Disenchanted Evening

They laughed when Harry Truman stood up to play a little politics. But before the evening was over the 1,600 paying guests ($100 a plate) gathered in Manhattan's Waldorf last week to honor Eleanor Roosevelt's 75th birthday knew that Harry Truman looks on 1960 Democratic politics, and his part in the show, as no laughing matter.

Truman's first job was to introduce the seven Democratic presidential possibles, and he plainly wore his heart on his sleeve. He breezed lightly over California's Governor Edmund ("Pat") Brown ("a man to be reckoned with''), New Jersey's Governor Bob Meyner ("in the spotlight of public interest"), and Michigan's Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams ("in the forefront of enlightened social legislation"). Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey was "one of the forward-looking thinkers in our ranks"; Adlai Stevenson, chairman of the evening, was "an important and gifted voice in the affairs of the party and the nation"; Massachusetts' Senator Jack Kennedy was "a liberal and, in the judgment of many, a fighting liberal." But Harry Truman's own favorite, Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, was unequivocally presented as "a confirmed and dedicated liberal."

When the time came for Truman's full-dress speech, he was full of a fury that shocked the Stevenson-minded New York audience. He threw away a large chunk of his prepared script, sneered at "those snobs who think they have solutions to all our problems," and lit into "the hothouse liberal who talks the game but doesn't play it ... Let us choose a liberal who meets the requirements of the people who know the difference between a working liberal and a talking liberal . . . I for one have no time for the Johnny-come-lately, well-fed liberals who would like to have a disproportionate voice in the party. I think you know who they are." He made it clear, in a passing swipe, that he was sore at the once-devoted New York Post, which had recently taken some potshots at him. But beyond that, nobody was quite certain whom he had in mind; he could have meant Stevenson, whose passive third-time availability galls him, or he could even have meant Eleanor Roosevelt, who is part of a New York reform group trying to upset Tammany Leader Carmine De Sapio.

When the last brickbat had been flung, Eleanor Roosevelt rose up like teacher reproving a wayward elderly schoolboy. "He doesn't like certain kinds of liberals," she said. "I welcome every kind of liberal . . . Perhaps we have something to learn from liberals that are younger." Flushing to his hairline, Truman managed to applaud politely. But, as usual, he had the last hot word. Next day before he flew back home to Missouri, Truman grandly assured attendant reporters that "there isn't any split. There aren't any liberals in the Democratic Party; they're all Democrats." Then, with magnificent illogic, he snapped: "But I am damned sure that they are not going to have anything to say about it."

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