Truman (29 page)

This did not mean that his private memorandum of renunciation, by then nearly two years old, which he had revealed to his staff in the previous November, was just a piece of play-acting. He genuinely thought that it was right and desirable that he should not serve again. He also no doubt had a roseate vision of finding a satisfactory Democratic candidate, whom he could promote, instruct in the ways of presidential politics and government, and then protectively install in the White House.

Truman's approach to the 1952 election cannot be understood without comprehending that he firmly believed a Democratic candidate could and would win. This was based partly on his fierce partisanship, which made him overestimate the continuing appeal of his own and Roosevelt's record. It was also based on the view, which he held steadfastly up to the opening of their Convention in early July, that the Republicans would nominate Taft, whom he regarded as eminently beatable. In Truman's view therefore any presentable Democrat (certainly including himself, in spite of the 23% poll rating) would be President and not merely a sporting runner. This view, except possibly for the inclusion of Truman himself within the electable category, was broadly shared by much informed opinion over the winter of 1951-2.

At the beginning of that winter, on November 19th, Truman for the first time discussed the succession freely with his staff. Adlai Stevenson, who at the age of 51 was three years into a successful term as Governor of Illinois, was the first name to be mentioned in this inner group, as it was already becoming the first name in more public circles. Truman spoke against him, on somewhat inconsequential grounds. According to his daughter he expressed his hope that the Democratic Party ‘would be smart enough to select someone who could win. And by that I
don't
mean the Stevenson type of candidate. I don't believe the people of the United States are ready for an Ivy Leaguer.'
³

Truman's choice was his own appointment as Chief Justice, Fred Vinson, a former Kentucky congressman who had been briefly Secretary of the Treasury before elevation to the Supreme Court. As Chief Justice, which office he occupied respectably rather than with distinction, Vinson remained surprisingly close to the President's inner circle (he was a poker player). Truman, as in the case of the abortive mission to Stalin in 1948, tended to credit him with both a greater sagacity and a higher public repute than he in fact possessed. What was indisputable was that he was a man with whom Truman felt comfortable. This combination of qualities, real and imagined, made Truman prepared to leap over a precedent-free gulf and try to put a Chief Justice in the White House.
^†
Vinson, however, was unresponsive. He was 62, not in perfect health, and sensitive about damaging his judicial reputation.
By early December he had convinced the President that he was not available.

This left Truman without a satisfactory candidate. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Barkley, Harriman and Estes Kefauver all wanted the job, but Truman considered none of them right. Russell was an able Senator but too much a man of the South to be acceptable. Barkley had been ‘a great Vice-President', but at 74 he was simply too old. ‘It takes him five minutes to sign his name,' which would be a substantial disqualification for dealing with the 600 documents a day which, Truman claimed, the President had to sign.
⁴
Harriman, on the other hand, was well capable of doing the job, but Truman thought that his lack of campaign experience and political backing, together with his provenance as the son of one of the great railroad predators of the turn of the century, probably made him unelectable. Kefauver, the anti-crime campaigner in the coonskin hat, he simply regarded as unappetizing. Privately he mostly referred to him as ‘Cowfever'.

In these circumstances Truman did two things, neither of which turned out well. First he began to move back towards himself as a candidate, and chose Eisenhower, of all people, as a correspondent to whom to open his mind. Partly because of a certain romantic attachment to the idea of the relationship of the President as Commander-in-Chief to a great commander overseas, and perhaps also to compensate for the MacArthur rupture, he had the habit of writing to Eisenhower in terms closer than that General ever reciprocated, either in thought or word. Certainly on this occasion he wrote to him by hand in a foolishly unbuttoned way:
⁵

‘Dera Ike, [Truman wrote on December 18th.]

‘The columnists, the slick magazines and all the political people who like to speculate are saying many things about what is to happen in 1952.

‘As I told you in 1948 and at our luncheon in 1951, do

what you think best for the country. My own position is in the balance. If I do what I want to do, I'll go back to Missouri and
maybe
run for the Senate.
⁷
If you decide to finish the European job (and I don't know who else can) I must keep the isolationists out of the White House. I wish you would let me know what you intend to do. It will be between us and no one else.

‘I have the utmost confidence in your judgment and your patriotism.

‘My best to you and Mrs Ike for a happy holiday season.

           Most sincerely,

              Harry S. Truman.'
²

Eisenhower took two weeks to reply and then did so at best guardedly, at worst hypocritically. There was no reciprocation of esteem let alone affection. Reading between the lines it was clear that he was open to political angling. But his formal statement of position, ‘you know, far better than I, that the possibility that I will ever- be drawn into political activity is so remote as to be negligible' was, to say the least, disingenuous. Five days later Henry Cabot Lodge announced with authority that Eisenhower's name would be entered in the New Hampshire Republican Primary. Two days after that Eisenhower issued a somewhat unctuous statement of availability for ‘higher duty'.

Truman's name also was entered, by an over-enthusiastic local supporter, in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary. He tried but failed to get it withdrawn. He was heavily beaten by Senator ‘Cowfever'. Well before that outcome, however, he had made his second unfortunate move. This was to decide that Governor Stevenson, even if he carried a little too much ivy, was the most likely winning candidate, and that he should be summoned to Washington for a placing of the hands upon the head.

The occasion for this act of consecration was a meeting at Blair House after dinner on January 22nd. It was the first time they had attempted to talk intimately. Stevenson had been forewarned by Murphy what would be proposed. This did not however mean that he responded with the crisp and grateful acceptance which Truman expected. Nor, it appears, did he give a clear ‘no'. On the following day Truman reported to Murphy that he had reluctantly
said ‘yes'. Stevenson reported to his friends that he had said ‘no'. The confusion is probably to be explained by the fact that the two men understood each other about as well as if they had been conversing in a neutral foreign language which neither understood or spoke easily. The reality however was that Stevenson, while flattered by the offer, was genuinely unsure whether he wanted the nomination, partly because of hesitant ambition, partly because of fear of Eisenhower, and certain that he did not want it as Truman's surrogate. He believed that any Democrat with a chance of winning would have to offer a new start in Washington and not a continuation of the Truman régime under a new name.

In the course of a few days Truman came to understand that he had not netted his candidate, but not the reasons for this failure. He believed that Stevenson, like a shy Victorian heroine receiving her first proposal of marriage, had been too overwhelmed by the offer to make a rational reply. A little perseverance would probably do the trick.

On March 4th, when President and Governor met for the second time, Truman was forced to accept defeat, although it seems unlikely that many misunderstandings were cleared away, for the account which Truman wrote on the same day of the interview, while happily friendly towards Stevenson, was frankly incredible:

‘Tonight the Governor came to see me at his request to tell me that he had made a commitment to run for re-election in Illinois and that he did not think he could go back on that commitment honorably. I appreciate his view point and I honor him for it … His is an honorable man. Wish I could have talked with him before his announcement. He is a modest man too. He seems to think that I am something of a superman which isn't true of course.

‘… I told him I could get him nominated whether he wanted to be or not. Then I asked what he'd do in that case. He was very much worried and said that no patriot could say no to such a condition
[sic].

‘Then he argued that only I can beat any Republican be he Taft, Eisenhower, Warren, or anyone else! My wife and daughter had said the same thing to me an hour before. What the hell am I to do? I'll know when the time comes because I am sure God Almighty will guide me.'
³

Truman in fact turned more for guidance to ChiefJustice Vinson, who had the advantage of being resident in Washington. He had him, Charles Murphy and a few others to one of his last dinners in Blair House. They were discouraging. The rest of the story is told vividly, as usual, by his daughter: ‘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 that the verdict seemed to be unanimous.'
⁴

That settled the question of his own candidature. He went off for another vacation at Key West and on his return used a Jefferson/Jackson Day Washington dinner to make a surprise announcement of unequivocal non-availability. ‘I shall not accept a renomination', he said. ‘I do not feel that it is my duty to spend another four years in the White House.' It did not, however, settle the question of Stevenson. Truman had switched off him, but public attention had not. Indeed, as soon as Truman made his statement of withdrawal the cameramen rushed to the other end of the same long table where the Governor of Illinois was seated.

Throughout the spring and summer Stevenson played very hard to get. To a large extent his reluctance was genuine. But this did not make it any less irritating to Truman, who had his own troubles during these months. On March 28th his Director of Defense Mobilisation, Charles E. Wilson, the former head of General Electric,
⁸
resigned in dudgeon against a policy of profit squeeze on the steel industry and brought a great deal of business and press approbrium upon the head of the administration. On April 3rd McGrath, the delinquent Attorney-General, had to be dismissed for quite separate reasons. On April 8th, almost as though to keep up the interest, Truman seized the steel mills. He had been encouraged to take such action by the private, certainly rash, and doubtfully proper counsel of Chief Justice Vinson. Congress declined to give him power to operate the mills, and a Federal
Court declared their seizure unconstitutional. The Supreme Court then announced that it would hear the case. This all happened within a week. After that there was an interval until June 2nd, when the Court declared Truman's action unconstitutional by the crushing majority of six to three. Vinson had been overruled in his own Court, and had carried only one, not very notable, Truman appointee (Minton) with him. Much of the indignity lay in the fact that the majority was stuffed with Democrats who were mostly liberals as well. It was quite unlike 1936 when Roosevelt could portray himself as battling against a fossilized Court of ‘horse and buggy' reactionaries. In 1952 there was not a single one of the nine justices who was not a Roosevelt or a Truman appointee. Amongst the majority six were Hugo L. Black, who delivered the majority judgment, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, William O. Douglas, and, almost the unkindest cut of all, Tom Clark, the Attorney-General who had been elevated beyond his deserts by Truman a couple of years before.

The immediate result was that Truman allowed the separation of powers to produce the disorganization of government. With the Korean War simmering away, he had a seven week steel strike on his hands. How much harm to national interests it did is open to question. Indeed one of the factors in the adverse judgment was quantitative rather than qualitative: steel stocks were too high to justify presidential high-handedness. But its pressures, leading up to a settlement on July 24th, no doubt increased his feeling that he was grappling with real issues while Stevenson, to quote Joseph Chamberlain's satirical lines on Gladstone, ‘left us repining while he is, no doubt, still engaged in refining'.

When, therefore, on that same day of July, Stevenson telephoned the President, the first direct communication between them for several months, and asked Truman whether it would embarrass him after all if he allowed his name to be put forward, he got a fairly rough although favourable reply. That is exactly what I have been trying to urge upon your over-elegant mind for the past six months was the essence of the President's response. In fact this was not wholly true. It had been so, but after the double rebuff of March Truman had switched to Barkley, semi-senile or not, and had sent him out to Chicago with full presidential backing. Barkley, however, in Truman's view mishandled his essential canvassing of labour leaders, and got a turn-down as firm as Byrnes
had received in 1944. He then withdrew, in reality in dismay but in form under the happy smokescreen of a splendid valedictory oration, and left Truman once again fancy free when Stevenson telephoned.