HISTORY TEACHER

     ....The morale of the staff had never been higher. Truman spoke of them proudly and affectionately as his “team.” They were devoted to him, and increasingly as time went on, the better they knew him, quite as much as those who had served with him in the Army. They liked him as a man, greatly respected him as a leader, admiring his courage, decisiveness, and fundamental honesty. The President they worked for, the Harry Truman they saw day to day, bore almost no resemblance to the stereotype Harry Truman, the cocky, profane, “feisty little guy.” Rather it was a quiet-spoken, even-tempered and uncommonly kind-hearted person, whose respect for the office he held enlarged their appreciation not only of him but of their own responsibilities. “He was, as I’m sure you know, an extremely thoughtful , courteous, considerate man,” George Elsey would tell an interviewer years later. “He was a pleasure to work for . . . very kindly . . . never too busy to think about members of his staff. . . . He had a tremendous veneration and respect for the institution of the Presidency. He demanded at all times respect for the President of the United States. . . .” William J. Hopkins, an executive clerk who would serve nearly forty years in the White House , said later of Truman that no President in his experience had “set a comparable tone.” Truman, Hopkins emphasized, “liked people, he trusted people, and in turn he engendered a feeling of unqualified loyalty and devotion among his staff.” A measure of the Truman manner and outlook was the way he conducted his regular morning meeting with the staff, one of the most important events of their day, for the information and sense of direction provided, but also for its overall atmosphere.

    The staff numbered thirteen, two more than in Roosevelt’s time, and Truman was his own chief of staff. The meetings were informal, yet orderly and businesslike. Truman would open the door of his office on the dot of nine o’clock and one by one they would file in and take their seats. He was seated at his desk . . . the staff assembled in a semi-circle around his desk, and much of the day’s business was gone over [remembered Hopkins ]. He usually started with Matt Connelly, who would bring up matters relating to presidential appointments, what was on the agenda for the day and upcoming appointments. He would also bring to the President’s attention requests for speeches throughout the country, getting the President’s reactions and (in some cases) commitments. The President would then turn to Charlie Ross and see what problems might arise during the day in his relations with the press. Many matters were discussed in terms of how to answer press questions and deal with certain problems. Dr. Steelman, of course, was there, and Clark Clifford . . . and they brought up matters in their areas of responsibility. It was an opportunity to listen to the President’s philosophy and get his directions for the day.

    President Truman was a prodigious reader, and each night he would carry home a portfolio , often six or eight inches thick. The next morning, he would have gone through all that material and taken such action as was needed. He had a desk folder labeled for each of his staff members, and at this staff meeting, he would pass out to them documents in their area of responsibility, or on which he wished their advice or recommendations, or on matters he wanted raised with the various departments and agencies. In this way each staff member knew basically what the others were doing, knew to whom the President had given which responsibility—whether it was to respond to a certain request, or to follow through on the preparation of an Executive Order or a speech, or things of that nature. Truman was as tidy about his desk as he was about his clothes. The “flow of paper was probably the best I have experienced,” remembered Hopkins, whose job, as executive clerk, was to bring to the President and keep track of the immense range of documents requiring his attention or signature— enrolled bills, executive orders, proclamations, executive clemency cases, treaties , departmental directives, nominations for federal office, commissions, messages to Congress—in addition to “gleanings” from the incoming mail, which were routinely delivered to Truman’s desk twice a day, in the morning and again after lunch.

    Hopkins, who was himself extremely punctual, also noted admiringly of Truman, “When he went to lunch, if he left word that he would return at 2: 00 P.M., he was back without fail, not at 2: 05, not at 1: 15, but at 2: 00 P.M.” The longer he was in office, the more conscious Truman seemed of time. On his desk now he had a total of four clocks, as well as two others elsewhere in the room and his own wristwatch. Ross, Clifford, Elsey, could each tell his own stories of Truman’s exceptional diligence, the long hours he kept, working as hard or harder than any of them. “Lots of times I would be down there [at the White House] in the evening,” Clifford would remember, “and he’d be sitting upstairs, in the Oval Room upstairs, with an old-fashioned green eye shade on, like bookkeepers wear, and he’d be sitting there reading all this material . . . and we would talk together, and he took it very, very seriously. And the strain of the job was enormous.” “He spent virtually every waking moment working at being president,” said Charles Murphy, a new man on the staff in 1947, who was Clifford’s assistant. To convey the kind of sustained effort the presidency demanded, Murphy would compare it to cramming for and taking an examination every day, year after year, with never a letup. Murphy particularly admired Truman’s gift for simplification. “Not only could he simplify complex matters, he could also keep simple matters simple.”

    The staff was continuously amazed by the President’s knowledge of the country, acquired from years of travel by automobile and from the territory covered at the time of the Truman Committee investigations. Charlie Ross claimed that Truman could look out of his plane at almost any point and name the exact region he was flying over. They liked his sense of humor. “An economist,” he told them , “is a man who wears a watch chain with a Phi Beta Kappa key at one end and no watch at the other.” And all of them, it seems, admired his sense of history, which they saw as one of his greatest strengths. “If a man is acquainted with what other people have experienced at this desk,” Truman would say sitting in the Oval Office, “it will be easier for him to go through a similar experience. It is ignorance that causes most mistakes. The man who sits here ought to know his American history, at least.” When Truman talked of presidents past—Jackson, Polk, Lincoln—it was as if he had known them personally. If ever there was a “clean break from all that had gone before,” he would say, the result would be chaos. Once, that spring, at lunch on the Williamsburg, during a brief cruise down the Potomac, Truman and Bill Hassett, the correspondence secretary, began talking about the Civil War. As the others at the table listened, the conversation ranged over several battles and the abilities and flaws of various Union and Confederate generals, Truman, as often before, impressing everyone with how much he had read and remembered. He would like to have been a history teacher, Truman said. “Rather teach it than make it?” Clifford asked. “Yes, I think so,” Truman replied. “It would be not nearly so much trouble.”

    Clifford had become particularly important to Truman, in much the way Harry Hopkins had been to Roosevelt, and it was vital, they both knew, that Clifford understand Truman and what he was trying to accomplish in the long run. He did not want an administration like Roosevelt’s, Truman said. Too many of those around Roosevelt had been “crackpots,” he thought. “I want to keep my feet on the ground, don’t feel comfortable unless I know where I’m going. I don’t want any experiments. The American people have been through a lot of experiments and they want a rest from experiments.” He disliked the terms “progressive” and “liberal.” What he wanted was a “forward-looking program.” That was it, a “forward-looking program.” Perhaps more than Truman knew, they all appreciated the respect he showed them....

Charles Murphy, a shy man who spoke only when spoken to, would later remark, “In many ways President Truman really was as tough as a boot, but with his personal staff he was extremely gentle . . . and his staff returned his kindness with an extraordinary amount of hard work, voluntary overtime, and wholehearted, single-minded devotion.” By later presidential standards the staff was small and unlike the White House staffs of some later presidencies, those serving Truman made no policy decisions. As George Elsey would remember, no one on Truman’s staff would have dreamed of making policy or making decisions on fundamental economic or political issues, “or any other kind of issue.” It just has to be said over and over again [Elsey would comment in an interview years later]. There was no vast foreign policy machinery at the White House. There was no vast machinery on any subject at the White House. . . . [And no one trying to] make their reputations by undercutting . . . by slitting the throat of a Secretary of State . . . by proving to the President, by trying to prove to the President, that they’re smarter and more brilliant and their ideas are better [than the Secretary of State] . . . . None of that existed. Had anybody at the White House tried to behave that way, he would have been out of there in thirty seconds flat. The loyalty of those around Truman was total and would never falter. In years to come not one member of the Truman White House would ever speak or write scathingly of him or belittle him in any fashion. There would be no vindictive “inside” books or articles written about this President by those who worked closest to him. They all thought the world of Harry Truman then and for the rest of their lives, and would welcome the chance to say so.


McCullough, David (2003-08-20). Truman
(Kindle Locations 10773-10850). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.