“He is no great campaigner, no sparkling public figure,” wrote one Christian Science Monitor political reporter. “Poor Harry Truman. And poor people of the United States,” wrote the political columnist Richard Strout in the New Republic, noting the rumors about Roosevelt’s health. “[Truman] will make a passable Vice President. But Truman as President of the United States in times like these?” Even Mamma Truman had something to say. “I would rather have had him stay in the Senate,” said the ninety-one-year-old. “He did not want it. They shoved him into it.”
