Iconfess a fondness for Harry S. Truman, some of it based on admiration of the conventional kind, some of it perhaps best described as cosmically circumstantial. I was born in Washington, DC, less than two miles from the White House then occupied by Harry Truman. While I don’t go in for astrology, I still like to think of Harry (and Bess, too) as constituting my own political zodiac sign. He is my guide to good sense and hence the herald of my good fortune (such as it is, and may become).

Truman’s own fortune, historically speaking, did not come quickly or easily. He came to the presidency in tragedy following Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, and FDR’s act was about as hard for Harry Truman to follow as Lincoln’s was for Andrew Johnson. Yet Truman somehow won the 1948 election despite not one but two defections from his own party (Henry Wallace to the Progressive Party Left and Strom Thurmond to the Dixiecrat Right). Shortly thereafter, however, his popularity fell off sharply when he asked a weary citizenry to accept new burdens at home and abroad. He left office during the Korean War with a 23 percent approval rating, the lowest ever since those kinds of data have been kept.

But as everyone also knows—not least George W. Bush and his diminished coterie of loyal supporters—Truman’s reputation has soared over time as his judgments have been vindicated. Harry Truman’s Administration is widely credited with having conceived the basic strategy and raised up the key institutions, domestic and international, that in due course won the Cold War. That assessment is basically true, too, though it took the Eisenhower Administration to consolidate that path and the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations to collect the laurels.

President Truman was a man of bold strokes—from the August 1945 decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan to the June 1950 decision to resist Communist aggression in Korea to the April 1951 decision to fire General Douglas MacArthur. But three decisions he made in-between these others, all in the spring and summer of 1948, just as surely stand out for their boldness and their beneficial consequences.

On May 12, 1948, against the advice of all his military and diplomatic advisers, Truman decided to recognize without delay the new state of Israel. Had it not been for that decision, Israel would have had a much more difficult time overcoming the odds against its successful birth.

At a June 26, 1948, cabinet meeting, once more against the advice of nearly all his advisers, Truman backed the resolution of General Lucius Clay, the U.S. military governor of Germany, to defy the Soviet blockade of West Berlin with an airlift. The airlift transformed the shaky postwar European psyche. Before it, most Europeans doubted U.S. staying power and smelled a red wind as the French, Italian and other West European Communist parties kneaded their hands in rapt anticipation. By the time Stalin backed down in May 1949, Western resolve had been transformed in the eyes of the world from frail reed to sturdy oak.

Above all, on July 26, 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981 ordering the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. It took nearly half a dozen years before EO 9981 was finally implemented in full, but that was to be expected. What matters is that Truman was the first post-Civil War American leader to begin in earnest the difficult process of redeeming a shameful legacy within an otherwise mostly noble American historical experience. It was Harry Truman, more than any other individual, who set the stage for Brown v. Board of Education, for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and for all good that has followed.

Each of these three decisions has attracted scholarly attention which has shed light on the specific issues and how Truman reached his conclusions about them. What comes through all the detail in this literature, however, is a portrait of the kind of man, and the kind of leader, Harry Truman was: a pragmatic moralist (not to be confused with a detail-challenged idealist).

The life of a pragmatic moralist is rarely an easy one, for others frequently discount the need either for pragmatism or for a moral compass. Each of Truman’s three decisions sixty years ago brought intimate criticism down on his head. The decision to recognize Israel led Secretary of State George Marshall to lose his temper and declare before all present in the Oval Office that he would vote against the President in November if he followed through. The second persuaded Marshall, Robert Lovett, George Kennan and the rest of the original “wise men” that with the airlift Truman was courting World War III at a time when U.S. forces in Europe were hopelessly outmatched by the still-mobilized Red Army. The momentous decision to desegregate the military led many of the President’s political advisers to warn that he risked dooming his own re-election campaign.

Truman stuck by his judgment in each case, however, and for the same reason: He believed it was the right thing to do, and he believed he could make his decision stick. If his pragmatic moralism helped him politically, fine. He hoped it would. But if it didn’t, well, the buck that stops at the president’s desk doesn’t always push its occupant forward.

Vivid evidence of how Truman conceived his role as President comes from Henry Kissinger. “I met Truman only once, early in 1961”, Kissinger wrote in Diplomacy (1994):

Having heard that I was consulting part-time at the Kennedy White House, he asked me what I had learned. Drawing on standard Washington cocktail party wisdom, I replied that the bureaucracy appeared to me to function as a fourth branch of government, severely constricting the president’s freedom of action. Truman found this remark neither amusing nor instructive. Impatient at being subjected to what he labeled ‘professor talk’, he responded with an expletive, then introduced his view of the role of the president: ‘If the president knows what he wants, no bureaucrat can stop him. A president has to know when to stop taking advice.’

Straight talk, that, from the only 20th-century American President without a college degree. As November 2008 approaches, Truman’s conclusion about what it really takes to be president is perhaps something voters should keep in mind as they evaluate the candidates on offer.

Rather than review President Truman’s key 1948 decisions at length, I am content to let others illustrate each of them for me (three of whom actually knew him, and one whose career demonstrates his foresight).

At our last meeting [in 1961], after a very interesting talk, just before [Truman] left me—it was in a New York hotel suite—I told him that as a foreigner I could not judge what would be his place in American history; but his helpfulness to us, his constant sympathy with our aims in Israel, his courageous decision to recognize our new state so quickly and his steadfast support since then had given him an immortal place in Jewish history. As I said that, tears suddenly sprang to his eyes. And his eyes were still wet when he bade me goodbye. I had rarely seen anyone so moved.

—David Ben-Gurion,
Ben Gurion Remembers (no date)¹ 1.
Text quoted in Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President (Random House, 1991).

The success of the European Recovery Program and the planned formation of [a] West German Government led to the Soviet blockade of Berlin, a ruthless attempt to use starvation to drive out the Western Powers, thus re-creating in Europe the fear which favored Communist expansion. The airlift prevented the blockade from accomplishing its purpose. There were risks involved in our determination not to be driven out of the former German capital. We understood and accepted these risks.²2.
Decision in Germany (Doubleday, 1950).
. . .

Truman realized that the Berlin crisis was a political war, not a physical military war. . . . Truman was a man of great courage, and he didn’t hesitate to make his own decisions.³3.
Truman Library Archive, oral history interview with Lucius D. Clay, conducted by Richard D. McKinzie, July 16, 1974.

—Gen. Lucius Clay (1950, 1974)

It was highly significant that such bold proposals and messages on civil rights would come from the grandson of a Missouri slave owner. Harry Truman was born less than twenty years after the end of the Civil War, and had grown up surrounded by veterans of that conflict. His early attitudes were shaped by that environment; words that would be unacceptable in today’s world were very much a part of the language with which young Harry Truman grew up. . . . However, President Truman. . . had seen the cruelty and stupidity and wastefulness of discrimination back home in Jackson County—it was time, he felt, to begin to put an end to over seventy years of officially condoned discrimination, intimidation, and segregation. He saw as well that leadership on this most difficult of all domestic issues could only come from the President. . . . He had heard the voices of caution and concern, including those of the conservatives within his own Administration—and he had rejected their advice.

—Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President (1991)

Tomorrow in Norfolk, Virginia, President Clinton will commission the USS Harry S. Truman, our newest aircraft carrier. . . . I wish President Truman could see the crew that will take his ship down to the sea. They would match his every dream: Every color of America, every accent of America—America the beautiful, all 5,000 sailors and marines working together as members of a family. . . .

And after commissioning tomorrow, the USS Truman will join the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The Atlantic Fleet is commanded by a four-star admiral, Admiral Paul Reason, and guess what? Yep, you got it: Admiral Reason is black. And as Harry Truman might say, no one gives a damn, and that’s the way it should be. Thank you, Mr. President and God bless what you did for all of us.

—Colin L. Powell (1998)⁴4.
“The 50th Anniversary of EO 9981”, unpublished speech, Truman Library, July 24, 1998.

What lessons reside in Harry Truman’s spring and summer of decisions sixty years ago? Since I have taken him for my own personal political zodiac sign, I feel obliged to offer a few suggestions:

Trust your moral instincts: On May 12, 1948, Harry Truman listened to his heart, knowing it to be the source of profound ancestral wisdom and the deepest storehouse of moral guidance any man can draw upon.

Mind your backbone: On June 26, 1948, Truman understood that pursuing peace with freedom and dignity means never ducking an honorable and necessary fight, and that standing firm is our best insurance against having to fight.

Know the rarity of genuine leadership, and when you find it, follow it: On July 26, 1948, Truman knew that it fell to Americans to be pioneers for freedom in perpetuity, but also that just one American needed to be first in faith to leap into the roiling waters. Like Nachshon before him at the Red Sea, Harry leapt, and the people followed.

As best as I can see, none of these lessons is passé—just in uncertain supply as we approach November. Here’s to you, Harry, for your bold leadership. The whole world has been its beneficiary.

1.
Text quoted in Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President (Random House, 1991).
2.
Decision in Germany (Doubleday, 1950).
3.
Truman Library Archive, oral history interview with Lucius D. Clay, conducted by Richard D. McKinzie, July 16, 1974.
4.
“The 50th Anniversary of EO 9981”, unpublished speech, Truman Library, July 24, 1998.