Rating: 5 out of 5
Harry S Truman comes out of this title like a person one would like to talk to, possibly about anything. I had this in my library for a few years before taking the time to go through it, but the book was a very pleasant read all things considered. It also made me want to read more about FDR as he doesn’t come out very well, but more on that later.
Mr McCullough’s biography of Truman is amazingly thorough, bringing to life a person who couldn’t have been thought to make president for much of his early life. In this, throughout Harry’s childhood and early adulthood, including the First World War, his human character shines bright. Small endeavours, such as his attempt to be a small town shopkeeper are so down to earth, it’s difficult to imagine the same person running the world’s most powerful country.
Yet, in the author’s words, Truman’s journey into political life was at every step natural and guided by a sense of honesty and transparency that would be unfamiliar to many politicians. That’s the way a county judge could make senator in those days, and that’s the way he also behaved as a senator. McCullough doesn’t highlight how the honest Truman formula for rooting out corruption was copied by Lyndon Johnson during the Korean War, but with much less success—quite probably because what for HST was a real investigation into efficiency was for LBJ only a political stunt.
This honest nature rings through also in the controversial vice-presidential nomination which seems to have a real surprise for the eventual winner. This part is also where Roosevelt comes through as really odd, though perhaps a much craftier politician than most give him credit for. Truman’s vice-presidency ended up short, but this only gives us more time to look at the interesting presidency, full on it’s own of various issues that would have made a lesser man crumble. I do not want to go into these topics as that’s enough for ten more reviews, or perhaps historical essays.
What’s most important is that yet again, HST comes through as a real person, even when he rails against a reviewer who criticised his daughter’s performance. Overall, I dare say that the very human parts of this president made him a far more approachable and understandable person than many, if not all, of who came after him. A conversation with HST in the early 1960s, in his presidential library, could have been a very interesting one!
