Truman(57)

Truman also did well, but by no means sensationally so, amongst blacks. Most did not vote at all, but of those who did twice as many were for Truman as were for Dewey. In the big cities Truman maintained the traditional Democratic majority, but substantially less strongly than had Roosevelt. The best summing up seems to be that he held together, on a declining asset basis, the traditional Roosevelt coalition, sustained it with a special injection of farm votes, and was fortified by an over-confident Dewey campaign which discouraged marginal Republican supporters from voting.

However achieved, it was a famous victory. As Mrs Truman, through her sore throat, told the White House assistant usher on the morning after their return to Washington: ‘It looks like you’re going to have to put up with us for another four years.’19 There was also going to be a great deal with which Truman himself, and vicariously Mrs Truman, would have to put up during that forthcoming four years.





9

THE LIMITATIONS OF VICTORY


Just as defeat in the mid-term elections of 1946 had liberated Truman in his own mind from the shadow of Roosevelt’s splendiferous personality, so his much more important victory in 1948 gave him a new freedom in the minds of most of his countrymen both from this formidable shadow and from the limitations of his own occasionally jejune impact. He had joined a small company of three presidents who had succeeded through death and subsequently been re-elected in their own right. Theodore Roosevelt was the first predecessor, Calvin Coolidge the second. Truman could no longer be regarded as a president simply of chance and gaffes.

This gave him no immunity from criticism. But no president including Washington and Jefferson has ever approached such immunity. Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, to cite the other two (with Washington and Jefferson) now most commonly regarded as in the first league, were peculiarly far away from it.

Roosevelt, by virtue of the beneficent power of the United States when Hitler menaced the world, approached immunity internationally, but not internally. Lincoln, on the other hand, signally failed to achieve it either abroad or at home. The London Times under one of its most distinguished editors (Delane) accomplished the considerable feat of describing the Gettysburg Address as ‘rendering ludicrous’ what might otherwise have been an impressive ceremony of dedication. Nor, beset by the relentless ambition to replace him of his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, and by his own capacity for selecting incompetent generals, did he stand high internally until victory for the union   was manifestly within his grasp. The American democracy has many qualities, but appreciating great presidents during their terms of office is not amongst them.

It should therefore be no surprise that, while Truman’s election was recognized as remarkable, it gave him no guarantee of four years of unchallenged authority. Even before his inauguration on January 20th, 1949, there had been two precursors of the troubles of the second term. In December 1948, Alger Hiss, a State Department official who as a young man of promise had occupied junior but central posts, had been indicted for perjury in denying that he had passed classified documents to a Communist agent. During the same late autumn it became obvious that the Chiang Kai-Shek régime would be driven out of mainland China. Those who wished to oppose the administration said that this was due to supineness in Washington. Those who wished to support the administration thought it was an inevitable result of the corruption and inefficiency of the Kuomintang. It opened a great foreign policy divide in American politics. Towards Europe there was an adequate community of approach. Towards the Far East there was no such thing. Vandenberg’s health was declining. (He died in April 1951.) The China Lobby was rising. Truman was to have more foreign policy trouble at home during the second term than during the first.

Acheson replaced Marshall as Secretary of State because of the latter’s kidney complaint on January 7th, two weeks before the Inauguration. For all his fine creative qualities of mind, and total ability to defend himself in any forum, Acheson’s return probably exacerbated rather than calmed the incipient political conflict. His coruscating confidence was sometimes a liability with the Congress. It in no way prevented his getting on with Truman (of whose presidential prerogatives he was always very respectful) or with his most important foreign colleague, Ernest Bevin (although Bevin and Truman could not get on with each other). But it seemed too much of an arrogantly carried emblem of the liberal Eastern foreign policy establishment to endear him to many members of the Senate or the House.

As the second term wore on and as McCarthyite populism achieved its formidable if short-lived wave of success, Acheson became a red rag to the red-baiters. But his provocation was splendidly done. It began with his examination for confirmation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When asked about his relationship with Hiss, which in fact was not particularly close—it was so with Hiss’s brother—he replied that his ‘friendship was not easily given nor easily withdrawn’. Nor was he then going ‘to abandon (Hiss) and throw rocks when he was in trouble’. This created some consternation, but Vandenberg was still there to find a way round. Acheson agreed to balance it with the publication of a statement (in fact drafted by Vandenberg) saying that he abhorred Communism—and no doubt sin too. That for the moment was enough to get him a unanimous favourable recommendation from the committee, and confirmation by the whole Senate on a vote of 83 to 6. But Vandenberg was not going to be there for long, and the 6 (all Republicans) were a cloud bigger than a man’s hand, particularly as they voted adversely mainly because of China, about which Acheson was most vulnerable and knew least.