How to Give 'Em Hell

For a few heady moments last week, Democrats could close their eyes, open their ears and imagine that they were back in the good old days of 1948. Arriving in Des Moines for Iowa's Jackson Day dinner, that self-styled "political has-been," Harry Truman, grinned happily at the sight of a team of midget mules hitched to a cart that bore the sign "Welcome, Harry. Give 'Em Hell." Said he: "I never did give 'em hell. I just told them the truth and they couldn't stand it."

That evening, after 1,250 guests at the biggest Iowa Democratic dinner in a decade had warmed up on Happy Days Are Here Again, Harry rose to demonstrate for the Stevensonian moderates just how he thinks a candidate should preach the Democratic truth. "Fellow farm sufferers . . ." he began. "In 1948 we had a Republican Congress--remember, it was the notorious, do-nothing 80th Congress . . . and that Republican Congress tried to block everything the Democratic President was trying to do for the people . . . This year we have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President. And the Congress has been trying to help the farmers while the President has put roadblocks in its way . . . [Eisenhower] deserves to be rejected by the people just as the 80th Congress was, because he is a do-nothing President just as that 80th Congress was a do-nothing Congress."

"Look Behind the Mask." "Remember," said Harry, "this is Ike's record just as much as it is Ezra Taft Benson's. Secretary Benson is merely the President's hired man." His voice taking on the old whistle-stop vigor, he gave 'em more: "This is one of the most amazing records of political betrayal I have ever seen in all my years of public life . . . In 1952 General Eisenhower went all over the country handing out promises about what he would do for the farmers ... At Brookings, S. Dak. he said: ' The Republican Party is pledged to the sustaining of the 90% of parity price support, and it is pledged even more than that to helping the farmer obtain his full parity, 100% parity . . .'" With machine-gun persistence, Truman hammered his point home. "Just remember that the next time anyone talks to you about honesty and sincerity," he said. "Just look behind the mask and remember those promises . . . "Another Republican depression has started on the farms . . . Already the effects are being felt in the towns and cities that draw their major support from farm families . . . You good people here in Iowa know that very well. You know that a nationwide depression can be born on the farm under Eisenhower just as well as under Herbert Hoover . . . Are you going to throw the Republicans out now or are you going to give them four more years to finish busting the farmers?"

"Corkscrewing the Truth." "No! No!" the crowd shouted fervently, and when Harry had finished, local Democratic bigwigs surged up to slap the ex-president on the back. In more than three years out of office Harry Truman had lost none of his ability to fire up the Democratic faithful--in fact the fire burned so merrily that some of his old friends in the party suspected he might be thinking of himself as a last-resort candidate.

Republicans reacted as though he were the front runner. The day after the speech Iowa's G.O.P. Chairman Don Pierson angrily accused Truman of "corkscrewing the truth" and charged that "seldom has there been a bigger collection of half-truth and misconception assembled under the roof of one mouth--even his." And from Augusta, Ga. Presidential Press Secretary Jim Hagerty declared: "I don't believe that Mr. Truman, by his own standards, can recognize accomplishment when he sees it."

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