Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip (19 page)

Harry delivers his first major speech as a former president at the Reserve Officers Association convention in Philadelphia, June 26, 1953. “Do not be misled by the desire for lower taxes into cutting corners on our national security,” he warned.

After dinner, Truman was introduced as “a colonel, U.S. Army, retired, and the former President of the United States.” He received a two-minute standing ovation.

He stood behind a small lectern that had been placed on the head table. A sign leaning against the front of it read
RESERVES ASK ONLY THE RIGHT TO BE READY
. The lectern was covered with microphones—the speech would be carried live on radio stations nationwide. Television cameras were there too, and it was dreadfully hot under the klieg lights, though Harry, as usual, never let on. The Bellevue-Stratford’s Grand Ballroom was packed with more than a thousand people, most of the men in uniform, the women in gowns. They sat at round tables covered with white tablecloths, or stood in the balcony overlooking the floor.

“He stepped to the microphone like a man who can graciously take applause,” wrote Raymond C. Brecht in the
Philadelphia Bulletin.
“Then he took off the gloves.”

He began innocuously enough, speaking slowly in that familiar voice, flat, a little high-pitched, the pronunciations still unmistakably Missourian (“entire” he rendered “EN-tire”). He spoke of how he enjoyed reading the morning papers now, “without having to make plans for handling the problems that appear there.”

“Occasionally,” he said, “the temptation has been very strong to do a little Monday-morning quarterbacking and advise my successor on how he should handle particular situations. But so far I have resisted that temptation, and I think I deserve a little credit for that.”

He acknowledged that the Republicans had supported him when “the United States took the lead in defending the Republic of Korea against brutal aggression.” He also noted that there had been “more continuity than … change” in American foreign policy since the Republicans took over. “This is as it ought to be.”

“Unfortunately, however, the elections of last fall have strengthened the irresponsible element in the Republican Party. The grave burden of national leadership has apparently brought no change in the attitude of the reckless and isolationist wing of the Republican Party….

“Our plans were to build the defense forces we needed as soon as possible, and then to continue these forces at whatever strength was necessary for as long as necessary.”

His voice was rising, now, the words coming faster.

“I am sorry to read, however—and I’m sure you are—that a great deal has happened to cut that program down.” He was referring to Eisenhower’s proposed defense cuts.

He held his hands in the air, as if measuring an imaginary fish. Then he chopped them down to drive home his point.

“There can be no doctrine more dangerous than the notion that we cannot afford to defend ourselves. And no doctrine quite so foolish, either….

“The greatest danger period of the ‘cold war’ is not necessarily behind us, as some seem to think. We may be in our greatest danger period now, or it may be ahead of us. Nobody on this side of the Iron Curtain knows what is going on in the minds of the men in the Kremlin….

“Big talk does not impress the rulers of the Soviet empire…. What impresses them are planes, and divisions, and ships….

“We must be strongly armed, now and as far ahead as we can see. If the Soviets are genuinely interested in real settlements, we must be able to negotiate from strength. If they are tempted to make war, we must be able to deter them by our strength. And if they should attack, we must be able to beat them back, by strength. No matter what way lies ahead, the essential thing is always strength….

“I think that those who talk about our defense program being too big may be letting their pocketbooks obscure their judgment. It is only natural to wish that we didn’t have to tax ourselves so much for defense. This is perfectly human. We would all like lower taxes. But I warn you soberly and plainly: Do not be misled by the desire for lower taxes into cutting corners on our national security.

“Increasing the risk of World War III means increasing the risk of atom bombs on our homes. Think about that hard and think about it often….

“The world depends upon us,” he said in conclusion. “Let us meet the challenge.” It was ten o’clock. The speech had lasted twenty-four minutes. The ovation it received lasted several more.

Truman returned to his seat and watched a performance by a choir from Naval Air Station Pensacola. At ten-thirty he returned to the private railcar at 30th Street Station and spent the night on board before proceeding to New York.

Like Harry, I took a train from Washington to Philadelphia. Unlike Harry, I didn’t ride in a private railcar loaned by the Pennsylvania Railroad (which ceased to exist in 1968). Instead, I was a passenger on the rolling stock of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. In other words, I took Amtrak. Coach class, of course.

It was June 26, 2008—the fifty-fifth anniversary of Harry’s speech at the Reserve Officers convention. From 30th Street Station, I took a subway to Center City (as downtown is called in Philadelphia) and walked to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, the site of Harry’s speech. Opened in 1904, the Bellevue-Stratford is a nineteen-story beaux arts masterpiece. It was Philadelphia’s grandest hotel—until it made history of a most unpleasant kind.

In the summer of 1976, the American Legion held a convention at the hotel. More than two hundred people who attended it were stricken with a mysterious pneumonia-like malady. More than thirty eventually died of the illness, which was attributed to a bacterium in the hotel’s air-conditioning system. Researchers named the bacterium
Legionellosis.
The illness it causes has come to be known as Legionnaires’ disease.

If the best surprise in the lodging business is no surprise, then the worst is probably death. Naturally the outbreak had a deleterious effect on business, and the Bellevue-Stratford was forced to close by the end of that year. Since then it has been bought and sold, opened and closed, and remodeled and renamed many times. In its present incarnation it is known simply as the Bellevue. It is, in essence, an upscale mall. The once-ornate lobby has been subdivided into shops, including a Polo Ralph Lauren and a Tiffany. There’s also a Palm restaurant and the requisite Starbucks. The middle floors have been converted into office space. Only the very top floors still offer accommodations, in the form of a boutique hotel managed by the Hyatt chain.

One important aspect of the old Bellevue-Stratford has been preserved, however: the Grand Ballroom on the second floor. This is where Harry delivered his speech to the Reserve Officers Association. The ballroom is still rented out for swanky occasions. On the day I visited, however, it was empty. Stacks of chairs sat on the edge of the dance floor. Round folding tables leaned against the wall.

At the front of the room there was a small stage with an orange backdrop. I walked up to the edge of the stage and turned to face the empty room. I was standing in the very spot where Harry had stood exactly fifty-five years earlier, front and center in his white dinner jacket, under the blazing klieg lights, measuring an imaginary fish, and giving Ike hell.

The Philadelphia speech was vintage Truman, blunt and forceful with a dash of hyperbole (“atom bombs on our homes”), and it energized Democrats. To the
Philadelphia Bulletin
the “smiling man from Missouri” looked like he would be a “big cannon” in the 1954 congressional elections.

Republicans, however, were unmoved. “Mr. Truman is back at the old stand,” said Leonard W. Hall, the head of the Republican National Committee, “soft on economy, soft on money and soft on communism. The American people know that … President Eisenhower put some muscle into American defense and foreign policies.” Hall asserted Truman had been “given a well-deserved rest by the American people, and he should take it.” Republicans were also quick to point out that Truman himself had slashed defense spending between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War.

President Eisenhower had no response. He was spending the weekend at the presidential retreat in the Maryland woods—not far from Frederick, actually. FDR and Truman had called the retreat Shangri-La. Ike had recently renamed it in honor of his grandson: Camp David.

The immediate effect of the speech was negligible. The very next day, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted to slash another $1.3 million from the defense budget. “Mr. Truman’s influence with the 83rd Republican Congress appeared to be about as great as it was with the 80th,” quipped the
Washington Star.

But the long-term effect of the speech was more profound. By attacking his successor so fiercely so soon after leaving the White House, Harry Truman set the tone, not only for his own ex-presidency, but also for the ex-presidents after him. He was the first ex-president to engage in partisan politics in the age of modern mass media. Earlier exes had been politically active, of course. But in the thirty-four years between the death of Teddy Roosevelt and the end of the Truman presidency—a period during which the first commercial radio and television stations went on the air—ex-presidents were mostly seen but not heard.

After TR died in 1919, there were four ex-presidents before Truman: Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, and Hoover. Taft was chief justice and Wilson was infirm, so neither was especially active politically. For a year or so, Coolidge wrote a newspaper column called “Calvin Coolidge Says,” in which Silent Cal said almost nothing. The columns were mostly bland essays on conservative business and political principles. He died less than four years after leaving office. (Upon learning of his death, Dorothy Parker quipped, “How can they tell?”) As for Hoover, he wrote critically of the Roosevelt administration; his 1934 book
The Challenge to Liberty
compared the New Deal to fascism. But poor Herbert was lost in the political wilderness, and nobody paid much attention to him.

But Harry Truman—people paid attention to Harry Truman. His plainspoken, straightforward style was perfectly suited to the new broadcast media. If not the first television president, he was, at least, the first television ex-president. He turned the ex-presidency into a bully pulpit in its own right, and in doing so transformed it into the institution it has become.

New York, New York,
June 27–July 5, 1953

H
arry’s private railcar, which was attached to the regular Philadelphia Express, arrived at Penn Station in New York around 9:40 on the morning of Saturday, June 27. “I’m having the best time in the world,” he told reporters as he stepped onto the platform. From the station he was driven to the Waldorf-Astoria by Ed Hastings, the hotel’s vice president.

When he first learned the Trumans were planning to visit New York, Hastings had written Harry, offering the couple accommodations at the Waldorf. Truman, who had spent many nights at the hotel as president, replied that he would “very much like to take advantage of” Hastings’s invitation. “I’ll need a couple of bedrooms and a parlor,” Truman wrote. “Please inform me just what the expense will be for that sort of arrangement.”

Hastings immediately wrote back: “For this, your first visit of a few days, the management of the Waldorf-Astoria will be pleased to have you as our guest.” If the former president found the accommodations acceptable, “we can then discuss the matter of rates, for future visits.”

“It certainly is kind of you to give me such service,” Truman answered. “Your suggestion is all right and I more than appreciate it.”

Which is how the cash-strapped former leader of the free world was able to afford eight nights at one of the finest—and most expensive—hotels in the world.

After he checked into his suite, Truman went downstairs for a haircut and shoeshine. A clutch of reporters and photographers were waiting for him.

Truman was photographed smiling broadly in the barber’s chair, his legs crossed, a white smock covering his blue suit. It was a rare public appearance without his eyeglasses.

The haircut cost $1.50. Truman tipped the barber a buck. The shoeshine cost fifteen cents. He tipped the bootblack a quarter. Truman’s big tips were reported with some incredulity in the next day’s papers, as if the former farmer and haberdasher from Missouri was a bumpkin. Truman “shattered a theory,” the
New York Daily News
reported, “that tourists were lousy tippers.”

As was becoming customary, Harry invited reporters up to his suite for an impromptu press conference—though Harry insisted it was only a

“talk.”

He said he stood by his speech the night before in Philadelphia. “I’ve been in politics forty years,” he added, “and I’m not out of it yet.”

He expressed concern over the health of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had recently suffered a stroke. “I think very highly of Winston Churchill,” Truman said. “I hope it is not serious. He’s a great man. The world needs him.” (Churchill recovered and lived another eleven years.)