A Little Touch of Harry

MARGARET TRUMAN was not only very close to her father, she also attentively followed his career. In an affectionate biography published by William Morrow & Co., she provides some insights and asides to the official record.

Truman's relations with Franklin Roosevelt were always ambivalent. Though F.D.R. would later select Truman as his Vice President, in 1940, Margaret reveals, he tried to dump Truman from the U.S. Senate. Harry resisted and defended his relationship to Kansas City's Pendergast machine.

"It was the White House calling. It was an offer from the President. If Senator Truman would withdraw from the race, he could have a seat on the Interstate Commerce Commission, a life appointment at a salary that was a lot more than Senators were paid. Tell them to go to hell,' Dad said. 'For my own self-respect, if nothing else, I must run.' "

Though he chaired the most important wartime committee in Congress --the Truman committee acted as watchdog over defense--Harry tried to enlist in the Army. He went to see Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.

" 'I would like very much to have a chance to work in this war as a field artillery colonel,' he said.

"General Marshall pulled down his spectacles, eyed my gray-haired father, and said, 'Senator, how old are you?'

" 'Well,' said Dad, 'I'm fifty-six.'

" 'You're too damned old. You'd better stay home and work in the Senate.'

"Tartly, Dad replied: 'You're three years older than I am.'

" 'I know, but I'm already a general.' "

Truman was never torn by ambition. He did not particularly want to be Vice President in 1944 when word went out that F.D.R. was interested. Margaret shows how Roosevelt maneuvered him into the job against his will. First, F.D.R. had to get rid of two contenders, Vice President Henry Wallace and James Byrnes.

"The story has long been told that F.D.R. finally yielded to the hostility of the city bosses who assured him that they could not deliver their heavily Catholic constituencies for Byrnes because he had abandoned Catholicism in his youth and became a Protestant. James Farley recently told me that the true story is the exact reverse--it was the President who ordered the bosses to spread the story to eliminate Mr. Byrnes. As for Vice President Wallace, F.D.R. sent him off on a trip to China."

As the convention opened, Truman was balking. Finally, Roosevelt was called by the party's chairman. Bob Hannegan, while Truman listened.

" 'Bob, have you got that fellow lined up yet?'

" 'No,' said Mr. Hannegan. 'He is the contrariest Missouri mule I have ever dealt with.'

" 'Well, tell him if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of a war, that's his responsibility.'

"There was a click and the phone was dead. My father got up, walked back and forth for a moment, and then said, 'Well, if that is the situation, I'll have to say yes. But why the hell didn't he tell me in the first place?'

"In politics, and in every kind of relationship, Dad believed in dealing straight from the shoulder whenever possible. Mr. Roosevelt obviously enjoyed juggling friends and potential enemies to keep them all within the charmed political circle on which he rested his power."

While he served as President, Harry remarked more than once that he thought the White House might be haunted. He wrote Margaret in 1946:

"I told your mother a 'hant' story which you'd better have her read to you. This old place cracks and pops all night long and you can imagine that old Jackson or Andy Johnson or some other ghost is walking. Why they'd want to come back I could never understand. It's a nice prison but a prison nevertheless. No man in his right mind would want to come here of his own accord.

"Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day. I am sure old Andy could give me some good advice and probably teach me some good swear words to use on Molotov and De Gaulle. And I am sure old Grover Cleveland could tell me some choice remarks to make to some political leaders. So I won't lock my doors or bar them either if any of the old coots in the pictures out in the hall want to come out of their frames for a friendly chat."

When Truman gave up the haunted house he never really liked and retired to private life, he had a chilly meeting with his successor, Dwight Eisenhower. Margaret describes their drive together to Ike's inauguration.

"There was very little conversation during their one-mile ride to the Capitol. Ike remarked that he had not come to the 1948 inauguration because he did not want to attract attention from the President.

"'You were not here in 1948 because I did not send for you,' Dad said. 'But if I had sent for you, you would have come.'

"When they reached the Capitol, they went to the sergeant-at-arms' office to wait for the summons to the platform. Ike suddenly turned to Dad and said: 'I wonder who is responsible for my son John being ordered to Washington from Korea? I wonder who is trying to embarrass me?'

" 'The President of the U.S. ordered your son to attend your inauguration,' Dad said. 'If you think somebody was trying to embarrass you, then the President assumes full responsibility.'

"My father had ordered John Eisenhower home as a gesture of thoughtfulness. He was not serving in the front lines or in any vital role in the Army, so there was no reason to accuse either his father or Dad of favoritism, or of endangering the public interest. It astonished Dad that Ike resented his gesture. It still astonishes me."

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