Harry Truman (67 page)

Meanwhile, Dad was left without a candidate. For a few weeks, he reconsidered his decision not to run again. First, he had a small dinner at Blair House, with only a few of his closest advisers, such as Fred Vinson and Charlie Murphy. Later, he convened a larger meeting, which included the whole White House staff, as well as several congressional leaders. At this meeting, he polled the entire room - a dozen or more - and asked each man what he thought. Although they gave varying reasons, not one of them thought he should run again.

Mother felt the same way. So did I. Mother’s opinion carried a lot more weight than mine, of course. Dad decided the verdict seemed to be unanimous.

On March 29, 1952, my father was the chief speaker at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in the Washington Armory. It was one of the biggest dinners in the history of the Democratic Party - 5,300 people contributed $100 each, to raise over half a million dollars for the Democratic National Committee treasury. Dad gave one of his best speeches. He ridiculed the “dinosaur school of Republican strategy” which wanted to go back to “prehistoric times.” Entwined in this sarcasm was a serious plea for a bipartisan foreign policy:

Dad warned the Democrats the Republican campaign would not be fought on the issues. They were going to wage a campaign of “phony propaganda” with Senator McCarthy as their real spokesman. “They are going to try what we might call the ‘white is black’ and the ‘black is white’ strategy.” Another branch of this strategy, Dad said, was their smear that the government was full of grafters and thieves and all kinds of assorted crooks: “Now I want to say something very important to you about this issue of morality in government. I stand for honest government. I have worked for it. I have probably done more for it than any other President. I have done more than any other President to reorganize the government on an efficient basis, and to extend the Civil Service merit system. I hate corruption not only because it is bad in itself, but also because it is the deadly enemy of all the things the Democratic Party has been doing all these years. I hate corruption everywhere, but I hate it most of all in a Democratic officeholder, because that is a betrayal of all that the Democratic Party stands for.”

My father then summed up the Democratic Party’s record of service to the farmer, the worker, and world peace. Finally came the fateful words: “Whoever the Democrats nominate for President this year, he will have this record to run upon. I shall not be a candidate for reelection. I have served my country long, and I think efficiently and honestly. I shall not accept a renomination. I do not feel that it is my duty to spend another four years in the White House.”

Everyone not in on the secret was utterly astonished. There were cries of “no, no” from the audience. Photographers rushed from one end of the head table, where Dad was speaking, to the other end, where Adlai Stevenson was sitting. Even then, in spite of his non-candidacy, he was the front runner.

Meanwhile, my father continued to run the government of the United States. In the months immediately following his announcement, he made two of his most controversial decisions.

Late in March, it became clear to the President and the rest of the country that a steel strike was threatening to cripple our economy in the middle of a war. The Wage Stabilization Board had recommended giving the Steelworkers Union a boost of 26.4 cents an hour. The companies had arrogantly refused to bargain with the union, and they now insisted, with even more arrogance, that they would not grant the increase unless they were permitted to add $12 a ton to the price of steel. My father considered this nothing less than profiteering and refused to go along, even when his Director of Defense Mobilization, Charles E. Wilson, resigned over his stand. On April 7, the unions announced they were going out on strike. The lives of our men in Korea were threatened, and our NATO buildup in Europe would be fatally undermined by a long strike. Dad acted promptly out of his conviction the nation was faced with an immense emergency. He issued Executive Order 10340 to seize the steel mills.

The following day, he asked Congress for legislation which would give him the power he needed to operate the mills. Congress refused to act, and the steel companies took the government to court. Federal Judge David Pines ruled that Order 10340 was unconstitutional. Although the judge received a lot of publicity for supposedly defying the President, the man he really slapped down was the government attorney who handled the case. He was lamentably inept. “Our position is that there is no power in the courts to restrain the President,” he declared. This was practically an open invitation for the judiciary to assert its power as the third - and coequal - branch of the government.

Within another week, the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case. On June 2, 1952, the Court ruled, six to three, that the President had exceeded his constitutional powers. It was one of the strangest decisions in the Court’s history. Each of the majority judges wrote separate opinions, since they could not agree on any fundamental reason why the seizure of the mills was unconstitutional. The arguments of the government’s witnesses, Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman, and others, that a national emergency existed, were ignored. Chief Justice Vinson dissented vigorously from the majority, and expressed grave dissatisfaction with “the complete disregard of the uncontroverted fact showing the gravity of the emergency and the temporary nature” of the seizure.

The most painful part of this episode was the attacks made on my father by some members of the press, and by the public relations men of the steel companies. He was accused of plotting to seize the nation’s newspapers and radio stations, and set up a dictatorship. The steel companies filled newspapers and magazines with ads picturing the battle as the test of whether our free enterprise system will survive. For someone who had spent much of his time in public office attempting to prevent the greedy members of the business community from destroying free enterprise, this was hard to take. Even more galling was the talk of dictatorship to a man who revered the office of the presidency and the Constitution of the United States as deeply as Dad has revered them, from boyhood.

My father’s second decision concerned the disposition of the offshore oil resources of the nation. Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada had introduced a resolution which attempted to convey to three states the rights to $100 billion worth of oil. Even before the bill reached Dad’s desk, he announced, “I intend to stand up and fight to protect the people’s interest in this matter.” On May 29, 1952, he vetoed the bill. In his message he pointed out that during his first months as President, he had issued an Executive Order claiming federal jurisdiction over all the mineral resources of the continental shelf, which extends 150 miles or more off the coast of our country.

Even the traditional three-mile limit could not be claimed by the states, Dad noted, because the rights to these lands were obtained by the federal government through a letter which Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had written in 1793. Scathingly, Dad condemned this “free gift of immensely valuable resources which belong to the entire nation, to the states which happen to be located nearest to them.” The political repercussions, in Texas particularly, were grim. Many leading Democrats openly bolted the party. But my father never wavered from his conviction he had acted rightly on behalf of all the people by refusing to kowtow to a minority of oil barons.

By now, the political campaign was really heating up. General Eisenhower asked permission to resign from NATO and become a candidate. My father brought him home immediately. I will not be so naïve as to claim Harry S. Truman, the quintessential Democrat, did not begin to regard Ike with a slightly jaundiced eye, from the moment he announced he was a Republican. Nevertheless, I think a conversation, on which Dad made notes several weeks after Ike had come to the White House to give the President his last report on NATO, is worthy of some historical interest.

They got into a discussion of Point Four, and Ike made it clear he thought little of the program. What did he think was the answer to the world’s economic problems? Dad asked.

“Birth control,” Ike said.

“Do me a favor,” Dad said.

“I’ll be glad to, if I can,” Ike said.

“Go make a speech on birth control in Boston, Brooklyn, Detroit and Chicago.”

These were, of course, strongholds of the Catholic Church, and in 1952, any politician who made such a speech in any one of these places would be committing instant suicide.

Ike did not get the point at all. “He is not as intelligent as I thought,” Dad wrote. “Evidently his staff has furnished the intelligence.”

As they parted, Ike expressed considerable resentment over some rather nasty comments which certain segments of the press had already begun making about his candidacy. The General had thought he was going to get the Republican nomination on a platter. But Senator Taft had other ideas, and Ike found himself in the middle of a dogfight for delegates. Senator Taft had plenty of newspaper support, and Ike suddenly had become the target of numerous uncomplimentary remarks. Dad grinned. “Ike,” he said, “I suggest you go right down to the office of the Republican National Committee and ask them to equip you with an elephant hide about an inch thick. You’re going to need it.”

Meanwhile, the President’s wandering daughter took off again. With my best friend Drucie Snyder Horton for company, I headed for Europe aboard the S.S.
United States
on her maiden voyage. My trip during the previous summer was “official” - which meant I had to stay at embassies and consulates. This time, I insisted on making it as unofficial as a President’s daughter can manage it. I still had Secret Service men on my trail, and there would, I knew, be receptions and welcomes wherever we went. But otherwise we would be relatively free agents.

Dad was just a little worried about having us on the loose in Europe. We tend to get a little giddy when we are together, and we were adept at being silly. To make sure everything went well, I was ordered to report to the State Department to pick up my passport from no less than Dean Acheson. He had obviously been told to give me a little lecture on how to behave, lest the dignity of the United States be impaired. “Now remember, don’t upset any apple carts,” he said, pointing those formidable eyebrows at me.

In the same spirit, I told him I would behave myself according to
my
understanding of the word. “If that’s not good enough for you, that’s too bad,” I said.

This did not exactly reassure the Secretary of State. Our session down at Foggy Bottom that day explains the touch of acid humor in our relationship which persisted until his death.

While I was in London, I got an amusing letter from Mother. She was very put out by a silly newspaper story that her grandfather’s relatives were waiting to greet me in Ireland. The story claimed Grandfather Wallace had been born there.

Mother wrote this letter from the White House. We had finally moved back into the Great White Jail in the spring of 1952. Dad was in the middle of coping with the steel strike and had very little time to enjoy the round of parties and receptions which began immediately after we moved in. As a housekeeper, Mother thoroughly enjoyed her new surroundings. The place was painted and papered and decorated down to the most minute details. Personally, I found it more hotel-like than ever.

The first part of the European trip was a delight. We had lunch with Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in Buckingham Palace, toured Ireland and Scotland, oohed at a Dior showing in Paris, aahed up the Grindelwald in Switzerland, heard
The Marriage of Figaro
in Salzburg, and penetrated the Iron Curtain to tour Berlin. I wanted to see Potsdam, but I was sadly informed it was out of the question. It was in Communist territory, and the cold war was very frigid at that point.

We left Berlin at night on the so-called HiCog (for High Commissioner of Germany) train. I noticed our official escort, Sam Rieber, the deputy high commissioner for Germany, was very nervous. He was smoking cigarettes by the pack. At 2:00 a.m., Drucie and I were still sitting up, talking, when the train came to a grinding halt. Suddenly it was surrounded by Russian soldiers. Sam Rieber turned pale. He later admitted he worried a year off his life that night. But the Russians turned out to have no interest in anything as spectacular as kidnapping the President’s daughter. They were just playing their old game of harassment on the Berlin railroad. Unwittingly, they did us a favor. They had stopped the train in the suburbs of Potsdam, and from our windows we could see the moonlit walls and roof of the Cecilienhof Palace where my father had met with Marshal Stalin and Churchill.