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For the past sixty years, whenever a presidential candidate is down in the polls days before Election Day, Harry Truman's victory in 1948 inevitable comes up. Of all the comebacks, Truman's still ranks as the most startling, down to the premature headline published by the staunch Republican media mogul Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune the day after the election: "Dewey Defeats Truman!" A month before the election, Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, had a double digit lead over Truman. Most pollsters simply stopped polling, believing that voters made their minds up well before Election Day. Of the 50...

Five weeks and one vice-presidential debate after joining the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin is not going away. As she proved Thursday night in St. Louis, for those who hoped to make her Dan Quayle, she is not obliging. Already she is rewriting the conventional wisdom that says running mates can only hurt, not help a ticket. Her appeal recalls that of Harry Truman, another vice-presidential selection whom opponents discounted at their peril. Not long to politics, Palin's story is relatively short. She was a two-term city council member and then two-term mayor of small town Wasilla, Alaska. In 2006, she...

Here is video in two parts of Sen. John McCain speaking yesterday at the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, where he focused on the Economic Crisis facing America. Toward the end of his remarks, McCain also talked about the character and leadership of President Harry Truman. . . . . (Watch Video)

GLOBAL VIEW By BRET STEPHENS Palin and the 'Experience' Canard September 16, 2008; Page A23 If nothing else, the media meltdown over Sarah Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency has exposed the not-unsuspected truth that, when it comes to historical ignorance and political amnesia, our cultural panjandrums are in a class by themselves. ABC's Charlie Gibson is only the latest to offer himself upon the altar of self-parody with his pop-quizzing of the Alaska governor during their interview last week. Gibson: "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?" Palin: "In what respect, Charlie?" Which was a sensible answer, given that...

On 27 occasions, presidents have called both houses into session to deal with a crisis. The most recent of these special sessions -- and the first one since 1856 -- met at the behest of President Harry S. Truman on this day in 1948. With less than four months remaining before Election Day, Truman's approval rating stood at 36 percent. His GOP opponent, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, looked like a sure winner. So in search of a bold political gesture, the president turned to the provision in the Constitution that allows the president "on extraordinary occasions" to convene one...

The weekly Economist for June 12 placed Iraq on its cover once again. The timing of the cover story was significant. Nine days earlier the Democrats had settled on their presidential nominee -- Barack Hussein Obama -- for the November election. The Iraq story had been downgraded by the mainstream media when the Democratic primary contest intensified and when the good news from Iraq, according to the Economist, was "far better than it was only a few months ago." The good news from Iraq is indeed far better than merely good. The military surge President George W. Bush ordered in...

The stature and repute of our public figures are shaped, as I have written before, by this thing called Kultursmog . It is our political culture, a kultur utterly polluted by politics, left-liberal politics. For instance, it renders the Clintons, as reporter John F. Harris hymned in a recent hagiography, "the two most important political figures of their generation." Continues...================================================================= Still a hero after all these years Anyone who has been following the MSM for the past eight years and has had nothing but the MSM to go by might be forgiven for believing Bush to be some bungling nincompoop,...

In this earlier thread I commented on the incredible ignorant statement by Obama that FDR and Truman talked to our enemies: The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it’s not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda’s leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it’s not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies – like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did. Its a breathtaking quote and...

Business, meaning research by historians and nourishment for history hobbyists, is brisk at the Harry S. Truman Library on this 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the desegregation of the armed services, recognition of the state of Israel and the improbable election of the president responsible for many momentous policies. The library is a place, and now is a time, to ponder the transformation Truman wrought in the presidency and the Constitution, and why that transformation should be debated before the next president is selected. With a mere 15 million pages of documents, this library is minuscule: The Clinton Library...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo.—Business, meaning research by historians and nourishment for history hobbyists, is brisk at the Harry S. Truman Library on this 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the desegregation of the armed services, recognition of the state of Israel and the improbable election of the president responsible for many momentous policies. The library is a place, and now is a time, to ponder the transformation Truman wrought in the presidency and the Constitution and why that transformation should be debated before the next president is selected. With a mere 15 million pages of documents, this library is minuscule: The Clinton...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

Floyd M. Boring, a Secret Service agent who guarded five presidents and took part in the gunfight that foiled an attempt by Puerto Rican nationalists to assassinate President Harry S. Truman, died Friday at his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 92. His death was confirmed by the Collins Funeral Home of Silver Spring. On the afternoon of Nov. 1, 1950, Truman was taking a nap at Blair House, where he was living while the White House, across Pennsylvania Avenue, was being renovated. Boring was stationed outside Blair House with several uniformed White House guards, while two Secret Service...

A former Secret Service officer [Floyd Boring] who helped thwart the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman has died. Boring changed the course of history when he and White House police officers took on two armed men during a shootout near Blair House, where Truman was staying during White House renovations.

A former Secret Service officer who helped thwart the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman has died. Floyd Boring, 92, died Feb. 1 of congestive heart failure at his home in Silver Spring, Md. Boring changed the course of history when he and White House police officers took on two armed men during a shootout near Blair House, where Truman was staying during White House renovations. Boring had just gotten to work Nov. 1, 1950, when the Puerto Rican nationalists arrived to kill Truman. One of the would-be assassins, Oscar Collazo, shot a White House police officer. When they heard...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of former President Harry Truman, died Tuesday. She was 83. Daniel died in Chicago following a brief illness, according to a statement from the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence. She had been living in an assisted living facility for the past several weeks and was on a respirator, the library said. Daniel, a longtime resident of New York City, was also the author of mystery novels, many of them set in Washington D.C.; books on the White House; and biographies, including books on her father and her mother,...

During his tenure as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld often likened the administration's foreign policy decisions to those of the Truman administration during the first years of the Cold War. As President George W. Bush makes his way to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with a stated agenda of advancing the goal of Palestinian statehood, it is worth examining president Truman's achievements and comparing them with those of President Bush. President Harry S Truman was in some ways an accidental president. Elected vice president in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fourth term in...

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be...

WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons. Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against...

A 1950 Plan: Arrest 12,000, Suspend Due Process By TIM WEINER A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially...

Historians debate whether his stature will increase after he leaves office WASHINGTON — If Harry S. Truman did it, why can't George W. Bush? Truman came back from the political abyss — his public approval rating sank as low as 22 percent thanks in large part to America's entry into the Korean War and his handling of labor disputes at home — to become regarded by historians as one of the nation's top 10 presidents. Lately, some Bush administration officials and White House associates have predicted that President Bush — mired in an unpopular war in Iraq and saddled with...