Truman made mistakes. He said so himself. He said “If I could take back anything, it would be the formation of the CIA, it was my biggest mistake”. That being said, he played so major league ball and made perhaps the biggest decisions of the last century for the free world, when he stepped in. Truman was already surrounded by Roosevelt communists when he arrived, with virtually no knowledge of the major projects in the US or war at the time. He had to face down Stalin and Mao day one of his arrival.
Him being rich, well he didn’t sure didn’t flaunt it or ask for anything government. The reason Truman is being trashed now is that all the Democrats have enriched themselves being POTUS or VPOTUS, and only Trump lost half his wealth serving. That fact sticks in the gut of Democrats so much that they reach back to try and smear one of their own.
I figure not many could have done as well as Truman did, with what he started with, filling in during a huge war, with everything stacked against him. He was loyal to party, probably to a fault, but the buck did stop at his desk.
Truman did some very good things: he took the measure of Stalin immediately and did not have the trust in “Uncle Joe” that FDR had cultivated. Second, he did not hesitate to end WW2 by dropping the atomic bombs - it had to be done and he said he had the best sleep of any night the evening he ordered it done. Third, he overrode his entire Cabinet by his one vote to resupply Berlin in the Berlin Airlift. Fourth, he integrated the armed forces - you can’t ask a man to die for his country and then tell him that he has to be in a separate unit bc of his race.
And not a word about Trump donating his salary.
This is not personal Pete Dovgan, and I understand the points you make, but you and I disagree on this.
Truman should have been impeached for obstruction of justice, plain and simple. And he should have been properly impeached by the rules in place at the time, not the idiotic rules and fashions of impeachment we have today. He presented one face to the public of the virulent anti-communist while the government was infested with communist spies. It is a given that any action against him would have failed, given how he played politics and built up his reputation and image with the laudatory press (even if there were, back then, more press entities in a more balance press corps willing to take a stand against him than in succeeding years up to today) and I don’t think he was the “only one” who could have made hard decisions. There were men at that time who could have. Perhaps your statement would be accurate if you specified “other Democrats”.
Truman, as President, proudly and defiantly removed OFFICIAL government files on people who were being investigated and had them brought to the White House so the access could be restricted as being under the watch of the Executive Branch. Kind of sounds like the Clinton White House to me.
That was done under his direction, by him.
Not his underlings or political allies.
Him alone.
And it wasn’t just one or two files, it was dozens, if not hundreds of files that he gathered under his wing in the White House, removed from the State Department record systems and other departments record systems. He gave the express orders to make this happen with the full and stated intent of stymieing Joseph McCarthy.
These were government employees, Administration employees, State Department employees, and employees from dozens of different branches who were being investigated, almost all of whom DID have ties to the Soviet Union.
It was he who set the rules for investigators. The investigators had to travel to the White House. Only one person at a time could examine the records. No documents could be checked out and removed from the White House. No notes could be taken. No documents could be brought in for comparison. No photographs could be taken. Formal requests and appointments had to be made in writing, in advance.
When documentation was provided, it was incomplete. Parts of records or whole records were removed, and instead of the standard process where a document was inserted in place of removed documents stating who had custody of the documents and when it was removed were NOT THERE. As said, an investigator would show up, and the record was mysteriously unavailable, mislaid, misfiled, or whatever.
These were Truman’s rules. HE was the source of them. He was the one who laid them down. And he was proud of it. It was the Presidential equivalent of Andrew Jackson’s public declaration of “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
I disagree with you. Truman was a scumbag. That he pulled the wool over the eyes of Americans with his “anti-communism” and crying poor when he left office is one thing. He understood all too well the importance of building an image and he did it damn well.
For reference, I suggest the best book on this era by the now deceased M. Stanton Evans: “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies”. It is important to note that, in stark comparison to the many, many anti-McCarthy books written, very few if any who did original research, but simply referenced other books who did not do any primary research, the author M. Stanton Evans was a cub reporter during the McCarthy era, has done extensive primary research on this, has seen time and time again with his own eyes viewing the actual records in question in the archives the evidence of file tampering of official records, often the only evidence the original document was originally there is a scrap of paper tauntingly left under a staple where it had been ripped out. He had fought long, officially documented battles with the New York Times over four decades about inaccuracy or outright lies in their reporting (backed up by official documentation from the archives) and never received any satisfaction from them.
This article posted by euram shows EXACTLY the type of man Truman was. I don’t blame people who don’t want to believe this article or M. Stanton Evans’ book. Truman wanted to make his legacy untouchable to the American public, and succeeded.
Trump will regain his losses through asset inflation due to Xidens policies.
I watched a film of Truman's 1948 Democratic Convention acceptance speech on C-Span a few years ago.
It sounded like Stalin and Mao had written it.
Not only that, but his anger and contempt for the GOP were completely sincere, and very similar to the tone and rhetoric that Conservatives hear from the Political Left every day in 2021.
MORE from Truman trasher Paul Campos:
WHITE PARANOIA, WHITE RAGE, AND FOX NEWS
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/08/white-paranoia-white-rage-and-fox-news