Too bad Harry isn’t
around to speak to Donald. One was a …man, the other an…mp. A Tru-MAN, the
other a Tru-(I)MP.
Yes, I do love
words. To stretch, pulverize and then dissect them to see what may be hiding
inside. So here is the Imp writ-large, a demon or goblin noted for wild and
uncontrollable behavior. He doesn’t qualify to be an ump. That would entail fairness and mediation between factions but he is already a faction, the guy who has moved
the goal posts.
Both the 33rd and
45th president assumed the office at momentous times. The former
presided over the beginning of post-war America. By any measure it was a new
epoch. Our 45th POTUS seems to be ending that seventy-year period of
America as a beacon, a defender of Europe through alliances and a promoter of
free-trade agreements.
To the admiration
of their constituencies, both men were elected because they said it as it is. Harry spoke in short,
clipped phrases. He was a citizen of the heartland, a plain-spoken man without
rhetorical flourishes. The buck stopped with him. When his time was up in
the oval office he simply got on a train at Union Station and rode, by himself,
back home to Missouri. What you saw was what you got. Unlike the Imp.
Donald
ventriloquized disgruntled Americans, particularly from the Rust Belt, orated
in conversational style with locker-room vulgarities, schoolyard slander and a vocabulary of a twelve-year old. He
stoked fear and long-simmering hatreds while all the time gloating as
celebrity. Truman lived with his famously insufferable mother-in-law in a small
town. Trump lived on top of his tower in Bigtown. What we got was not what we
reckoned for.
HST was a quick
learner. He had to be after being sent into the next room by FDR which rendered
him out of the loop regarding the Manhattan A-bomb Project and all matters
pertaining to meetings with heads-of-state at Yalta and other summits. His load
was the heaviest of any president. Twenty-five days after taking office Germany
surrendered ending the war in Europe. Two months after that he met at Potsdam
with Atlee and Stalin and weeks later made the decision to drop the bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific.
I cannot imagine
our Imp presiding over the carnage and restoration of order in the world, with
millions of refugees and displaced persons seeking asylum, returning G.Is
looking to the government for educational opportunities along with labor
unrest, segregated armed forces and the transition to a peacetime economy.
When I was fifteen
the 1948 election campaign was underway. I
was a staunch supporter of Henry Wallace, the Progressive party candidate.
Unlike other kids doing normal things like stealing candy from Woolworths or
sniffing airplane glue I was scurrying from floor to floor in every apartment building for blocks at-a-time distributing political material attacking both
Truman and Dewey. Forgive me, I was living in an idealized world built on peace
and justice. We had Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger to sing ourselves to an
imagined place. Truman, of course, prevailed beating Dewey and also trouncing
all that Truth I had slipped under doors which went unheeded.
Looking back I have
a greater admiration for Truman. He had to emerge from Roosevelt’s long shadow
and he did, steering the nation through a troubling period. There are several
areas where he fell short but compared to our new president he shines with a
bright and true light.
One TRU stood for truth and the other for trumpery and truancy
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