Who's Boss Around Here?

Reviewing the show, the New York Times's Pundit Arthur Krock detected strong signs of "Mr. Truman's expanding self-assurance." The President's recent speeches, and his bearing, thought Krock, proclaimed some new beliefs on Harry Truman's part.

The beliefs: 1) "he is right and all opponents are wrong, spiritually and factually; 2) he can beat any politician or set of politicians at their common trade; 3) he is boss and intends to assert it; 4) the American majority and most men & women of good will support him down to the item; and 5) if his friends are criticized, with or without good basis, it is a virtue to make a blanket defense of them and keep them in the places to which they are assigned."

Minute Man. One night last week, Harry Truman got into his limousine and rode over to the Army & Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va. There some 200 members of the Reserve Officers Association and their wives, gathered for dinner, had reached dessert. Mr. Truman sat down at the head table.

The object of the dinner was to honor the President's military aide, Major General Harry Vaughan, who had been the target lately of some salvos fired by Columnist Drew Pearson. When Argentina's Juan Peron sent along a medal for General Vaughan, "a brilliant soldier in the glorious Army of the United States," Pearson thought thegeneral's acceptance of it out of keeping with President Truman's championing of democractic principles. The members of the R.O.A. thought otherwise. To affirm their confidence in General Vaughan, they presented him with a scroll naming him "Minute Man of 1949." Everyone clapped.

Another Think Coming. Trim and confident, Mr. Truman stood up. Harry Vaughan, he said, had been his friend since they were soldiers together at Fort Sill in 1917. Everybody in the room knew that he loved wisecracking Harry Vaughan, and that he despised Drew Pearson, whom he once called a liar./- Once, Pearson wrote some critical remarks about Mrs. Truman and Margaret; the President never forgave him.

Mr. Truman began his off-the-cuff speech with some nostalgic comments on the military life of General Vaughan, artillery man in World War I, lieutenant colonel in World War II until he was hospitalized home after an airplane accident. Then the President of the U.S. stuck his jaw out. In a firm, measured voice he said:

"Now, I am just as fond of and just as loyal to my military aide as I am to the high brass, and I want you to distinctly understand that any S.O.B. who thinks he can cause any of those people to be discharged by me by some smart-aleck statement over the air or in the paper, he has got another think coming.

"No commentator or columnist names any members of my Cabinet or my staff. I name them myself. And when it is time for them to be moved on, I do the moving --nobody else . . ."

The crowd loved it. Looking very pleased, Mr. Truman got into his limousine and rode back to Blair House.

"Dirty Phrase." In the official press release, the White House stenographer changed "any S.O.B." to "anyone." That was the ineffectual gesture of the week. The original phrase, taken down by newsmen at the dinner, was already clacking over telegraph wires.

The New Dealing Chicago Sun-Times gasped: "The dirty phrase used by Mr. Truman has shocked millions who feel that every President becomes a symbol for clean-minded youth." Discussion of it sputtered across the U.S.

If the President felt contrite, he didn't show it. Obviously to the new, self-assured Mr. Truman who had taken the place of the more tentative Harry Truman of other days, "S.O.B." had just seemed the appropriate phrase. While Harry Vaughan, scarcely noticed, accepted another medal (Mexico's "Order of Military Merit, First Class"), Mr. Truman told his press conference that he thought the reaction to S.O.B. had been very satisfactory.

/- Franklin Roosevelt had called Pearson a "chronic liar."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.