Truman

by David McCullough

A performance by Richard Mansfield in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde left Harry so shaken he was afraid to go home alone.

He talked of the capitalist domination of government in bygone Republican times, praised the determination of FDR to end the “rule of the rich” and give the average American a chance. Ninety percent of the wealth of the country was in the hands of 4 percent of the population, he said at Springfield. Roosevelt was “the man of the hour” to chase the moneychangers from the temple, “so that the common people of the country could have a chance at the good things of life.”

“Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization is forever

Truman had little use for the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, in contrast to Franklin Roosevelt, who had liked the way Hoover got results and greatly enjoyed the spicy secrets Hoover passed on to him about the private lives of important people. It had been Roosevelt, in 1936, who had quietly ordered Hoover to begin gathering political information, a policy Truman strongly disliked. Truman considered Hoover and the FBI a direct threat to civil liberties, and he made no effort now, as Roosevelt had, to ingratiate himself with Hoover—as Hoover saw at once and found infuriating.

Says a lot.

“We may agree the next time, or if not then, the time after,” Stalin said, as he idly doodled wolves’ heads with a red pencil.

“They [the Republicans] did not understand the worker, the farmer, the everyday person. . . . Most of them honestly believed that prosperity actually began at the top and would trickle down in due time to benefit all the people.”

Not much has changed since the 40's.