Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman, a politician from Missouri, was the Democratic president of the United States, 1945-1953.
Agriculture
Truman won the farm vote in 1948 by charging the GOP shoved "a pitchfork in the farmer's back", but was unable to get new farm programs passed. His second secretary of agriculture, Charles F. Brannan promoted the Brannan Plan, intended to bring widespread changes to farm policy. Brannan proposed to replace market price supports with direct income payments to farmers. His plan set ceilings on the amount a farmer could receive and limited the program to farmers who did not exceed a set production mark. The Brannan Plan was supposed to foster the "family-sized farm" while providing affordable food for consumers. While Brannan could count on support from the left, especially the National Farmers Union (which was small), labor unions (which were powerful), and consumer groups (which were weak), he was opposed by leading farm economists and the national Farm Bureau (which was large) and the national Chamber of Commerce (represinting business). The head of the Farm Bureau decried the plan as intrusive, a form of "creeping socialism," and expensive. The Farm Bureau, dominated by conservatives, resisted any curbs on full agricultural production. A bloc of midwestern Republican and southern Democratic congressmen opposed replacing market mechanisms with outright government payments to farmers and setting limits on supports to individual farms. The Brannan Plan went nowhere and instead, the conservative farm bloc passed the Agricultural Act of 1949 with high price supports.[1]
Religion
Truman, a Southern Baptist, sought religious allies in the Cold War. He tried to unite the world's religions in a spiritual crusade against communism, sending his personal representative to Pope Pius XII to coordinate not only with the Vatican but also with the heads of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Greek Orthodox churches. "If I can mobilize the people who believe in a moral world against the Bolshevik materialists," Truman wrote in 1947, "we can win this fight." Since the Roman Catholic Church was his strongest religious ally in the moral battle against international communism, Truman put Rome first in his global strategy, even trying to confer formal diplomatic recognition on the Vatican. At home, he received solid support from Catholics, who were a major element of the New Deal Coalition, but overwhelming resistance from Protestants, especially Southern Baptists who rejected anything "popish." Truman's political-diplomatic effort to formalize a public, faith-driven, ecumenical international campaign failed.[2]
Evaluations
Truman's reputation has gone from very low when he left office, to high after 1990. He is now widely considered to have been a tough-minded, decisive, and effective leader who ably guided the nation through the perilous waters of the early Cold War and whose policy of containment essentially laid the foundations for American "victory" in that prolonged conflict in 1989. For many historians, the down-to-earth Midwesterner now merits consideration as one of the greatest American presidents. In recent years presidential aspirants of both parties have claimed Truman as their own, especially if their election chances seem as hopeless as Truman's did in 1948. His reputation has been bolstered by scholarly biographies by Ferrell (1994), Hamby (1995), and especially McCullough's Pulitzer prize-winning popular biography (1992). The in-depth analysis by Leffler (1992), cautiously praised the Truman administration's essential wisdom in handling a myriad of problems.
A strong negative dissent comes from Offner (2002) who argues that Truman was a "parochial nationalist" whose "uncritical belief in the superiority of American values and political-economic interests," conviction that "the Soviet Union and Communism were the root cause of international strife," and "inability to comprehend Asian politics and nationalism" intensified the postwar conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, precipitated the division of Europe, and set Sino-American relations on a path of long-term animosity. Rather than being a great statesman who carefully weighed various policy alternatives, Offner asserts that Truman's myopia "created a rigid framework in which the United States waged long-term, extremely costly global cold war". As his title suggests, the Cold War was at best a pyrrhic victory for the United States.[3]
Further reading
- Burnes, Brian. Harry S. Truman: His Life and Times (2003), popular biography excerpt and text search
- Donovan, Robert J. Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (1977); Tumultuous Years: 1949-1953 (1982) detailed 2-vol political history by well-informed journalist
- Fleming, Thomas J. Harry S. Truman, President (1993) for middle school audience.
- Graff, Henry F., ed. The Presidents: A Reference History. 2nd ed. 1996, 443–458. ISBN 0-684-80471-9
- Hamby, Alonzo L. Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (1995), very well received scholartly biography
- Hamby, Alonzo L. "Truman, Harry S."; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000
- Kirkendall, Richard S. Harry S. Truman Encyclopedia (1990)
- McCullough, David. Truman. . ISBN 0-671-86920-5 best-selling biography; Pulitzer Prize excerpt and text search
- Offner, Arnold A. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War. (2002) 640pp, highly negative excerpts and text search
- American Experience: Truman (2006), from PBS
- "Classic President Harry S Truman Films: 1945-1965 (2006) 40 newsreels, 101 minutes