Highlights from Truman by David McCullough

When I was up in Oakland for training back in October, I trekked to Jack London Square and bought a copy of Truman at Barnes and Noble, thinking I would have a whole lot of time to read it. It's almost 1,000 pages long, and I finally finished it shortly after returning from Japan. I read the bulk of it while there, interesting considering that initially my main interest in reading about Truman was to find out what went into his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. I highly recommend this book (in fact, I recommend anything by David McCullough - I've now read 1776, John Adams, and Truman, all three of which are far from the dry histories we remember from our social studies classes as kids).

Often when I read books, I mark pages with quotes or passages that particularly stand out to me (for example, this blog). So here they are, the highlights from Truman:

* One of Truman's idols was Andrew Jackson. A quote from Jackson in the book that really appealed to me: "One man with courage makes a majority."

* In high school, Truman had to translate works of the Roman Cicero from the original Latin, including this - Salus populi suprema est lex - "The people's good is the highest law."

* A common theme to Truman's presidency: "I am here to make decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong I am going to make them."

* From a speech by David Lilienthal, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, to a Senate committee considering Truman's renomination of him to that post, around the beginning of the "Red Scare." He was asked to explain his views on communism, and this is part of his purely extemporaneous answer. Wow! :

I believe in, and I conceive the Constitution of the United States to rest, as does religion, upon the fundamental proposition of the integrity of the individual; and that all Government and all private institutions must be designed to promote and protect and defend the integrity and the dignity of the individual...

Any forms of government, therefore, and any other institutions, which make men means rather than ends in themselves, which exalt that state or any other institutions above the importance of men, which place arbitrary power over men as a fundamental tenet of government, are contrary to this conception; and therefore I am deeply opposed to them.... The fundamental tenet of communism is that the state is an end in itself, and that therefore the powers which the state exercises over the individual are without any ethical standards to limit them. That I deeply disbelieve.

It is very easy simply to say one is not a Communist. And, of course, if despite my record it is necessary for me to state this very affirmatively, then this is a great disappointment to me. It is very easy to talk about being against communism. It is equally important to believe those things which provide a satisfactory and effective alternative. Democracy is that satisfying alternative.

And its hope in the world is that it is an affirmative belief, rather than simply a belief against something else...

I deeply believe in the capacity of democracy to surmount any trials that may lie ahead provided only we practice it in our daily lives.

And among the things that we must practice is this: that while we seek fervently to ferret out the subversive and anti-democratic forces in the county, we do not at the same time, by hysteria, by resort to innuendo and sneers and other unfortunate tactics, besmirch the very cause that we believe in, and cause a separation among our people, cause one group and one individual to hate one another, based upon mere attacks, mere unsubstantiated attacks upon their loyalty.

* From a speech during the 1948 presidential campaign: "The Republicans have the propaganda and the money, but we have the people, and the people have the votes."

* pg. 726- "Often in informal conversation, Truman would say there were probably a million men in the country who could make a better President than he, but that this was not the point. He, Harry Truman, was the President. 'I have the job and I have to do it and the rest of you have to help me.'"

* From his Inaugural Address: "The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible... Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies--hunger, misery, and despair."

* When under pressure and attack from the press to remove a controversial member of his staff: "No commentator or columnist names any members of my Cabinet, or my staff. I name them myself. And when it is time for them to be moved on, I do the moving--nobody else."

* Truman's third and final Secretary of State, Dean Acheson: "It was a great thing between Mr. Truman and me. Each one understood his role and the other's. We never got tangled up in it. I never thought I was the President, and he never thought he was the Secretary.... It is important that the relations between the President and his Secretary be quite frank, sometimes to the point of being blunt. And you just have to be deferential. He is the President of the United States, and you don't say rude things to him--you say blunt things to him. Sometimes he doesn't like that. That's natural, but he comes back, and you argue the thing out. But that's your duty. You don't tell him only what he wants to hear. That would be bad for him and for everyone else."

* In considering a government takeover of the steel industry in response to a strike, a move that would result in accusations of wildly overstepping his constitutional bounds, Truman said, "The President has the power to keep the country from going to hell."