A Play in One Act

THE PRESIDENCY A Play in One Act

SCENE: the baroque conference room of the old State Department Building, Washington. The seats are three-quarters filled with reporters. On stage, center, is HARRY TRUMAN, in snappy dark blue suit, with a blue pocket handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket, matching his blue silk tie. Around him, PHOTOGRAPHERS and NEWSREEL MEN cluster. They have been specially invited by the President to give the broadest possible sweep of publicity to what he has to say.

Q. (from a photographer): This way, Mr. President.

A. The President [who cannot be directly quoted because of White House protocol] said, All right, fire away. (Photographers move in close.)

Q. Can I have that two-handed gesture, Mr. President?

A. No, said the President. That's enough; let's go to work. (Photographers, undaunted, keep shooting; Press Secretary Roger Tubby shouts sternly: the President has said "enough." Cut the lights, please.)

Q. (photographers) Thank you, Mr. President.

A. All right, said the President. (Turning to reporters.) If you can think of any questions, the President will try to answer them.

Q. Mr. President, Senator Watkins has suggested that you invite both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur to the White House for a Korean strategy conference.

A. The President doesn't see any good purpose to be served by that but they are welcome to talk to him any time they want . . .

Q. Do you feel that it is MacArthur's duty to come forth with it if he has any plan?

A. Yes, said the President, certainly it is, certainly it is. MacArthur is on active duty and will be for the rest of his life.

Q. Have you talked with General MacArthur since you saw him on Wake Island?

A. No, said Truman. The President took a 14,400-mile trip to get a lot of misinformation and MacArthur didn't even have the courtesy of reporting when he came back here.* The President has never seen him and doesn't want to see him. He should have reported to the President the moment he got in Washington. Any decent man would have done it.

Q. Mr. President, what misinformation did the general give you?

A. The President said that [MacArthur] said the Chinese would not come into Korea, that it would be possible to send a division of the Regular Army to

Germany . . . This division was to come from Korea.

Q. Mr. President, the attorney general of Massachusetts, I believe, says you were urged during the campaign to announce you would go to Korea and that the war would be over by Christmas . . . Was that suggestion put up to you?

A. Yes, said Harry Truman, it was, and the President decided it wouldn't serve any purpose and would be just a piece of demagoguery, and that is what it has turned out to be.

Q. The current trip that is on now is a piece of demagoguery?

A. Yes, said the President, the announcement of that [Eisenhower] trip was a piece of demagoguery, and then, of course, he had to make it. He made the statement and he had to take it. (Press Secretary Tubby rockets from his chair, plucks at Harry Truman's sleeve and whispers hurriedly into his ear. Harry Truman mumbles something that sounds like: Oh, all right.) Roger suggested, Truman went on, that maybe some good might come out of the trip and if it does, the President will be the happiest man in the world. The President hopes some good will come out of it. (There are a few more scattered, unrelated questions and then a silence.)

Q. Does that about cover it, Mr. President? (Laughter.)

Harry Truman nods, chuckles with self-satisfaction and smiles to himself as wire-service reporters rush for the door.

* Although on April 19, 1951 MacArthur was formally received by, and addressed in joint session, the U.S. Congress.

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