They're Just Wild About Harry--Why Truman's anti-Semitism gets a pass -- and Nixon's never will

Harry Truman reached out from the grave last week and exposed the media’s double standard when it comes to judging Democrats and Republicans. A librarian at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, discovered a 1947 diary of Truman’s that had been sitting unopened on a shelf for some four decades. The book contained the following edifying remarks:

“The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.”

The media’s response? Either a rush to “explain” the remarks in a positive light or a relative disinterest (playing down the entries about Jews while highlighting some other aspect of the diary). The New York Times, for example, headlined its July 11 story on the diary “Truman Wrote of ‘48 Offer to Eisenhower” — and didn’t get around to blandly mentioning Truman’s anti-Semitic comments until the sixth paragraph.

The Times failed to give its readers the full flavor of Truman’s rant, reproducing only a partial quote from the diary and excising the president’s comparison of Jews — a mere two years after the Holocaust — with Hitler and Stalin.

Just about every media account quoted so-called experts who strained to place Truman’s remarks in historical context and to differentiate between his words and deeds. Such fair-mindedness is, of course, noticeably lacking whenever the media rehash the anti-Semitic statements made by Richard Nixon, whose deeds vis-a-vis Israel trumped Truman’s — Nixon saved Israel from catastrophe during the Yom Kippur War while Truman, after granting recognition to Israel in 1948, refused to provide desperately needed arms to the new Jewish state as it fought for its life against invading Arab armies.

Some of the aforementioned “experts” professed shock at the very idea that Harry Truman could have harbored dark thoughts toward Jews. Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, reacted with a particularly appalling display of ignorance: “Wow!” she said. “It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman’s record.”

Ms. Bloomfield obviously doesn’t know very much. At a Cabinet meeting in 1946, Truman complained bitterly to his Cabinet about Jewish organizational leaders, remarking, “If Jesus Christ couldn’t satisfy them here on earth, how the hell am I supposed to?....I have no use for them and I don’t care what happens to them.”

On another occasion, referring to Jews who were pressing the case for a Jewish state, Truman snapped to some aides, “I’m not a New Yorker. All these people are pleading for a special interest. I’m an American.”

Truman’s anti-Jewish tantrums were hardly limited to his inner circle: Ted Thackrey, editor of the New York Post and husband of the paper’s flamboyant publisher, Dorothy Schiff, recalled how stunned he and his wife were when they paid a call on Truman at the White House and broached the subject of Palestine. “Now, Thackrey,” Truman said, anger visibly rising, “if only the [expletive deleted] New York Jews would just shut their mouths and quit hollering.”

In his book "Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter," James Humes, a speech writer for five U.S. presidents, relates a little-known but highly revealing story that was told to him by the television producer David Susskind, who worked on a documentary with Truman several years after the latter left office.

“Susskind,” writes Humes, “said that each morning...he would arrive at Truman’s house at Independence. He would wait on the porch on a cold February day while Mrs. Truman went to inform her husband of his arrival. After about the fourth morning, he asked the president in his walk why he was never asked inside.

“You’re a Jew, David,” Truman replied, “and no Jew has ever been in the house.”

According to Humes, Truman went on to explain to a stunned Susskind that the house was his wife’s: “Bess runs it, and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime.”

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Jason Maoz is the senior editor of The Jewish Press. Jason Maoz can be reached at jmaoz@jewishpress.com.

When Nixon died Ben Stein wrote a great eulogy and made reference to Richard Nixon helping Israel. His father served under Nixon (Council Economic Advisors)

The Nixon I Knew
The Nixon I Knew
By Herbert Stein
Posted Friday, January 2, 1998, at 12:30 AM PT

Determined scholars and journalists have fished through the Nixon tapes and recovered enough material to fill books and articles showing that Nixon was obscene and unscrupulous. I do not deny that there was a Nixon like that. But that was not the only Nixon or the most usual and important one. Richard Nixon performed the daily, difficult duties of being president responsibly and respectably. I was not a confidant or crony of President Nixon, but I saw him frequently during his whole tenure of office, when I was a member and then chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers. On all these occasions he impressed me as a civil, serious, dedicated, judicious, and highly intelligent man. I believe that others who worked with him in a professional way had the same impression.

I first met Nixon on Dec. 18, 1968, after his first election, when he was about to name me a member of the CEA. If I was a Republican at all, I was not a Nixon Republican. He was about to assume the most powerful office in the world. I was a little-known economics essayist. But I felt comfortable with him. He did not try either to glad-hand me or to impress me with his importance. He showed genuine interest in what I had to say about the matters on which I was assumed to be well informed, and he was unreserved about expressing his own opinion.

Iwas also struck by my observation of him at the first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy, shortly after the inauguration. As members of the CEA, my colleague Hendrik Houthakker and I were the lowest-ranking people in the room. But the president wanted to hear what we had to say. He also made it clear that he did not expect his economic advisers to engage in political activity, although we might make speeches on economic policy to groups of economists and others interested in a professional way. I thought he showed courtesy, consideration, and a desire to learn. (Later, after the 1972 campaign, some of my Democratic friends thought that my speeches had been too political. If so, it was because I enjoyed being in the political game, not because Nixon urged me on.)
In the next six years I went through many meetings in which three or four people--from Treasury, Budget, Federal Reserve, or the CEA--would discuss economic policy with the president. He usually listened to the interchange quietly. When the discussion was over he would summarize it in a systematic way--distilling what order could be extracted from it and indicating what he thought were the main considerations and options. These scenes were light-years remote from the locker-room conversations with Haldeman, Erlichman, and others that have become the subject of much recent interest.
The president appreciated both the value and the limitations of economics. He understood that it had something to contribute and should be heard, but he also understood that economics is an uncertain science. There were no complaints or recriminations when the economic forecasts turned out to be wrong. At the beginning of 1972, the CEA had forecast that unemployment would be down from about 6 percent to 4 percent by the end of the year. In December, I had to report to him that unemployment was still about 5 percent. I said that was "in the neighborhood" of 4 percent. All he replied was that it was a streetcar ride across the neighborhood. That realistic attitude was a great comfort to an economic adviser.
I don't recall him ever using an obscenity, unless you want to count the time he said that he would rather have X inside the tent p...ing out than outside the tent p...ing in. (I believe this was borrowed from LBJ, and probably from generations of earlier politicians.) I remember Nixon once saying, "Honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while." But that was an occasion when he was arguing for honesty.
In view of the grossness of some of the language selectively extracted from the tapes, I think it important to note that Nixon showed an appreciation of, and capacity for, good writing and wit. He had probably the best staff of writers of any president since the time when Alexander Hamilton wrote speeches for George Washington. The exchange with him that I best remember came in early 1973, when he was considering the reimposition of a wage-and-price freeze that had been so popular when first done in August 1971. In a smart-alecky kind of way, I said, quoting Heraclitus, "You can't step in the same river twice." He immediately responded, "Yes, you can, if it's frozen."
In my opinion the imposition of price-and-wage controls was President Nixon's one serious economic-policy mistake. But that decision was within the range of options urged upon him by respected economists, mainly Democrats. The control system gave the administration extraordinary power over individual businesses. I do not believe there was any case in which this power was improperly used.
Nixon recognized and utilized talent, whatever its political connection. The leading example was George Shultz. He saw in this professor, whom he had never met before he invited him to be secretary of labor, a man of extraordinary intelligence, management ability, and integrity. He quickly elevated him to director of the Office of Management and Budget and then secretary of the Treasury. There must have been few administrations that had as much talent in the two senior Cabinet positions--State and Treasury--as Nixon's had in Kissinger and Shultz.
I do not put down these few recollections in order to excuse Richard Nixon. I knew him and liked and respected him. I am not inclined to judge him. I do not feel I have the wisdom and moral elevation to do that. Anyway, what would be the point? He is now beyond our--or, at least, my--power to add or detract. I only want to suggest that those who feel the need and ability to judge him should try to look beyond the Revelation of the Day.

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