Truman(16)

The interesting sentence is the third one. Truman, not unreasonably at that stage, two months before the outbreak of the war in Europe, was not contemplating a third term for Roosevelt. Retrospectively, however, his idea of possible successors does suggest a remarkable inwardness of senatorial approach. ‘Old Jack’ was Garner, already 71 and about to retire from the strains of the vice-presidency to his Texas ranch, from which he hardly ever subsequently emerged, and, perhaps for this reason, lived to the age of 99. Wheeler became one of the most isolationist of senators. Truman was not an early prophet of the imperial presidency.

Indeed, even when the European War had started and Roosevelt had begun to nibble at staying on, Truman remained opposed to a break with tradition. So was Bennett Clark, who even thought of himself for the nomination, an idea to which Truman gave some support. This had the unfortunate effect of further improving the position with Roosevelt of Governor Stark, who was unequivocally for a third term from the beginning. Quite how well the President thought of Stark is not clear. He delivered some disparaging non sequiturs (’I do not think your governor is a real liberal … He has no sense of humour … He has a large ego …’) about him to Truman in August 1939, which the latter gratefully recorded to his wife. But this may just have been playing a little politics with Truman. He certainly did not discourage Stark, he blandly declined to endorse Truman, and by January 1940, he regarded him as sufficiently unlikely to win that he offered him a well-paid appointment to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Truman himself at this stage probably took little better a view of his own chances than did Roosevelt. His daughter recorded: ‘Never before or since can I recall my father being so gloomy as he was in those latter months of 1939, after Tom Pendergast went to prison. Nothing seemed to be going right.’5 Nevertheless he became determined to run. It was not particularly his love of the Senate. Much more it was his contrariness, his good appetite for a fight against the odds, and an inherent optimism in adversity. When things were going well he was sceptical and self-critical. His good opinion of himself mostly surfaced when he was up against a wall. Life could not be as bad as it looked. Apart from anything else he deserved that it should be better. An almost equal resistance to both euphoria and despair was one of his most considerable qualities. He was not particularly magnanimous in victory, but he was certainly defiant in the face of defeat. It was the spirit which had given him control over D Battery in 1918, and which was to get him through in 1948. Perhaps, as has been ingeniously suggested by one of his later biographers, it was due to his abnormally slow heart-beat.6 It sounds as good an explanation as any other.

The early stages of the 1940 campaign were about as discouraging as it is possible to imagine. There was practically no money, little apparent support on the ground, and a nearly universal conviction that the fight was hopeless. The Jackson County machine, his base in 1934, was in ruins. The press was not merely hostile but often derisory. Milligan declared as a third candidate in March, and while this somewhat weakened Stark it also made Truman’s base seem even more exiguous, and in particular gave Bennett Clark, whose half-promised support Truman desperately wanted, a reason for further equivocation. Clark by this time was bitterly hostile to Stark, but really preferred Milligan to Truman.

There were only a few people in Missouri who remained wholly loyal and worked devotedly from the beginning, but even they did so without any conviction of victory. One was Jim Pendergast, but the name had become useless. Others were John Snyder, a St Louis banker, whom Truman was to make an undistinguished Secretary of the Treasury, and Colonel (of the reserve) Harry Vaughan, who as General Vaughan was to become Truman’s not wholly impeccable military aide, and a core crony in the White House. Truman’s gratitude to those who were staunch during the months of apparent hopelessness remained intense.

How, out of this impossible beginning, did he snatch victory? His dogged determination was an essential basis. He also had good pockets of hidden support, which responded well to his vigorous, hard hitting but intimate, face-to-face campaigning. And the luck suddenly began to run with him. Stark, who was far enough ahead to prevent the more effective Milligan looking a serious challenger, began to defeat himself.

Truman’s campaign opened officially at the mid-state town of Sedalia on June 15th, 1940, the day after German troops entered Paris. He was supported on the platform by Senator Schwellenbach of Washington State. Aid from other senators became a strong feature of his campaign. Alben Barkley of Kentucky and Carl Hatch of New Mexico came to speak for him in St Louis (unfortunately attracting an audience of only 300 in a hall for 3,500, which at least gave great pleasure to the Post-Dispatch), as, elsewhere, did one or two others. And public messages of support poured in from a wide span of leading Democrats: Wagner of New York, Connally of Texas, Byrnes of South Carolina, Harrison of Mississippi, Wheeler of Montana.