Yesterday I finished reading David McCullough’s exceptional biography of Harry S. Truman, titled simply Truman. The book is 1,117 pages — 992 pages not counting the end matter — and I’d been working my way through it for a month and a half.
So what to say in a brief blog post about such a long book? First, I loved it. Long biographies, even of interesting people, can sometimes seem like a slog. But reading Truman never felt like a chore.
Someone had told me that the book is biased in Truman’s favor — that McCullough is too much a fan of the 33rd president — but the book didn’t seem one-sided to me. It’s hard to know, of course; it’s not as if I’ve read a lot of other Truman biographies that I could compare it to, but there seemed to be no shortage of descriptions of Truman’s blind spots and missteps. And even with all of those there seemed to be much to admire in the man.
Of course I’m not going to try to summarize Truman’s life story, but it’s worth noting that he was responsible for the Truman doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the recognition of Israel, and oversaw the creation of the United Nations. Perhaps his most prominent weakness was a persistent loyalty to old friends in his administration who embarrassed him by profiting from their association with the president.
But as I considered what I would say here about Truman’s life story, the thing that most stood out was that he was a man of principle. He saw himself as charged with upholding the constitutional imperatives of the United States and the integrity and dignity of the office of the president, and held himself to the highest standard in fulfilling those responsibilities. Needless to say, in this regard he stands in stark contrast to the current occupant of the White House.
I’ve always been deeply admiring of leaders who refuse to betray the principles they espouse for the sake of expediency. The thing I liked most about Star Trek: The Next Generation was the character of the captain, Jean Luc Picard, and his unwavering adherence to his oath as an officer and his principles of integrity, justice, and respect for diversity.
No one would have presumed when Harry Truman was a young man that he would go on to achieve greatness. He was a middle-American everyman — a farmer, a devoted husband and proud father, an active participant in his community. In the final chapter of Truman, McCollough quotes from a tribute by Mary McGrory published in the Washington Star on the occasion of Truman’s death. It seems to me to summarize nicely everything that went before:
He was not a hero or a magician or a chess player, or an obsession. He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct, fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted. He did not require to be loved. He did not expect to be followed blindly. Congressional opposition never struck him as subversive, nor did he regard his critics as traitors. He never whined.
He walked around Washington every morning — it was safe then. He met reporters frequently as a matter of course, and did not blame them for his failures. He did not use the office as a club or a shield, or a hiding place. He worked at it. . . . He said he lived by the Bible and history. So armed, he proved that the ordinary American is capable of grandeur. And that a President can be a human being. . . .
I loved this book, too. I was struck by how Truman, who grew up in a part of Missouri that sided strongly with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and who had a deeply racist Mother, was able to see beyond those prejudices to integrate the Armed Forces. He was re-elected despite the faction led by Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrats, walking out of the 1948 Democratic convention. Truman also served in the Army as low ranking officer in France during World War 1 and saw combat there. According to our current president, I guess that makes him a loser.