, a term that both illuminates and obscures the political dynamics of the Truman years. It was Truman, not McCarthy, who introduced a loyalty program for federal employees. But McCarthy, far more than Truman, put his stamp on the anti-Communist Zeitgeist.
In the nearly seventy years since Truman left office, the institutions that he helped to create have had remarkable staying power., despite repeated challenges to its relevance, endures as the critical military pact of the Western world. Japan and Germany, with the help of American reconstruction funds, developed into prosperous, stable democracies. Even the U.N.
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