Politicians From Missouri

"Nothing but a damn bunch of bullshit!"

"It isn't important who is ahead at one time or another in either an election or horse race. It's the horse that comes in first at the finish line that counts."

"I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they think it's hell."

"I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them ... that's all the powers of the President amount to."

"My forebears were Confederates... but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten."

"I am not sure it can ever be used... I don't think we ought to use this thing unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that."

"No man can get rich in politics unless he's a crook. − Harry S Truman, quoted in Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman by Merle Miller, 1973-1974 SBN 425-02664-7 LOC 73-87198, Berkeley Medallion Edition, October, 1974, Chapter 10. "The Only Defeat − and Then Victory", p. 134."

"Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. ...They think the American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it. − Harry S. Truman, October 13, 1948, St. Paul, Minnesota, Radio Broadcast"

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

"Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it."

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

"The buck stops here!"

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit*"

"Tuesday, August 14, 1945, dawned clear and warm in Washington. Official and unofficial Washington spent a nervous day, listening, watching, waiting. When the marble columned office buildings were emptied, the streets filled rapidly; suburban gardens went unattended; eating places filled beyond their normal capacity. Crowds began an early vigil in Lafayette Square, opposite the White House. News and radio correspondents were summoned at 6:45 to a White House Press Conference. At seven o'clock the President greeted reporters. In his hands was a message from the Swiss Legation; its contents were the Japanese diplomatic words accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. War was over. Peace had come at last."

"... at 10:30 a.m. on October 25, 1945, Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office. President Truman was naturally curious to meet the celebrated physicist, whom he knew by reputation to be an eloquent and charismatic figure. ... At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When Oppie replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer: "Never." For Oppenheimer, such foolishness was proof of Truman's limitations. The "incomprehension it showed just knocked the heart out of him," recalled Willie Higinbotham."

"Every man who's had to command troops in combat has had to look at the big picture. When Harry Truman made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, he didn't do that assuming he wasn't going to be criticized for it. He was looking at ending the war and saving a million American lives. He provided vision for the nation in spite of the fact that many criticized him then and even more do now. And what about Winston Churchill? He let the Germans bomb the British city of Coventry to protect the fact that the Allies had broken the Germans' code. He allowed the Germans to bomb Coventry because he was looking strategically at ending the war. And he knew if he let it be known that he was reading the Germans' mail, they would immediately change their code. That's thinking strategically versus at the tactical situation. I think everybody who's ever commanded troops has had to look at circumstances strategically. And that amounts to having vision."

"Never has a simpler, more homespun, less pretentious man inherited such enormous powers. Yet Truman rose to the job superbly. He remained personally unassuming and often clumsily naïve, as when he wrote a childishly abusive letter to the music critic of the Washington Post who had criticized his daughter's playing, or, more seriously, when he gave what Mr Jenkins calls "a devastatingly foolish series of answers" at a press conference, implying that he might use the atom bomb in Korea. Yet somehow he got all the big decisions right... Truman is the most spectacular example of an ordinary man plucked from obscurity to hold high office, and the strongest argument for feeling that we should choose our leaders more often from those who don't seek the job. It could not happen today. With all the money that has to be spent and the indignities that have to be undergone to get anywhere near the Presidency, only very twisted, ragingly ambitious individuals have a chance... Truman's life restores one's faith in the possibilities of democracy."

"Wake up, America. Your liberties are being stolen before your very eyes. What Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln fought for, Truman, Acheson, and McGrath are striving desperately to nullify. Wake up, Americans, and dare to think and say and do. Dare to cry: No More War!"

"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."

"By the time I prepared to enter college, I was beginning to see myself, as I did for many years afterward, as a Truman Democrat: a liberal Cold Warrior, pro-labor and anti-Communist, like Senators Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson and like my Detroit hero Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers. I admired Truman’s action in sending bombers filled with coal and food instead of weapons to resupply the people in Berlin during the Soviet blockade that began the month of my high school graduation. I supported his response two years later to naked Communist aggression in Korea. And I especially appreciated his decision to keep Korea a limited, conventional war, rejecting General Douglas MacArthur’s recommendations to expand the war to China and to use nuclear weapons. Believing in the policy, I was prepared to go to Korea myself, though I had no eagerness for it. After accepting student deferments until I finished Harvard and then for a year’s graduate fellowship at Cambridge University, I felt an obligation to take the place that others had filled for me. On my return from Cambridge, I volunteered for officer candidate school in the Marine Corps in the fall of 1953; the first opening was the following spring."

"Tell him anything so long as it's the truth."

"The President's party arrived in three planes with thirty-five reporters and photographers. As I shook hands with Mr. Truman, he remarked, "I've been a long time meeting you, General." I replied, "I hope it won't be so long next time." But there was never to be a next time."

"I had been warned about Mr. Truman's quick and violent temper and prejudices, but he radiated nothing but courtesy and good humor during our meeting. He has an engaging personality, a quick and witty tongue, and I liked him from the start. At the conference itself, he seemed to take great pride in his historical knowledge, but, it seemed to me that in spite of his having read much, it was of a superficial character, encompassing facts without the logic and reasoning dictating those facts. Of the Far East he knew little, presenting a strange combination of distorted history and vague hopes that somehow, some way, we could do something to help those struggling against Communism."

"Initially the Truman administration perceived events in Vietnam as a colonial war in which France was trying to reassert its sovereignty. But because France might undermine the containment policy in Europe if the Americans refused to help it in China, the U.S. supported the war effort even though many officials understood that the vast majority of Vietnamese favored Ho and that his movement contained both Communists and non-Communists. After the Korean war erupted, the U.S. commitment to France intensified, since the Indochinese and Korean battlefields seemed to be essential to stopping Chinese communism."

"One of the themes of the book is don't wait around... [with] steady mobilization. It doesn't work that way. It gives the corporation lobbies too much time to game the system. Look at the health care. It was proposed by Harry Truman in the 1940s, universal health care, and look where we're still at. ...Speed was of the essence."

"On our return from the Brenner Pass, we learned that President Roosevelt had died. We were all depressed and saddened by the loss of our Commander in Chief. None of us had heard much about Harry S. Truman, our new president and Commander in Chief. As in his choices of Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, FDR picked the best man in choosing Truman as his successor."

"We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced — and remain convinced now — that, after Hitler, Truman was the greatest murderer in the world."

"These cables to Churchill and Stalin point in the same direction: Roosevelt was still determined to keep the alliance intact, even if that meant gliding over issues of disagreement. Perhaps his policy would have shifted after the United Nations was safely launched, but there would still have been other pressing reasons for avoiding a total breach with the Soviet Union. Significantly, Harry Truman pursued essentially the same policy on Poland as his predecessor. Although on April 23 he told Molotov repeatedly in a brusque meeting that he expected the Soviets to honor the Yalta agreements, this did not mark a new hard line. Within weeks he (and Byrnes) realized that those agreements were more ambiguous than had been presented to the American public after the conference, and at the end of May Truman sent the ailing Hopkins to Moscow to stitch up a compromise. Hopkins’ instructions, the president wrote in his diary, were to make clear to Stalin that "Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Czeckosovakia [sic], Austria, Yugo-Slavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia et al made no difference to U.S. interests only so far as World Peace is concerned. That Poland ought to have 'free elections,' at least as free as [[Frank Hague|[Frank] Hague]], Tom Pendergast, Joe Martin or [[Robert A. Taft|[Robert] Taft]] would allow in their respective bailiwicks . . . Uncle Joe should make some sort of gesture— whether he means it or not to keep it [ — ] before our public that he intends to keep his word. Any smart political boss will do that." Truman’s language reveals his assumption that Stalin operated like an American machine politician and that this was acceptable as long as he made the necessary genuflections to democratic pieties over Poland. FDR would not have put the point so crudely, but his successor was working on essentially Rooseveltian lines."

"At the end of July the Big Three met for a final time at Potsdam, on the edge of Berlin, but this was a very different summit from Yalta. Roosevelt was dead and Churchill was voted out of office during the conference, being replaced by the new Labour leader, Clement Attlee, whose contribution was limited. Byrnes, now Truman’s secretary of state, fixed up a deal—despite British objections— by which the Soviets got their way on the western border of Poland (following the Oder and Western Neisse). But, in return, the Western powers refused to set a total figure for what the Soviets would receive in reparations from Germany. Instead each ally would take what it wanted in equipment, food and raw materials from its zone of occupation and the Soviets would also receive some transfers from the western zones. This deal on reparations did more than the decisions at Yalta to divide Soviet-controlled eastern Germany from the west."

"The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a cold, calculated experiment carried out to demonstrate America's power. At the time, President Truman described it as "the greatest thing in history.""

"Ike's problem, Dad declared, was that he had fallen into the hands of the "Republican snollygosters." Dad fellin love with this wonderful word during his campaign. For those who don't know the political slang of the early 1900's, a snollygoster is a politician who is all words and very little action. Dad had a lot of fun making Ike squirm over things that he had said in earlier years. One of his favorite quotes, which Dad repeated at numerous whistle-stops, was Ike's 1945 statement withdrawing himself from the presidential race: "Nothing in the international or domestic situation especially qualifies for the most important office in the world a man whose adult years have been spent in the country's military forces. At least, this is true in my case." Dad wold add with a grin, "It was true then. It is true now.""

"Dad had even more fun with another Eisenhower gaffe. Ike was fond of calling his campaign a crusade, and at one point he declared that his model was Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads. Dad quickly pointed out, "Oliver Cromwell may have had his points, but his crusade, as I recall it, was one that started out as a matter of principle and finished up by destroying parliamentary government and butchering women and children. God save us from a crusade like that.""

"But when my father talked about Ike and General Marshall, his tone grew harsh. "If there is one man to whom the Republican candidate owes a great debt of loyalty and gratitude, it is George Catlett Marshall." He would then condemn without reservation Ike's support of Joe McCarthy and William Jenner. "Don't let anybody tell you that every Presidential candidate has to do that- that it is just part of politics. Franklin Roosevelt did not endorse every Democrat, and neither did Harry Truman. Governor Dewey in 1948 did not endorse Republicans who had disgraced the Republican label. But the Republican candidate this year did, with the same betrayal of principle he has shown throughout his campaign.""

"During most of the campaign, Dad had very little to say about General Eisenhower's running mate, Senator Richard M. Nixon of California. He made no comment on Mr. Nixon's "Checkers" speech, where he discussed the virtues of his cocker spaniel to exonerate himself from implications of corruption arising from some $18,000 given to him by a "millionaire's club" of wealthy Republicans. Several times Dad refused to say whether he thought this fund was ethical or not. He took the position that this was something the public could decide for themselves. Following the Biblical injunction to "judge not," Dad always hesitated to take ethical stands on the actions of his fellow politicians. Privately, however, Dad made it clear that the fund confirmed his longstanding opinion of Mr. Nixon- that he was a spokesman for special interests."

"Harry Truman launched the Marshall Plan, stood up to the Communists in Korea and fired General MacArthur, all of which made the president, as commander in chief, an even more impressive figure. Truman, as one joke about the plain man from Missouri would have it, proved that anyone could be president, and the remark was not without point; the office was believed in his time to confer something of its majesty mysteriously upon the man. Above all, however, Harry Truman dropped the Bomb- and the president became forever the man with his finger on the button, the one American who could destroy an enemy, perhaps the world, with a single order."

"My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating — and when to stop working."

"There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people — the 150 or 160 million — is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it."

"We are in a troublesome period, and some "nonsense" as you term it — but this is a great nation with a high purpose, and we shall come to our senses and resume our course."

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference."

"I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy."

"There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hitler government and the Franco government in Spain. They are all alike. They are police state governments."

"So much blood has already been shed for the ideals which we cherish, and for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt lived and died, that we dare not permit even a momentary pause in the hard fight for victory. Today, the entire world is looking to America for enlightened leadership to peace and progress. Such a leadership requires vision, courage and tolerance. It can be provided only by a united nation deeply devoted to the highest ideals."

"In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice. Here in America, we have labored long and hard to achieve a social order worthy of our great heritage. In our time, tremendous progress has been made toward a really democratic way of life. Let me assure the forward-looking people of America that there will be no relaxation in our efforts to improve the lot of the common people."

"It is not enough to yearn for peace. We must work, and if necessary, fight for it. The task of creating a sound international organization is complicated and difficult. Yet, without such organization, the rights of man on earth cannot be protected. Machinery for the just settlement of international differences must be found. Without such machinery, the entire world will have to remain an armed camp. The world will be doomed to deadly conflict, devoid of hope for real peace."

"In bitter despair, some people have come to believe that wars are inevitable. With tragic fatalism, they insist that wars have always been, of necessity, and of necessity wars always will be. To such defeatism, men and women of good will must not and can not yield. The outlook for humanity is not so hopeless."

"If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law. Nothing is more essential to the future peace of the world than continued cooperation of the nations which had to muster the force necessary to defeat the conspiracy of the Axis powers to dominate the world. While these great states have a special responsibility to enforce the peace, their responsibility is based upon the obligations resting upon all states, large and small, not to use force in international relations except in the defense of law. The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world."

"Today, America has become one of the most powerful forces for good on earth. We must keep it so. We have achieved a world leadership which does not depend solely upon our military and naval might. We have learned to fight with other nations in common defense of our freedom. We must now learn to live with other nations for our mutual good. We must learn to trade more with other nations so that there may be — for our mutual advantage — increased production, increased employment and better standards of living throughout the world. May we Americans all live up to our glorious heritage. In that way, America may well lead the world to peace and prosperity."

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet."

"It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all."

"We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."