The Answer Man

His big decision made, Harry Truman, President of the U.S., was talking like a new man. In some ways, he sounded a good bit like Candidate Harry Truman, yearning for the whistle stops again. But to the old back-platform folksiness and give-em-hell zest, he had added another quality: the regardless candor of a man who is soon to become plain Harry Truman, U.S. citizen.

Last week he moved his regular press conference (his 300th in seven years) into the dim, cavernous auditorium of the Smithsonian Institution so that 400 visiting editors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors could hear the new Truman in action. After the picture-taking and handshaking, A.S.N.E. President Alexander F. ("Casey") Jones of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal began the show with a planted question that none of the White House regulars had thought to ask before. He asked the President to comment on his "political philosophy in retiring," and Harry Truman was off.

The Job to Do. In a relaxed and expansive mood, he let his broad smile travel across the room and offered a few homely reflections for direct quotation. Said the President: "I have been a very close student of the presidency of the United States and also of the individual Presidents who have occupied the place since Washington's time, and my reason for not running again is based on the fact that I don't think that any man, I don't care how good he is, is indispensable in any job . . .*

"When a man has been in this very responsible post for eight years, which I will practically have been by the 20th day of next January, he has, or he should have by that time made all the contribution he possibly can to the welfare of the country. He has either done it well or done it not well.

"I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I had to do it, and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Ariz.: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest."

A Rain of Questions. Harry Truman's damndest, as he saw it, took in a lot of territory. Aside from the prevention of World War III, he thought, the greatest accomplishment of his Administration has been keeping employment at full tilt. Said he: We have been able to fix the income of the country so that it is fairly distributed --an even economy, well-balanced so everybody has a fair chance. And after the rearmament program is finished a Point Four program--if it raises the standards of living of the underdeveloped parts of the world at least 2%--can keep U.S. production going for the next 25 years.

As the questions rained down, Truman tossed off his answers with obvious relish.

P: On political experts: Editors don't know anything about politics, and he is trying to learn them something.

P: On a Southern Democrat as the presidential nominee: A Southerner could be nominated at the convention if he is willing to run on the Democratic platform; you can't be a Democrat with reservations.

P: On favorite Son Averell Harriman (see below) as a vote-getter: that depends altogether on the impression you make. The President went out [in 1948] and traveled 31,700 miles, gave 355 speeches, saw 7,000,000 people and talked to 30 million more people over the radio and sold them a bill of goods and became President.

P: On the Democratic platform for 1952: The President had already read it aloud in his Jefferson-Jackson Day speech.

P: On his own plans for the future: He did not plan to become a history professor because he has no college degrees except honorary ones, and he does not believe that any college in the country would consider him qualified to teach. He would love to run for Senator from Missouri, but he wouldn't use the power of the presidency to run this fall and did not want to run against Democrat Tom Hennings, who comes up for re-election in 1956.

P: On ex-Presidents: A lot of people would like to tie a rock to ex-Presidents and throw them in the Potomac. But he thinks Herbert Hoover made a wonderful contribution to his country as chairman of the Commission for the Reorganization of the Government, and Truman expects to do whatever he is asked to do, just as these people have done for him.

Genesis to Revelations. The new Truman was charming the visiting editors right down out of the masthead. Though he had often upbraided the editors as heatedly as Franklin Roosevelt, he smoothly refused the chance to deliver a scolding in person. He had no specific complaints today, said Harry Truman with a disarming grin. Then one of the editors asked the day's sharpest question: "Mr. President, if it is proper to seize the steel mills, can you in your opinion seize the newspapers and radio stations?" Replied the President: Under similar circumstances, the President has to act for whatever is for the best interests of the country. That is your answer.

Presidential Press Secretary Joe, Short, besieged later for a clarification, did his best to patch matters up again: "It was a purely academic and hypothetical question and there is no amplification or comment on it." Truman, himself, did not elaborate. But next day, while telling 100 visiting Protestant editors that his press conference had produced questions ranging from "Genesis to Revelations," he grinned and said: "I don't know whether I gave them the right answers or not."

Deep Roots. Right or wrong, Harry Truman had answers for everybody all week long. He flew out to Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, to lecture seven flood-weary Midwestern governors (six of them Republicans) on the need for flood control (see below). "I want to get this job done," he snapped. "There isn't any sense in our fooling around any longer." For the Daughters of the American Revolution, gathered in annual convention in Washington, he had a polite welcoming note and a couple of not-so-polite digs. During a White House ceremony for Polish Refugee Josef Zylka (last of the European refugees to come to the U.S. under the Displaced Persons Act), Truman observed that "some of the descendants of those early [U.S.] immigrants have come to the conclusion that they shouldn't help other people who are now in the same condition ... I am not one of them, although my roots go back as far as any ... I am not an ancestor hunter."

But he saved his angriest words to rawhide the House of Representatives for cutting $4.7 billion out of the $51 billion defense appropriation for 1953 (TIME, April 21). It was a shrewdly timed outburst, designed to show Harry Truman, though he himself had sharply slashed the armed forces' budget, as the fearless champion of adequate defense.

Turnip Day. "How did the House of Representatives decide to make a cut like this?" he asked at a dedication ceremony for a new AMVETS headquarters in Washington. "Did they say, 'We have been over the whole defense program and we think you ought to plan something smaller?' No, no, they didn't say anything like that. They said, 'This program is all right--but we won't provide the money to put it over! . . .' They just said, 'Cut it--and don't bother us with details.' I wish I had the whole outfit right here before me now ... If I have to call a special Turnip Day session** every day from now until the first of January, we're going to get this thing done and it's going to be done right.. .

"This nation is still in deadly peril. We have an Army confronting the enemy in the field. We have troops and bases at vital points overseas . . . Until the Kremlin shows by deeds that it is willing to abandon its aggressive designs, we must prepare to prevent disaster. This may be an election year, but the Kremlin won't take a vacation simply because of the political situation. If we weaken, if we fall back, the Kremlin will see a chance to move in. There's only one real language they understand."

And the President of the U.S., glaring fiercely, held up a tightly clenched fist for all to see. The gesture might have been more to the point, punctuating another above-the-battle lecture by the new Harry Truman, if the President himself did not still rate a large share of the blame for the perilous state of the nation's defenses. But many a good Democrat, glumly contemplating the leaderless, divided state of the party last week, realized with a sharp sense of loss just how much the party would miss the political touch of the old campaigner.

* To a visiting friend last week, the President gave a more down-to-earth reason for his retirement, quoting a favorite expression of his military jester, Major General Harry Vaughan: "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, that's what I'm doing."

** A throwback to the 1948 Democratic Convention, where Nominee Truman, in a 2 a.m. acceptance speech, announced that he was summoning Congress into special session for July 26, "which out in Missouri they call Turnip Day."

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