Talking with Truman

PLAIN SPEAKING is an entertaining experiment in oral biography that works fairly well because Harry Truman had a folksy and unpretentious way of expressing himself. The book consists of interviews conducted in the early 1960s with Truman, his family, and many of his friends and colleagues as well as commentary by Merle Miller.

Harry Truman's ascension to the Presidency was the result of a series of coincidences. He headed a routine Senate investigation concerning national defense preparedness and munitions industries that uncovered major scandals which catapulted him into national prominence. Thus when President Roosevelt found it necessary to dump Henry Wallace from the Democratic ticket in 1944, Truman emerged as a compromise choice for Vice-President. Three months after he took office, F.D.R.'s death placed Truman in the White House. Yet in spite of this accidental assumption of the office, many historians, such as Clinton Rossiter and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., have rated him in retrospect among the greatest of American presidents.

Miller, who conducted and edited the interviews, traces Truman's career, exploring with Truman and others the beginning of U.S. involvement in Korea, the Marshall Plan, the firing of General MacArthur, and the 1948 election campaign. Miller emphasizes Truman as an individual, his relationships with other important personalities, and his feelings about important decisions he had to make. It is this material which makes the book interesting. There is no new historical insight, nor is there any surprising or previously unpublished information of any significance. But just to have Truman say of Douglas MacArthur, "there are times when I'm afraid he wasn't right in his head," or call Richard Nixon, "a shifty-eyed, goddam liar," is enjoyable in itself.

Unfortunately Plain Speaking is little more than such an exposure to Harry Truman's views on the major personalities and events of his time. Miller makes no real attempt to go beyond the anecdotes--interesting as they are--to work at some sort of psycho-historical interpretation. His admiration of Truman is so intense it approaches hero-worship. The result is that Miller's questions are largely set-ups, which fail to press Truman in the least, and merely afford the ex-President an opportunity to display his nobility of purpose and character.

"Mr. President, it constantly amazes me that you seem always to know what the right thing to do is."

"Oh, I don't think knowing what's the right thing to do ever gives anybody so much trouble. It's doing the right thing that seems to give a lot of people trouble."

It would seem that a book like this, made up of intimate interviews with a key figure, would provide a unique opportunity to explore crucial historical events: for example, in Truman's case, the decision to drop the bomb. Although Miller raises this subject, he does it ever so gently, in spite of the fact that he himself has written a book deploring the Hiroshima and Nagasaki massacres. He tells of proposing that Truman make a goodwill trip to Hiroshima seventeen years after the war. Truman's response was, "I'll go to Japan, if that's what you want, but I won't kiss their ass." Miller comments on this remark: "I expect what Mr. Truman meant was that while he was perfectly willing to explain why he had decided to drop the Bomb, he wasn't going to apologize for it, he wasn't going to say it was wrong. And for all I know, he wasn't wrong. Maybe it did save lives, ours and theirs." Not only does this statement ignore the mass of historical evidence that contradicts this notion with which Miller is certainly familiar, it is too casual treatment of one of the greatest tragedies of modern times for a biography of the man responsible for the event.

THE BOOK COMES complete with Miller's homespun philosophy: "We need more Presidents who have run from fights and admit it. We must run from more fights. That's our only hope." Plain Speaking could do with more probing of Truman's personality and less banal simplicity.

The Harry Truman who emerges from this book is an honest, well-intentioned, intelligent man with a great deal of insight into human character. Although somewhat limited by his background, as his continued references to "niggers" indicate, he had a solid progressive outlook on politics and on society. After learning in the past year of the way the executive branch has operated under President Nixon since 1969, it is a relief to read these interviews with Harry Truman--a down-to-earth man who did not get carried away by the grandeur and power of his office.

This is an entertaining book to read, more of a curiosity than a valuable historical contribution, though it may be of some use as a handy compendium of Truman's sayings and anecdotes. Miller is a perceptive man and a good interviewer, and he was fortunate in having an extremely responsive subject. He had the chance to produce a unique and significant document and make an important inroad in the relatively new field of oral biography. He shouldn't have stopped short.

Miller originally intended that the interviews be part of a television series on Harry Truman to be shown in the early sixties. But apparently as a result of residual McCarthy era anti-Truman sentiment, he was still too hot a subject for television to handle at the time. The series was never produced. Miller's interviews probably would have made a remarkable television event. But as a biography, Plain Speaking leaves much to be desired.