Harry Truman (25 page)

The chairman asked the required question: “Does any delegation wish to alter its vote?” There were no takers. Most of the favorite sons were still hoping for a deadlock. By now, it was about six o’clock. The convention had been in session over six hours, and several delegations were screaming they were famished. I remember feeling a few pangs of hunger myself. I started to envy my father, who had found himself another hot dog, somewhere down on the convention floor and was cheerfully munching it and chatting with his fellow Missourians.

Normally, the convention would have adjourned at this point and resumed balloting in the evening. But Bob Hannegan, with unerring tactical instinct, decided this would be a mistake. Aides had told him there were huge crowds of Wallace supporters outside waiting eagerly to grab a majority of the seats for the evening session. Inevitably they would make another attempt at a stampede, in the style of the previous night. Ignoring the cries of the hungry delegates, Hannegan ordered Chairman Jackson to start a second ballot.

It was a terrific gamble. If this ballot ended with Dad still behind, chances of a Wallace victory or a deadlock and a bolt to a favorite son were very strong.

At first the vice president was ahead, but so many delegations were splitting and passing it was hard to tell what was happening for a while. The big disappointment among Dad’s supporters was Alabama’s refusal to switch from Senator Bankhead. That had been the original plan, but Senator Bankhead was sniffing the wind, and he thought it was starting to blow in his direction. Illinois and Kentucky also stayed with their favorite sons, Lucas and Barkley.

Then came the first switch. Maryland’s Governor O’Connor, who had told Dad he was crazy on Monday, threw his eighteen votes to Truman. Michigan and the CIO remained loyal to Wallace, but New York did not hesitate this time. They delivered seventy-four and half for Truman and only eighteen for Wallace. Dad was now ahead, 246 to 187.

Now came the swing vote, the one that started the Truman landslide. Governor Robert Kerr, on direct orders from Democratic Party treasurer Ed Pauley, switched Oklahoma’s twenty-two votes to Dad. Ed Pauley later recalled that Bob Kerr paled when he pointed his finger at him. Bob had been the keynote speaker of the convention and had given a magnificent talk. He would have made an ideal compromise candidate. But he was a good Democrat, and he sacrificed his personal ambitions without a moment’s hesitation, when he got the signal.

But in the W’s, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, the vice president rallied amazingly. He cut Dad’s lead to a half vote, and then with six votes from Indiana and sixteen from Kansas, both of whom had passed, Wallace edged ahead by twenty and a half. But Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Montana came through for Dad, and the count finally stood at 477 1/2 for Truman and 473 for Wallace.

There was a pause. Thousands of voices rose and fell, some murmuring, some shouting. The chairman asked the delegates if the count was to be made official. Before a motion could be made, Senator Bankhead rose and swung Alabama’s twenty-two votes to Dad. South Carolina boosted him to 501. Then Indiana and Illinois announced they were caucusing to change their votes. In a moment, Indiana was declaring twenty-two votes for Truman, and Illinois, New York, and a dozen other states were screaming for recognition. I can’t believe anybody really knows who voted what in the ensuing pandemonium. But when I heard Kansas swinging sixteen votes to Truman, I knew it was all over. By the time the final tally was announced by the befuddled clerks, at least forty-four state delegations had changed their votes, and Truman was the winner, 1,031 to 105.

A phalanx of policemen seized my father and fought their way through the roaring crowd to the platform. Bob Hannegan held up Dad’s arm while the convention hall went insane. They seemed ready to scream all night, and Dad finally seized the chairman’s gavel and banged for order. “Give me a chance, will you please?” he begged them. Then he delivered one of the shortest acceptance speeches on record.

Everyone yelled some more, and the chairman recessed the convention. My father fought his way off the platform and, aided by another phalanx of police, soon reached the box where we were sitting. There we were practically besieged by a horde of shouting, sweating photographers, who begged us ad infinitum for “just one more” until Dad had to call a very firm halt and concentrate on getting us out of the stadium alive. The crowd was still frantic with excitement, and he was genuinely concerned for our safety.

It was a thoroughly justified concern. People in crowds do things which they would never dream of doing if they were alone with you. One woman who shall out of charity remain nameless - she was the wife of one of Dad’s close friends - threw herself practically on top of me in a hysterical hug and I felt - I swear I even heard in that cauldron of sound - my neck crack. Everyone wanted to touch us. We were pushed and pounded and battered until I thought for a moment I would collapse with sheer fright. To this day, the sight of a large crowd terrifies me (except across the footlights).

Thank goodness, there were enough police to form a defensive ring around us. Otherwise, I am sure one of us would have been seriously hurt. As we got to the street and the waiting car, Mother turned to Dad and said, “Are we going to have to go through this for all the rest of our lives?”

Dad wisely declined to answer her. I don’t remember much else of what happened that night. It took hours for the fear I felt in the middle of that crowd to wear off.

The next morning, Saturday, July 22, Mother held a press conference and answered as patiently as she could all sorts of silly questions about Dad’s eating habits, clothing styles, work routines, and the like. I stood beside her, hoping no one was going to ask me anything. Suddenly, into the room charged Dad, saying, “Where’s my baby? I have a telegram for her.” That was the beginning of my
real
antipathy for the word “baby.”

Dad soothed my wrath by giving me as a souvenir a telegram from President Roosevelt:

That same day, we started back to Independence, and Dad stayed with us until August 1, primary day in Missouri. Roger Sermon, the mayor of Independence, was running for governor, and Bennett Clark was up for reelection. Dad did some politicking for them, but they both lost. Bennett Clark stubbornly refused to abandon his isolationist views, and by 1944, they were hopelessly out of date.

Dad went back to Washington immediately after the election, and from there he wrote me an interesting letter about a meeting with the Republican nominee and his forecast of the campaign: “I was going into the Union Station (in St. Louis) to take the B&O as Dewey came out. There were not ten people there to meet him. More people came and spoke to your dad accidentally than came to meet Dewey on purpose. That can’t be so good and I just now happened to think of its significance. . . . This is going to be a tough, dirty campaign and you’ve got to help your dad, protect your good mamma. Nothing can be said of me that isn’t old and unproven - so this little “deestric attorney” will try to hit me by being nasty to my family. You must remember that I never wanted or went after the nomination - but now we have it, (to save the Democratic Party - so the Southerners and the AF of L and the RR Labor say) we must win and make ‘em like it. Maybe your dad can make a job out of the fifth wheel office. . . .”

On August 18, my father met President Roosevelt at the White House, and wrote me a letter about it later in the day. It tells the story in somewhat circular fashion, but I think it is best to print it exactly as he wrote it.

Mother and I were in Independence, but President Roosevelt was not aware of this fact, and that is why he gave Dad the roses. The purpose of this letter was mainly to give me a thrill. My father did not set down here what he really thought after he left the luncheon with the President. Nor did he tell the whole truth to the reporters who were waiting for him outside the White House. “He’s still the leader he’s always been and don’t let anybody kid you about it. He’s keen as a briar,” Dad said.

In private, he was appalled by Roosevelt’s physical condition. The President had just returned from a Pacific inspection trip. It had been an exhausting ordeal for him, and he had suffered, we now know, at least one cardiac seizure during the journey. My father later told close friends how the President’s hands shook so badly at the luncheon he could not get the cream from the pitcher into his coffee. He spilled most of it into the saucer. He talked with difficulty. “It doesn’t seem to be any mental lapse of any kind, but physically he’s just going to pieces,” Dad said. “I’m very much concerned about him.” The President alluded only once, and then obliquely, to the seriousness of his condition. He asked Dad how he planned to campaign, and Dad said he was thinking of using an airplane. The President vetoed the idea. “One of us has to stay alive,” he said.

My father saw President Roosevelt only two more times between that August date and the inauguration. On September 6, he went to the White House with Governor Coke Stevenson of Texas to discuss the problem of keeping rebellious Texas Democrats in the party. After the election, he attended a White House reception with Eddie McKim at which there was no chance to discuss politics or anything else with the President.

My father kicked off his campaign with a rally at his Missouri birthplace, Lamar. That was a day to remember - or forget - depending on your point of view. Missourians were enormously proud to have one of their own on the national ticket. There had only been two previous nominations, both for vice president in 1868 and 1872, and both had lost. Everyone who had a few spare gallons of gas for dozens of miles around poured into the little town. No less than nine U.S. senators escorted Dad to the rally. Estimates on the size of the crowd varied wildly, from a low of 12,000 to a high of 35,000. One thing was certain, it was too big for Lamar. Toilet facilities and the sewage system broke down. The parking field was turned into a huge mud hole by a heavy rainstorm the previous day. Poor Harry Easley, who was the chairman in charge of the day, almost went crazy. “All I can say,” he muttered, summing it up, “is never have a big affair in a small town.”

But everyone was good-natured about the inconveniences, and Tom Connally gave one of his old-fashioned, oratorical-fireworks-style speeches that had everybody ready to parboil Republicans, or eat them raw if necessary, before it was over. Dad made no attempt to top that untoppable Texas flamboyance. He simply stated the basic issue of the campaign - Thomas E. Dewey was not qualified either to direct a global war or to win the peace.

As my father had predicted, the campaign was dirty, and a lot of the dirt was thrown at him. The Republicans knew they had no real issues. To attack President Roosevelt’s conduct of the war sounded unpatriotic. So they concentrated on Dad and a few other people in the White House circle, especially poor Sidney Hillman. As one magazine writer noted, “The competence of Mr. Roosevelt’s current running mate is the nearest thing the country has to a burning issue.” Some of the stories were just plain silly.
Time
magazine described how Dad had supposedly broken down and wept, pleading his incompetence, when he was nominated for vice president. Other tales were more on the ugly side. The Republicans revived the 1940 canard that Dad was one-fourth Jewish, and his middle initial stood for Solomon. “I’m not Jewish, but if I were I would not be ashamed of it,” Dad said to the delight of his many Jewish friends. But one attack Dad did not dismiss lightly was the snide remarks Clare Booth Luce made about Mother.