I’ve written about my 10th grade American history teacher, Mr. Kugle, several times previously. One of the things I remember most about him, because he repeated it on more than one occasion, is that he had no respect Harry S. Truman because he thought Truman had behaved in a non-presidential manner when he wrote a letter to a Washington Post music critic.
What happened was this:
Truman’s daughter Margaret sang a recital at Constitution Hall in December, 1950. Paul Hume reviewed her performance in The Washington Post, writing:
Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality – (she) cannot sing very well – is flat a good deal of the time-more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years – has not improved in the years we have heard her – (and) still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish.
Truman’s letter:
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
(James Pegler, for those who don’t wish to click on the link, was a right wing writer, popular in the 1930s and 40s, who despised FDR so much that he went so far as to wish that Zangara had succeeded in his assassination attempt. Did you think that today’s right wing hate mongers sprang out of nowhere?)
The last time I checked, a couple years ago, Mr. Kugle was alive and well, and still in full possession of his faculties. I can only assume that in the ensuing years he may have found the behavior of one or two additional presidents to be somewhat below his exacting standards as well.
In any case that letter doesn’t figure into my evaluation the Truman presidency.
It’s his decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan killing 105,000 people.
Truman has argued that he did it to save many more lives, both Allied and Japanese, which would have been lost in a protracted war effort, and modern historians seem to agree with this analysis.
But I can’t help believing that his judgment was skewed and that had he been faced with dropping those same bombs on European targets, he might well have reached a different decision.
Couldn’t he have issued a warning and an ultimatum before dropping the first bomb? Or better yet, couldn’t he have dropped the first bomb on an uninhabited island? He had options, but he didn’t use them.
I realize he was faced with a difficult, even an impossible decision, one that no president had ever been faced with previously.
I simply don’t believe he made the right decision.
Yes, he also accomplished a lot of good things, and his civil rights record is good. But then he also got us involved in the Korean War quagmire.
So no, I’m not wild about Harry.
Oh, yes, one more thing.
In 1960 when I was ten years old, I watched the JFK inauguration on television. The only thing I remember about that is the commentators expressing their surprise several times about how cordial the relations were between outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower and incoming John Kennedy and what a contrast this was to the icy treatment that Ike had received from Truman on his Inauguration Day.
I’ve tried to find information about that but all I can come up with is that yes, Truman used to admire Ike, and had even offered to step aside for him if Ike wanted to run as a Democrat, but Truman rapidly soured on Ike when Ike came out as a Republican and began to criticize Truman’s domestic policies. Truman was further angered by Ike’s failure to try to rein in Joe McCarthy’s red baiting. And it seems Truman was unable to hide his feelings.
But as to the Inauguration Day itself, all I can find is William Hitchcock’s statement: “On January 20, 1953, a cloudy and mild day, Eisenhower went to the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol to take the oath of office. Truman, his sour and mute companion in their limousine ride down Pennsylvania Avenue, now stood across from him, his face unmoved and distant.”
And this photo with the caption: “Hiding the bitter feelings between them, Eisenhower and President Truman drive to the inauguration ceremony, January 20, 1953”
