Forum; David McCullough: Truman and Character

from the longhorn radio network the university of texas at austin this is for him this may be the most significant lecture series united states of lead the free world almost fifty years and that us presidents are leading the world for centuries max chairman dean of the lyndon baines johnson school of public affairs at the university of texas at austin the character of the person holding that office will shape the future and we hope that these lectures will help us to learn from the past and to get direction for the future after the lectures have been given they will be collected and edited into a book and the book will be published in late nineteen ninety five by simon and schuster yeah i mean this is all of korean today foreign

teachers the inaugural lecture of the character above all series sponsored by the lbj school of public affairs and the university of texas at austin and presented by the reigning the national foundation the first speaker historian david mccullough receive the pulitzer prize for his recently published a biography of president harry s truman entitled to know the subject of that film and the example of harry truman will or will not go away was your great president yes one of the best i think more interesting that he was a very great american david mccullough explains the president truman's world war one experiences served as a crucible strengthening him for what was ahead as vincenzo often very

poorly prepared for the presidency he came into office not knowing any of the establishment in washington he had very few friends among the big financiers or the brain trust people of the new deal virtually none and of course he had no advantage of that they had a lot of practice of insurance company that he could fall back on he had no money i he was so when winston churchill came to a washington in the early stage late stage of the nineteen thirties and forties we want to meet everybody influential he didn't bother to meet the senator from missouri the junior senator from missouri he wasn't important but you see he'd grown up in a small town in a small town was the essence of american life in victorian he'd been on the farm all those years and he'd gone to war and the farm and the war or without any question the turning points of his life and they formed they are the crucible generally the war because he came back from

france came back from having led an artillery battery through the worst of all battles ever at the battle of the argonne having discovered two things about him so that he didn't know one that he speak he occurred she had physical courage you never been in a fight in his life he was a little boy with the glasses who was told by the mother father not even you yet into a games where he might break his glasses my injuries aren't he was a little bookworm a little sissy has he adds set himself later on we went off to war and found he had phenomenal physical courage in the face of the heart of that battle and that he was even he was good at leading people he liked it and he learned a lot about leadership and one of the things that he learned is that courage is infectious is contagious and is a leader shows harris the others get the idea

now i'm here became president his courage became notable at the time and subsequently it has become what most people talk about but it's so so very important i think and so much more interesting to appreciate that with trauma and it's the courage of his convictions that's for a country is often scared to death as he was during the war one of the most enduring of dollars he ever wrote to his wife was then his fiance after the battle of the argonne after that i've been through is adapted to tell her how terrified he was in the earliest point when he of the earliest point when they're under fire in the polish mountains at night and the german seem to have gotten their range in there the really intimate with an artillery barrage from a nearby mountain and the americans have never been under fire before and their

russian they think it's a gas attack and they're rushing around are really trying to get their own gas mask on a gas mask on the horses imagine in the dark in the rain and all these soldiers truman's own people ran terrified an even stronger horse you that they're nearly been crushed by the horse had been pulled out from under the worst we stood up and they're all running and he stood still and he called them back using every were you know and they came back because of the image of this little follow look more like a bank clerk then than a heroic soldier there's no douglas macarthur strutting on the on the edge of the trench to who inspired the troops this is a menace to carry his glasses in every pocket lenders helmets everything case of the lessons he's wearing our lost a man who memorize the eye chart in order to get into the army and that was it was

not eligible for the draft because he was too old and it was supposed to stay back on the farm as the president had requested and who could have been ineligible anyway because he by that time was the sole support of both his white of his mother and sister and their ears using all the profanity used mustard and his years on the farm they call these people back to do what they're supposed to do and they come back now go flashing forward as they do in films were on television for the night in nineteen forty eight that the republican national convention in philadelphia whether it will in that he's too democratic national convention in philadelphia with the democrats on the left and then democrats on the right have all been doing everything possible to get rid of harry truman that aggressive march out of the convention the liberals who have tried to draft somebody else critically general eisenhower to be their candidate are so down in the dumps so dispirited that they think it's all over and it doesn't

get around to the point where the president come out and accept the nomination took almost two in the morning as the first and at first convention ever filmed for television and so these are huge lights are increasing the heat of philadelphia in the summer compounding it indexed to the extreme they're all drenched in perspiration exhausted and defeated and harry truman walks out on to the platform in his white linen ice cream soon as they called them then and he does the same thing at exactly that he'd get in the va osha mountains in the dark in the night in the rain in the first world war he gives them hell and tells him to get back to their jobs and that they are going to win and everybody who was there was simply astounding he brought them not only to their feet he brought them up cheering and newspaper reporters and diehard liberals who

were so dejected alike all agreed it was one of the great moments that ever witnessed in american politics so you see there it is there's this quality of dean acheson later like in that to henry the fifth shakespeare's play where henry king harry as he was known walks among the dispirited troops in the dark in the night before the battle of agincourt and every wretch hiding in pale before the holding him plugs comfort from his looks his liberal ideas give everyone a little touch of hairy in the night this touch of hairy in the night is an elixir in the darkest of times and it was the darkest of times that just was referring to it was right after the chinese communist hundred and sixty thousand strong and come storming into the war in korea when no one and anticipate any such thing

happening and it was all very bleak all very very bleak and trauma never lost his confidence never lost his essential good cheer never lost his fundamental civility and decency toward those who work with it he was never ever known to dress down a subordinate give him hell harry never gave anybody tell the science behind the scenes or on the job never now his decision to go into korea was the most difficult decision of his presidency he said that he thought it was the most important decision of his presidency war so than the decision to use the atomic bomb because he was so fearful so concerned that he was taking the country into a world war and that it would be an atomic war but it was a very popular decision which was people forget so easy it was popular because the whole country was waiting for the president say yes we are going to go the

support of south koreans were being overrun by the north korea both sides of the aisle gave him strong support he was applauded in the press on by radio commentator it's all over the country and it wasn't until later that summer when the war went so sour that suddenly became truman's war but you see there's no equation between popularity and ease or difficulty of the decision what was his most popular decision was for him his most difficult stage what was his most unpopular decision was he said not difficult at all and that was the decision to fire general mcarthur by far the most controversial act of his presidency and when they said to him mr president you are acting so calmly you are you're being so reserved in what you're saying or not saying in response to all this terrible criticism of the paper and he was being roasted he was being shredded by that preston by that by the radio commentators who were who were a very potent force almost

like something we know that and drill into food writing about using to have this gyroscope inside of the people around him said how how is this how do you do that i was impossible and he said because i am sure that in the long run the country is going to judge me who've done the right thing and furthermore it's my duty it's very specifically stated in the constitution that there will be civilian control over the military and when i took the oval office i said i pledge to uphold the constitution it wasn't difficult for me to important qualities that one is he does recognize does understand what his obligations are what his duty is as the commander j but also as the president nine states and he sees things in the long run he has a sense

of history and this is so important to understand about harry truman he likes to say the only new thing in the world is the history you don't know he says that he believes that every president should know american history at least the world history ideally what you do must stand the test of time and if you're being blasted by the press if your polls are plummeting downward as his bid during the korean war it doesn't matter the immediate satisfaction of seeing tomorrow's approval isn't the point what counts is what will stand up in the long run truman probably understood the history the presidency better than any president we've had with the possible exception of woodrow wilson he thought the white

house was haunted and the all white house which of course i had to be torn down and which he was in charge of as president as the occupants of crete and grown and with the change in temperature from the heat of dayton area cool of the evening sometime the doors would fly open on their own and he was often left by his family to himself in the white house at night and we know that from the pollen that abraham lincoln walks by harry truman would walk up and down the halls of stairs of the white house alone and empty family quarters and eagle a lot of the clauses and he did it in wine the clocks and he was very lonely and body i felt the presence of his predecessors then he would make fun of how we imagine them arguing over how this followed truman was doing so far

he has his reputation seems to grow and i think eventually will continue to grow anna grows i believe because he not only faced very difficult decisions and face them are squarely not always correctly that squarely but that those decisions were so often unprecedented they were they were about problems they were about the events for which he had no previous model to go by he made more difficult far reaching decisions in his first months in office than any president in our history including roosevelt franklin roosevelt and including abraham lincoln this follow this little former haberdashery this pendergast hack politicians this ordinary middle american who seemed to have none or very few of the qualities requisite for the highest office

turned out doing an extremely good job it is a mistake and is a misunderstanding to think that nobody saw that time lots of people saw at the time and the closer than they were two of the more they sought churchill marshall and especially i think dean acheson who of course was about as different from harry truman is anybody can possibly be that isn't one said that he we had great respect for franklin roosevelt but that he reserved his love for another president by which he meant to david mccullough puts president harry truman in perspective with this comparison with an earlier precedent i'd like to think so these remarks by talking about another president who came between as truman did who luminary figures that are national career

comes between fdr and generalize john adams figures in chronological order between george washington and the great genius of that day thomas jefferson adams who unlike truman was not very impressive physically and who tended to be underrated by people who know him i live in massachusetts and this morning i think in part to help me get some thoughts in order on the way to the airport boston i drove by the adams home state their two houses actually the one in which john oates was born the other in with his son john quincy adams who for whom course later became president they are very modest houses very modest

person you could put both of them in this room and there they sit on the edge of the road in quincy massachusetts what was once braintree it says it's a thrilling thing to say that out of such modest unpretentious down to earth simple american rural origins became such an extraordinary man exactly in the same spirit it seems to me as the man who came from the simple earth rural origins in missouri and hear something adam said in seventeen sixty five in other words more than a decade before philadelphia seventy and seventy six liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge

among the people who have a right to that knowledge and the desire to know his compatriot jefferson said anyone who expects a country to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be the same idea the atoms goes on but besides this they have to write an indisputable an inalienable into feasible divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge i mean of the character and conduct of their rulers he put character first then too were all in this together we too need to know what we stand for what we believe that we have to pass the torch

the people let me ask first about media filters as are starting to become known in the presidency what were the source is through which he all learned what truman was like at the time that it was most mostly the radio and newspapers primarily cartoons political cartoons and of course presidential addresses to the nation by radio and to a small degree boston television because he was the first president to be televised in the regular way he was a very good on television here had to do because his classes he had trouble seeing description in all the lights

and eight there was very uncomfortable with all the paraphernalia you like talk on the telephone because they present we just he was from a different time and but most of all bought by the daily papers he was here where the victim of the distortion all he would tell you it really harry was always the victim of distortion he felt very strongly that that the newspaper's twist things not reporters he didn't dislike or distressed reporters she really quite fond of them and consider some of them real and genuine friend's barbecue he was very a disparaging about some publishers such wealthy powerful republican a publisher's as the colonel mccormick of the chicago tribune and so the columnists like drew pearson or regular he was also very concerned with certain aspects of his work he would consider his private life would be a

publicized and i made her a mockery of and he didn't he didn't he didn't look forward to that unfairness weather is even one of the nominated for vice president in nineteen forty four forty four time president truman's wife and bess truman's her father her father had committed suicide killed himself in the shame and the grief that that brought to a nineteenth century family has probably more than we can understand the victorian age in tandem they were very very concerned that this would come out in the campaign and that would be so painful for his wife and for all the family went into my boss knew about it and report and i don't think any will i don't think the country was damaged by that certainly are made and their adjustment to the spotlight of presents a lot easier to

cope with does the armed services so right proclamation issued bear any resemblance to the clinton gays in the military issue that came after his will i think it doesn't like to the extent that was a controversial announcement of a controversial change in policy in the military that was not a welcomed by a great many people at the time including many people of high ranking position in the military and it was a far more on a controversy or far more incendiary the decision of them would be of the decision on homosexuals in the army today but instead of just finding out how people felt about it he does did you make the decision now it didn't take effect very well this important point night it was he was his order he ordered that they be

desegregation of the armed services there really didn't take effect until the korean war one of the outcomes of the korean war was the year a new role for black americans in the military in the combat responsibility in in the whole right levels and so it did happen within his time in office but can happen when he made that really ever make a decision in nineteen forty eight explain what he meant by something being necessary rather than right or wrong only two exclusive are those terms well necessary and that it would end the warranty hey hey isn't the right to kill anyone on his right to a justice he thought it wasn't right i think to allow that how crooked figure in his government back to missouri to steal ten thousand dollars home but

she felt then that by letting him get away with the ten thousand he was saving our the administration the county from being fleeced of a million dollars he felt that by making the decision he was going to save more lives would be lost that was a decision that need to be made because of his responsibilities as commander in chief and president oh yeah the invasion was also you know it was going to happen it wasn't a day of theoretical invasion and there's no question the cowardly to live in high how high is impossible no so i did and thirty he will always be an examined the decision will always be subject of historical of historic interest and human interest should be i think that given what they know given the nature of the moment given the pressures it was under given the responsibilities he

is to those fighting forces of hours and given them the effect that we were a war and that we're killing slaughtering the enemy and including enemy civilians on the most routine basis with our conventional marriage to an unprecedented degree it's hard to imagine harry truman making any other decision and it's hard to imagine any other president making the same decisions not making this a musician charlie franklin roosevelt would have done so and so when henry wallace says he later said it would help anyone had he inherited the presidency from franklin roosevelt as my event did he ever appeared calculating about his place in history no he said at least forty or fifty years or for any way to sort of all of them

permanently terminal for the dust to settle so he would he would understand if of you for taking a look at you know he would say this is a fair time to jamaica today former state controller months of president harry s truman biographer david mccullough is part of the character above all lecture series at the lyndon baines johnson school of public affairs at the university of texas at austin the views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin or this station technical producers reform could hargrove and david alvarez production assistant chris paulson a new producer and host olive gray

cruz says by writing for him so long radio network communication to the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one to france for him to say it's a longhorn radio network communication during the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one telecommunications services university of texas at austin this is the longhorn radio network fb this week on for around truman biographer david mccullough is a subject that

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