The Optimist

HARRY TRUMAN: I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on you. But last night the moon, the stars and all the planets fell on me. If you fellows ever pray, pray for me.

A REPORTER: Good luck, Mr. President.

HARRY TRUMAN : I wish you didn't have to call me that.

That, on April 13, 1945, was the humble Harry Truman, ex-soldier, unsuccessful haberdasher, minor Missouri politician, able U.S. Senator, thrust suddenly into the White House by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. "I never felt so out of place in my life," he confided to his old colleagues in the U.S. Senate that day. "I don't know if I'll ever get used to it."

The Transformation. Last week, five years later to the day, President Truman held his 222nd press conference. He was tanned from his 30-day vacation in Key West; the years of responsibility had engraved a few lines in his face and there was a heavier frost of whiteness in his hair. But there was more of a change than that--something the office had done to the man. He no longer looked like an anonymous face in the crowd. He stood erect as a West Pointer, radiated confidence, and looked amazingly trim for a man of 65. He had sampled authority, and liked it. He could reward friends, punish enemies. He had proved that he could whip his opponents even when some of his own supporters were dragging their feet. Not only was Harry Truman used to the job he once had feared--he felt jauntily on top of it. "My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?" President James A. Garfield had once asked, in moody disillusionment. The question no longer seemed to occur to Harry Truman.

A reporter asked him last week: "Mr. President, do you think the first five years were the hardest?"

The first five years were rather difficult, all right, Harry Truman began, but the U.S. is still on its feet. There are more people employed than ever before. The nation's business situation is the most prosperous in the country's history, if Wall Street reports are to be believed. The U.S. is in fine shape.

Taking Credit. In fact, he said, warming up, the first five years after the worst war in history had been easier on the U.S. than the period following any war ever fought by the country. Anyone who looked at the history books could see that this was so.

Then with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, he went on: Of course, it couldn't be that the Chief Executive could take credit for this pleasant state of affairs. It would have taken place anyway if a moron had been on the job--at least, that's the way some of the press reports it. But the President can take credit for it--and that is just what the President proposes to do.

The newsmen laughed, and the President joined in. One reporter wanted to know how the President felt about world problems, and found that Harry Truman felt fairly confident about them too: 1946, he said, was the worst time, except for the shooting war itself, and since 1946 there has been gradual improvement.

Had the President noted that "your old friend, Dr. Gallup, says your popularity is not all it might be?"* Harry Truman drily referred his questioner to Dr. Gallup's guesses in 1948.

The fact was that Harry Truman was a happy man, and as far as the observer could tell, boundlessly sure of himself. Critics could say that, even in a time of prosperity, the President should worry more about rising unemployment and deepening deficits; in a time when Russia had bulged nearly halfway across Europe and across the full breadth of Asia, he should spend his days & nights acquiring arms and achieving aims. Of course, they were right. But there was a lot to be said for a man who could walk away from a collision with the moon, the stars and all the planets, lead his nation through five troublesome years and come out of it all a supreme and unabashed optimist.

* The most recent poll shows 37% favor Harry Truman, his lowest popularity percentage--according to Gallup--since April 1948.

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