Harry Truman Page 23

  ONE THING THAT especially worried my father was the image of him as a bumbling, ineffectual second-rater that many newspapers had striven to construct during the campaign. In one of his few really bitter public remarks about the press, he accused the newspapers of creating a “straw man.” In those same remarks, he urged the papers to bury this straw man. My father was speaking, as he often did, with that amazing objectivity which enabled him to look upon himself as a public servant in a way that made listeners think he was talking about a separate person. I have never heard him express the least concern about the names he was called by other politicians or by newspaper editorialists. But at this point in his career, so close to assuming the enormous responsibilities of the presidency, he was concerned about the impact of his image - if I may use a word that was not in vogue at the time - on the nation.

  One symptom of this derision and contempt was the failure of his Republican vice presidential opponent, Senator John Bricker of Ohio, to send Dad a telegram, conceding his defeat and offering his congratulations. In some ways, my father found this more unforgivable than Lloyd Stark’s failure to make a similar gesture, in the 1940 senatorial campaign. Stark at least had the excuse of bitter personal disappointment. Senator Bricker’s discourtesy seemed studied and much grosser. Fortunately, Mother and I, the grudge bearers of the family, did not have much time to worry about it. We were much too busy coping with our first experience as national figures. The mail was overwhelming. Everyone I had ever met seemed to have seized a pen or rushed to a typewriter to congratulate me. Total strangers also joined the avalanche. It was an exhausting job to answer all of them, especially in longhand. We were totally devoid of secretarial help.

  My father, meanwhile, relaxed from the rigors of the campaign for a few days in Florida. But he too found he was operating on a larger political stage. “It was impossible for me to dodge the publicity,” he wrote to me. “Reporters were at the train at Memphis, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Tampa, and one was in the front yard when we arrived at the . . . house.” Worse, his luck with Florida weather remained bad. A cold wave followed him in from Kansas City. But he assured me he was nevertheless determined to “get three days rest, really and truly.”

  As I have said, we stayed in Kansas City for election eve and Election Day, and the victory produced some pretty wild celebrating. I was rather shocked by the way some of the local politicians handled their liquor. I mentioned this to Dad in the letter I wrote to him while he was in Florida and got an interesting comment in return: “Your views on . . . the middle-aged soaks are exactly correct. I like people who can control their appetites and their mental balance. When that isn’t done, I hope you’ll always scratch them off your list.”

  After Christmas, the only thing we thought about was the inauguration. Mother and I combed Kansas City for the better part of a week, trying to decide on a wardrobe. I finally settled on a simple gray-green woolen dress with a hat to match. For warmth, all I chose was a fur scarf, one of the worst mistakes I ever made in this department.

  For my father, the inauguration was a political nightmare. President Roosevelt decided, because it was wartime and also because he wanted to conserve his strength, to take the oath of office on the South Portico of the White House. Only 7,800 people were invited - which sounds like a lot, until you remember we are a very big country. Moreover, only a handful of people could get blue tickets, which gave them a place on the portico.

  On January 13, 1945, Dad wrote to his mother and sister:

  . . . I’m glad you all decided not to come to this brawl we are having. I’m in trouble at every turn, but I guess I’ll live through it. Can’t get tickets enough to get everyone in. Some people have all the nerve. A banker in Nashville is having a reception and Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House, is having one. And Oscar Ewing, vice chairman of the National Committee, is having one, the Presidential Electors are having a dinner, and Hannegan and Pauley are having a reception. All these things run from the 18th to the 21st, and some of ‘em are at the same time and blocks apart and I’m supposed to be at all of ‘em and “grin and bear it.”

  Maybe I can - in fact, I’ll have to. When it’s over I’ll be very much pleased. I told FDR the other day he should have boarded his automobile and driven to the Supreme Court and been sworn in and I should have taken the oath at a regular Senate session and there’d have been no feelings hurt and no expense at all.

  My problem was not “prima donnas and stuffed shirts,” as Dad called his tormentors, but examinations. Inauguration week coincided with my midterms, and I had to somehow cram in a lot of studying while simultaneously entertaining aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors from Kansas City and Independence. They swirled through our five-room apartment on Connecticut Avenue at all hours of the day and night. To complicate my woes, Inauguration Day was incredibly miserable - a cold rain mixed with sleet came pouring out of a gloomy sky. Mother and I had quite a set-to over my determination to brave the icy downpour protected by nothing but my new fur scarf. I finally departed with them for the religious ceremonies at St. John’s Church across Lafayette Square from the White House, wearing my school coat and feeling very sorry for myself.

  A few hours later, I stood on the South Portico between Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia, shivering in the cold, looking for two girlfriends from Kansas City who were standing in the slush on the White House lawn. I had a terrifying examination in the governments of Europe, one of my major courses, on the following day, and my mind kept jumping from the history in which I was participating to the history I would have to write tomorrow. We were jammed on the portico, practically sardine style. The guest list for the portico was limited to 140, but a number of people who had been invited by the President to a religious service in the East Room - and who had not been invited to the inaugural ceremony - simply sashayed out on the portico, sans tickets, and joined - or more correctly, created - the crush.

  My father took his oath of office first, administered in accordance with political tradition by the outgoing vice president, Henry Wallace. Meanwhile, just inside the French doors that led to the portico, President Roosevelt was arriving in a wheelchair, pushed by his son James in his marine uniform. The President looked haggard, his face pale, with dark circles under his eyes.

  Out on the portico, James Roosevelt and a Secret Service man lifted the President to his feet, and he grasped the edge of the speaker’s lectern. He shook hands with my father, took his oath of office, and then gave one of the briefest inaugural addresses in history - less than five minutes in length. He stood coatless, the freezing wind whipping his hair. He looked so worn and spent, I suddenly found myself feeling depressed at the climax of a day I had thought was going to be one of the high points of my life.

  Immediately after the inauguration ceremony, there was a tremendous buffet lunch for 1,805 guests. President Roosevelt could not face the ordeal of shaking hands with this mob and retired to the family rooms of the White House almost immediately. Dad, Mother, and Mrs. Roosevelt gamely threw themselves into the breach, shaking hands with every one of these frozen VIPs, who had endured the ceremony out on the windswept, slushy lawn.

  A heavy percentage of the guests were from Missouri. The Roosevelts, in line with their desire to play down the inauguration, had generously given us the lion’s share of the guest list. Practically every politician above the precinct level had trekked to Washington to honor Missouri’s first vice president. Before the reception, there was a lot of kidding about the danger of light-fingered Missourians departing with most of the White House’s silver. A few days later, when the White House staff finished its post-inaugural silver count, only one spoon was missing. The honor of Missouri had survived temptation.

  At the end of this first reception, my father retreated to his Senate office to call Mamma Truman and I stumbled home to take a nap. Mother and Mrs. Roosevelt stayed on duty to shake 678 more hands at a tea for second-rank VIPs - undersecretaries, Democratic
National Committee people, and family friends. It was Mother’s first taste of White House receiving. Fortunately for her peace of mind, she had no idea she was practicing for seven and three-quarters years of these endurance contests.

  This may sound strange, after what I have written about my father’s acute awareness of President Roosevelt’s failing health, at the nominating convention and on election night, but once the election was over, he simply stopped thinking about it. I cannot recall a single instance when he ever discussed the possibility of becoming President with Mother or me after he became vice president. This is perfectly understandable, if you think about it for a moment. Roosevelt was not visibly ill. He was failing, he looked alarmingly weary. But a good rest might easily restore him to health again - as far as Dad knew. In the first months of 1945, there was a distinct impression the President’s health had improved. Mother commented on it, with evident relief, in a letter to my cousin Ethel Noland. Another equally strong possibility was the end of the war. This would have lifted a tremendous burden from the President’s shoulders. Still another reason was the tradition that the vice president does not make comments or inquiries about the President’s health. The best way to avoid such a gaffe is by shutting the subject completely out of your mind. This is what my father tried to do.

  Besides, he had very little time to think about the Big If. After two more hectic days of partying, I collapsed with a beautiful case of the flu, and he plunged into the vice presidency with his previously stated determination to make it more than a fifth-wheel job. Only two days after he was inaugurated, President Roosevelt departed for Yalta and left my father with a task that was to give him more than a few frantic moments. In a style that totally lacked his usual political finesse, the President fired Jesse Jones as Secretary of Commerce and asked Dad to persuade the Senate to approve Henry Wallace in his place. Defeated in his attempt to become the Democratic Party’s heir apparent, Wallace was now trying to use his great personal influence with the President to land one of the most powerful - if not the most powerful - jobs in the administration. The Secretary of Commerce also controlled the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which had already lent $18 billion to small and large businesses. There was still $8 billion left in the original war authorization.

  Evidently President Roosevelt had hoped the switch could be accomplished behind the scenes. But Jesse Jones refused to go in peace. Instead, he released the President’s letter to him, in which FDR literally asked him to resign because Henry Wallace wanted his job. Jones also released his reply, a savagely sarcastic blast that practically called the President a hypocrite to his face. Jones also flatly declared Henry Wallace was not qualified to handle the vast financial responsibilities of the RFC.

  Immediately, Senate liberals began girding their loins to do battle for Wallace. Southerners, conservatives, and Republicans - just about everyone who had any reason to oppose President Roosevelt - grouped around “Uncle Jesse,” as they called Jones. It looked for a while as if the Supreme Court packing donnybrook would be replayed, in wartime, with possibly disastrous consequences.

  My father went to work. He dragged senator after senator down to his office to cajole him into going along with the President. But it soon became obvious there was no hope of the Senate giving Wallace control of the RFC. So Dad, with the help of Senator Tom Connally, worked out a shrewd compromise. He divided the two jobs and persuaded Senator Walter George of Georgia to introduce a bill creating an independent Federal Loan Administration. Then he returned to pushing Wallace as Secretary of Commerce, urgently reminding reluctant senators - and there were still plenty of these - that the Senate rarely if ever declined to give the President his own way on the selection of his Cabinet officers.

  In these delicate maneuvers, Wallace was his usual uncooperative self. He went to New York to attend a rally on his behalf and made a truculent speech, insisting he had a right to both jobs. Only desperate efforts on the part of Dad and Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, Wallace’s chief Senate supporter, held together a tremulous majority. But there were still some hair-raising moments ahead. My father worked out with Majority Leader Alben Barkley a strategy which called for swift action on Senator Barkley’s part. As soon as the Senate convened on February 1, he was supposed to introduce the George bill, which would eliminate the chief objection to Wallace as Secretary of Commerce. But the anti-Wallace senators called for an executive session, which would have forced an immediate vote on Wallace for both jobs. That dramatic roll call ended in a tie, forty-two to forty-two, in effect a victory for the administration, and Senator Barkley rose to introduce the George bill. But Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, one of the Senate’s shrewdest parliamentarians, leaped to his feet to ask Barkley if he would yield, so Senator Taft could change his vote from yea to nay.

  My father, sitting on the rostrum, instantly saw what Taft had in mind. Under the Senate’s rules, this would have given Senator Taft the right to call for another roll-call vote. Only one Wallace-hating senator had to change his mind and abandon the administration to send Wallace to ignominious defeat. For a moment, Senator Barkley started to say he would yield, then he realized in mid-sentence what Senator Taft had in mind and said he would not do so. Senator Taft objected violently and asked Dad for a ruling. Coolly, my father ruled that Senator Taft might make his motion “at any later time” and let Barkley keep the floor. The George bill was immediately introduced, and the senators demonstrated their opinion of Henry Wallace by voting seventy-two to twelve to take the RFC out of his hands. A few weeks later Wallace was confirmed as Secretary of Commerce.

  Woodrow Wilson may have described the vice presidency as an office of “anomalous insignificance and curious uncertainty.” But Dad also found it was hard work. In this letter to his mother and sister, he paints a good picture of his vice presidential routine:

  I used to get down here to the office at seven o’clock and always wrote you a letter promptly in reply to yours. But now I have to take Margaret to school every morning and I don’t get here until 8:30. Reathel Odum is always here at that time and we wade through a stack of mail a foot high. By that time I have to see people - one at a time just as fast as they can go through the office without seeming to hurry them.

  Then I go over to the Capitol gold-plated office and see Senators and curiosity seekers for an hour and then the Senate meets and it’s my job to get ‘em prayed for and goodness knows they need it, and then get the business to going by staying in the chair for an hour and then see more Senators and curiosity people who want to see what a V.P. looks like and if he walks and talks and has teeth.

  Then I close the Senate and sign the mail and then maybe go home or to some meeting, usually some meeting, and then home and start over. . . . I am trying to make a job out of the Vice Presidency and it’s quite a chore.

  I owe all the boys in the family who are in the service a letter and have at least a hundred more to dictate. I’ve seen ten or fifteen people since I started this and answered the phone as often.

  In another letter around this time, he wrote: “We are having about the usual merry-go-round here. I was so tired last night I could hardly walk. Went to bed at nine o’clock and slept right through to seven this morning.”

  Another reason for this exhaustion was the vice president’s social schedule. According to protocol, a veep outranks everyone in Washington but the President. Hostesses like to have him at their parties, and it is assumed, since he supposedly has nothing to do, he will accept any and all invitations. John Garner had brusquely ignored this assumption and lived an intensely private life. But my father loved parties and people, and he cheerfully accepted more invitations than any other vice president in recent memory. For a while, scarcely a night went by without him and Mother departing from our Connecticut Avenue apartment, looking tremendously regal in evening dress.

  Sometimes I went along to luncheons. I can’t say I really enjoyed myself very often. Because of protocol, Dad and Mother would be sitting
at the head of the table, and I would be with the commoners, often surrounded by complete strangers. A fussy eater, I tended to turn up my nose at dishes such as cold poached salmon en gelé and often went home hungry.

  One invitation my father regretted accepting was to a National Press Club party. Someone asked him to play the piano, and he cheerfully obliged. Actress Lauren Bacall, also a guest, climbed onto the top of the upright and gave him one of her sultriest stares. Dad, sensing trouble, tried to look the other way, giving the impression he was playing from sheet music somewhere off to his left. But he was trapped between his instinctive politeness, which made it impossible for him to hurt Miss Bacall’s feelings, and his equally instinctive political awareness he was flirting, not with Miss Bacall, but with trouble.

  Miss Bacall was merely obeying her press agent, who had seen an excellent opportunity for a publicity-winning picture. The agent was right. The picture was splashed through newspapers and magazines for the next month. Mother did not care for it much. She thought it made Dad look undignified and much too carefree for the vice president of a nation at war.

  Generally, my father had a good time as vice president without getting into trouble. He continued to attend luncheon meetings of Lowell Mason’s Chowder, Marching and Baseball Club. At one of these he pulled a typical gag on his protocol-conscious fellow politicians. When Dad arrived for lunch, he unobtrusively took a seat at the very bottom of the table, along with Billy Richardson, who was vice president of the Washington Senators. Sam Rayburn was sitting on Mason’s right, and on his left was a very junior senator. After grace, Matt Connelly arose and issued a vehement protest about the seating order. “Mr. Chairman,” Matt solemnly declared, “it seems to me that you know nothing whatever about protocol, because here you have the vice president sitting way down here at the bottom of the table, furthest from the salt, and you’ve got a very junior senator sitting on your left-hand side, and I think this is an affront to the vice president and I think you should correct this before we go ahead with our eating.”