Donald's Blog

  This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there.

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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever, and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc. to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.

 

July 9, 2014

Harry Truman

Back in the early 1990s, browsing in a bookstore in Washington DC with a pal, Larry Miller, he pointed out David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman, then a recent best-seller, and told me what a good book it was. I've been intending to read it ever since -- over 20 years! -- and recently, visiting another friend, David Seeler, on Long Island, David gave me his copy. (Like me, David has too many books.)

Well, it's almost 1,000 pages long, not counting the index, and I've just finished it. I wasn't been able to put it down. Here is one of the most striking parts, from Truman's last State of the Union address, before he left the White House in 1952:

As the free world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both sides of the Iron Curtain -- and as Soviet hopes for easy expansion are blocked -- then there will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world. Nobody can say for sure when that is going to be, or exactly how it will come about, whether by revolution, or trouble in the satellite states, or by a change inside the Kremlin.
      Whether the Communist rulers shift their policies of their own free will -- or whether the change comes about in some other way -- I have no doubt in the world that a change will occur.

What a man he was, and what a great American! A bright farm boy from Missouri who loved to read, and especially loved history, he served memorably in the First World War, became part of the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City without being tarnished by it, and ended up President of the United States almost by accident, winning a tremendous upset victory in 1948, and serving almost two full terms.

He knew what the Cold War was going to be about from the beginning. He knew that we had to go into Korea -- to keep our guard up -- and also that we had to keep each "police action" from exploding into a world war. And he knew that Soviet Communism was a house of cards, yet when it eventually collapsed, Ronald Reagan got the credit. And he might not have cared who got the credit.

Would that we had such leaders today.