History's Verdict
Harry Truman wasn't popular in office, but he is now. George Bush is hoping for the same treatment
Truman was less moralistic, emphasizing the importance of "luck and personality, forces quite beyond effort or determination," writes biographer David McCullough. "And though few presidents had ever worked so hard or taken their responsibilities so to heart in time of crisis as Truman had since the start of the war in Korea, it was luck, good and bad, and the large influence of personality that determined the course of events time and again, and never more so than in late December 1950 [shortly after China entered the Korean War], in the midst of his darkest passage."
Truman believed a president's first job was to make the tough choices. "The greatest part of the president's job is to make decisions—big ones and small ones, dozens of them almost every day," Truman said in that January 15 farewell address. "The papers may circulate around the government for a while, but they finally reach this desk. And then, there's no place else for them to go. The president—whoever he is—has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job."
Bush made a similar point to reporters last April. "I hear the voices," he declared, "and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."
When he talks privately to friends and aides, Bush says the central question for history will be not whether he did too much in the war on terrorism but whether he did enough. "No one's going to accuse this president of not being tough enough in trying to prevent it," says a key White House adviser.
There is another parallel. In 1946, the besieged president's party lost control of both houses of Congress to the GOP, partly as a referendum on Truman and his policies. The same thing happened to the Republicans under Bush in last November's elections. Led by Truman, the Democrats made a comeback in 1948 and recaptured Congress, but four years later, in 1952, they not only lost Congress but also were ousted from the White House by Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
That can't be heartening for Bush as he ponders the next two years.
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