Truman(77)

No doubt the newer staff found it less easy than the longer serving ones to understand the peculiar mixture of his weave of relaxation and decision taking, which had certainly not left the country short of firm government. There was no suggestion of disloyalty developing amongst either group. What was striking, however, was the unanimity with which they all said ‘no’ when, in early March 1952, he seriously considered running again.

This did not mean that his private memorandum of renunciation, by then nearly two years old, which he had revealed to his staff in the previous November, was just a piece of play-acting. He genuinely thought that it was right and desirable that he should not serve again. He also no doubt had a roseate vision of finding a satisfactory Democratic candidate, whom he could promote, instruct in the ways of presidential politics and government, and then protectively install in the White House.

Truman’s approach to the 1952 election cannot be understood without comprehending that he firmly believed a Democratic candidate could and would win. This was based partly on his fierce partisanship, which made him overestimate the continuing appeal of his own and Roosevelt’s record. It was also based on the view, which he held steadfastly up to the opening of their Convention in early July, that the Republicans would nominate Taft, whom he regarded as eminently beatable. In Truman’s view therefore any presentable Democrat (certainly including himself, in spite of the 23% poll rating) would be President and not merely a sporting runner. This view, except possibly for the inclusion of Truman himself within the electable category, was broadly shared by much informed opinion over the winter of 1951-2.

At the beginning of that winter, on November 19th, Truman for the first time discussed the succession freely with his staff. Adlai Stevenson, who at the age of 51 was three years into a successful term as Governor of Illinois, was the first name to be mentioned in this inner group, as it was already becoming the first name in more public circles. Truman spoke against him, on somewhat inconsequential grounds. According to his daughter he expressed his hope that the Democratic Party ‘would be smart enough to select someone who could win. And by that I don’t mean the Stevenson type of candidate. I don’t believe the people of the United States are ready for an Ivy Leaguer.’3

Truman’s choice was his own appointment as Chief Justice, Fred Vinson, a former Kentucky congressman who had been briefly Secretary of the Treasury before elevation to the Supreme Court. As Chief Justice, which office he occupied respectably rather than with distinction, Vinson remained surprisingly close to the President’s inner circle (he was a poker player). Truman, as in the case of the abortive mission to Stalin in 1948, tended to credit him with both a greater sagacity and a higher public repute than he in fact possessed. What was indisputable was that he was a man with whom Truman felt comfortable. This combination of qualities, real and imagined, made Truman prepared to leap over a precedent-free gulf and try to put a Chief Justice in the White House.† Vinson, however, was unresponsive. He was 62, not in perfect health, and sensitive about damaging his judicial reputation. By early December he had convinced the President that he was not available.

This left Truman without a satisfactory candidate. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Barkley, Harriman and Estes Kefauver all wanted the job, but Truman considered none of them right. Russell was an able Senator but too much a man of the South to be acceptable. Barkley had been ‘a great Vice-President’, but at 74 he was simply too old. ‘It takes him five minutes to sign his name,’ which would be a substantial disqualification for dealing with the 600 documents a day which, Truman claimed, the President had to sign.4 Harriman, on the other hand, was well capable of doing the job, but Truman thought that his lack of campaign experience and political backing, together with his provenance as the son of one of the great railroad predators of the turn of the century, probably made him unelectable. Kefauver, the anti-crime campaigner in the coonskin hat, he simply regarded as unappetizing. Privately he mostly referred to him as ‘Cowfever’.

In these circumstances Truman did two things, neither of which turned out well. First he began to move back towards himself as a candidate, and chose Eisenhower, of all people, as a correspondent to whom to open his mind. Partly because of a certain romantic attachment to the idea of the relationship of the President as Commander-in-Chief to a great commander overseas, and perhaps also to compensate for the MacArthur rupture, he had the habit of writing to Eisenhower in terms closer than that General ever reciprocated, either in thought or word. Certainly on this occasion he wrote to him by hand in a foolishly unbuttoned way:5