Posted on 01/16/2004 11:54:33 AM PST by ComtedeMaistre
In his recent endorsement of Dean, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa compared Howard Dean to Harry Truman. Many others have made the same comparison, especially with regard to Truman's angry 1948 election campaign. In liberal terms, this is supposed to be a complement.
But what worries me about the Truman legacy, is that so many decent, respectable, intelligent, educated, patriotic, and reasonable conservative Republicans, happen to be great admirers of Harry Truman. I have never been able to understand it. How could so many good people have a distorted view of history?
In his first term, Truman handed over half of Europe to the Soviet Communists, under Josef Stalin. In his second term, he allowed the commies to take over China, and he betrayed the Chinese nationalists who took refuge in Taiwan. In Korea, Truman refused to allow America's greatest military commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to win an outright victory in Korea. In fact, Truman fired MacArthur. If MacArthur had been allowed to finish his job, there would have been no Vietnam War. And as the great Senator Joseph McCarthy revealed to the American people, Truman allowed the US State Department to be infiltrated with communists, from top to bottom.
Dean's admirers are correct in comparing his 2003-2004 campaign, to Harry Truman's divisive 1948 campaign. In 1948, Truman was deeply unpopular, and had no real policies to run on. His Democratic party had split into three parts, with patriotic anti-communist Democrats joining Strom Thurmond's States Rights Movement, and the more overtly communist Democrats joining Henry Wallace's "progressive" movement. With a weakened Democratic party, Truman decided to wage the most negative, divisive, and hateful election campaign in American history, that consisted of nothing more than proclaiming hatred for the congressional Republican Party. Republicans were called all sorts of names, and as Truman campaigned throughout the country, partisan Democrats cheered him on, and demanded that he bash Republicans some more, by chanting, "Give Them Hell Harry!". Negative campaigning worked in 1948, and Truman won a narrow victory over Dewey.
By 1952, when Truman was seeking a another term in office, the American people had by then come to learn of the real Harry Truman, and what a despicable character he was. Americans, including most Democrats, overwhelmingly rejected Truman, and he left office in disgrace as the most unpopular President in history. Truman's opinion poll ratings were even lower than those of Nixon at the height of Watergate.
That has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever read here.
As far as MacArthur goes, and I will preface this by saying I think an awful lot of him, he was not only his own biggest assest but his own greatest enemy. Truman does not deserve the wrath laid upon him for his firing of MacArthur. Neither side of that coin handled what they should have been handling all that well.
There were also those pesky facts on the ground. Like 20,000,000 Red Army soldiers, or whatever the number was. Uncle Joe could just take what he wanted.
Yalta was largely a recognition of reality. You can make a good case that morality would have been better served by refusing to recognize a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. You can't make a terribly good one that it would have made much difference on the ground.
Although in 1944 Roosevelt could have probably abandoned the "unconditional surrender" demand and approached dissident German officers who would then overthrow Hitler and allow us in to help keep the Soviets out. I think that would have been the only real way to prevent a Soviet occupation of most of Eastern Europe.
Patton wanted to go through Germany and right into Russia. The Russians were tired of the war, had suffered much, and probably would not have liked to face us. In addition, the US had massive industrial potential (plus more unrealized industrial potential) that could not be damaged by the Soviets. But their factories were within range of our bombers.
Plus we had the atom bomb. Plus we were positioned to attack them from both the East and the West. I'm convinced we could have taken them -- at the very least, we could have pushed them out of Eastern Europe.
You're probably right. However, such a treacherous attack on an ally was not politically possible. Had Roosevelt tried it, he would have been impeached and removed from office. Also there is the trifling detail that America had not declared war on USSR.
I was four and my father took me with him to the train station so I could see, "That son of a bitch, Harry Truman."
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