Harry's Happy Hour

From the moment he looked down from his train in Chicago and saw Candidate Adlai Stevenson being gouged and elbowed and jostled in the howling platform mob, Harry Truman was in his glory. Before the week was out, Truman had left candidates' headquarters heaped with bitten fingernails and transformed the 1956 Democratic National Convention from a drab dogtrot into a race of rare and exhilarating drama.

The jockeying for position with Senior Democrat Truman began at the Dearborn Street station, where Stevenson was anxious to be photographed with Harry while Candidate Averell Harriman was still back in New York. But, as photographers tried to line up the ex-President and the leading candidate, India Edwards, an old Truman friend and a queen bee of the Harriman forces, jumped in between. When Stevenson went this-a-way, so did India. When Stevenson went thataway, so did India. Finally, Adlai executed a clever flanking movement and came up alongside Truman while the cameras clicked away. Almost unnoticed was the most important fact of Truman's arrival: his old speechwriter, Judge Sam Rosenman, now a top Harriman adviser, had sidled up to Truman's side, where he was to remain like an outsized shadow all week.

Breaking the Bandwagon. After a ten-minute arm's length chat with Stevenson in Truman's Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel suite, Harry Truman held a press conference, and let go kersplat with his first great crusher of the week. "I will," he said delightedly, "let the people know for whom I stand before the convention meets." A newsman asked if Truman was just trying to baffle every one. Chortled Harry: "That is exactly right."

Averell Harriman's followers, who had based all their hopes on Truman's backing, took immediate heart at another Truman press conference remark: "I am not a bandwagon fellow. Don't get that in your head." Later, Stevenson's supporters found cause for optimism when Truman appeared before the Democratic Platform Committee and recommended a civil-rights plank along Adlai's moderation lines.

Stirring Up Trouble. For the next two days, Harry Truman had the time of his life while politicians beat a path to his door (hardly a news story came out of Chicago that did not note that Truman was "obviously enjoying himself"). Stevenson visited for 30 minutes, left Truman's inner room looking glum, but turned on a brave smile when he emerged into the corridor. Harriman's headquarters soon got the good word: in his talk with Stevenson, Truman had flatly rejected 1) an endorsement of Adlai, and 2) a neutral stance between Stevenson and Harriman. Harriman aides set about preparing a statement, sent it to Truman by way of Sam Rosenman and retired Adman David Noyes, with the suggestion that Truman use it as the basis for his Harriman endorsement. Twenty-four hours later they learned that he would.

On the morning of his big day, Truman was up at 7 o'clock, strutted along on his morning walk, reveled in his role as star of the Democratic show. Asked a newsman: What did he intend to say at his press conference that afternoon? Beamed Truman: "Nobody knows but me." Had he made up his mind? "Yes," laughed Truman, "I've made up my mind--but I might want to change it." Almost as soon as he returned to the hotel, his visitors began pouring in again. Promised Truman to one of them, Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore: "I'm going to stir up a little trouble this afternoon."

"Get Out, Sam." The Stevenson followers made desperate eleventh-hour efforts to win Truman back--but they all found Harriman's Sam Rosenman immovably settled in the Truman suite. "We can't get any of our boys in to talk to the old man," mourned a top Stevenson adviser. "That s.o.b. is sitting right there in Truman's lap." All the Stevenson hopes were placed on Truman's Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman, whose political judgment Truman had always trusted. Chapman walked into Truman's suite, saw Sam Rosenman sitting there, dug an elbow deep in Rosenman's heavily larded ribs, and snapped: "Get out of here, Sam. I want to talk to the President." But by the time Chapman left, he knew Stevenson's jig was up as far as Truman was concerned.

After a brief talk with Texas' Favorite Son Lyndon Johnson (see below), Truman greeted 32 dyed-in-the-courthouse Trumanites whom he calls his "flying squad." Some of the high flyers: ex-National Chairmen Frank McKinney and Bill Boyle, California Oilman Ed Pauley, former White House Assistant Donald (Deepfreeze) Dawson, onetime Senate Secretary Les Biffle, ex-White House Secret Service Chief Frank Barry, Sam Rosenman, Dave Noyes, and Irish Tenor Phil Regan. Said Truman: "In five minutes I'm going down and announce for Harriman. I want you fellows to go get this job done. I'm not doing this with my tongue in my cheek. I mean it. I want you fellows to go to work."*

Then Harry Truman marched into the Sheraton-Blackstone's Crystal Ballroom, faced the overflow crowd and grinned as though he had lived his life for that moment.

"The Man Best Qualified." He would, he said, read his handwritten statement twice. After the first time, the newsmen "who feel like they want to break a leg to get to the telephone may do so." The second reading would be for "the slow-motion boys." As flashbulbs blazed around Truman, he told photographers: "You fellows quit. You've had enough now." Then, savoring every word, he began to read: "This statement is dated August 11, 1956, at 3:30 o'clock in the afternoon, Chicago time."

The first big hint came when Truman said caustically: "I have little faith in the value of the bandwagon operation nor in the reliability of polls--political polls." Truman made his decision even more obvious with the words: "I realize that my expression of a choice at this time will cause disappointment in some and may cause resentment in others, but against the mounting crises in the world, I know that this convention must name a man who has the experience and the ability to act as President immediately upon assuming that office, without risking a period of costly and dangerous trial and error."

Then, his eyes glinting as he headed into the fight, Harry Truman spoke the magic words: "I believe that the man best qualified to be the next President of the U.S. is Governor Harriman of New York ... I know him, and you can depend on him."

* Growled Harry to an old crony several months ago: "Why, if Stevenson is ever elected, he won't let us inside the White House."

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