Harry Truman: Unlikely Hero

Historians generally rate Harry Truman in the top quarter of all American presidents, not a mean feat. But if you had read his résumé, you’d have wondered why on earth President Roosevelt would have ever considered Truman as his running mate. In fact, when FDR died on April 12, 1945, just a few months after his re-election, Americans and the world held their breath and shook their heads.

Truman had the most unpromising of backgrounds. As a youth, he dropped out of business school, and took a series of menial jobs, then a series of business ventures. The best outcome he ever achieved was breaking even, mostly they failed, sometimes spectacularly.

But Truman was a voracious reader who never stopped his self-education. He needed to understand how the world worked and understood that while he may not have all the answers, there were those who did. And above all, he was not afraid of hard work.

There is a story about the man that explains much. As a child, his eyesight was terrible, in fact, in one eye it was so bad that it was considered legally blind. Thus, when he applied to join the Missouri National Guard, he failed the vision test and was rejected. So he went home, memorized the chart, applied again, and passed. Talk about determination!

When the mantle of the presidency fell unexpectedly upon him, he said, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” Not afraid of hard work and not seeking glory, Truman surrounded himself with experts and listened to them. He knew what he didn’t know. And he knew that nothing got done unless you were willing to make decisions and take responsibility. The sign on his desk said, “The buck stops here.”

His combination of humility, wisdom, listening to experts, grit, and hard work meant that Truman became a very consequential president. His “Truman Doctrine” effectively contained Stalin’s Soviet expansion, the Marshall Plan rebuilt a bombed-out Europe, NATO was created, and the invasion of South Korea pushed back. The state of Israel was immediately recognized upon its creation.

Domestically the American Army was desegregated and the CIA created. When Douglas MacArthur publicly challenged Truman’s calls on the Korean War, Truman fired him, a highly unpopular move, yet a necessary one to preserve civilian leadership of the military.

Ironically, Truman had come up through the ranks in the Kansas City Pendergast political machine, until recently one of the most corrupt in American history. As president, Truman refused to let himself or his government be corrupted, believing that being president was a sacred duty, not an avenue for self-advancement.

It turned out that Truman’s great Giftings were his unbending ethics, his ability to seek and take advice, to accept responsibility, and to persevere until things got done. This is the stuff of true leadership.