The Art of Manliness - #424： How Harry Truman Handled Being Out of His Depth

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00:01:06.200 I'm Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:01:24.440 Now, have you ever been put in a situation that you weren't ready for at all,

00:01:26.840 but somehow managed to rise to the occasion and do what needed to be done?

00:01:30.400 Imagine being Harry Truman.

00:01:31.500 Grew up a poor farmer's son in Jackson County, Missouri, didn't graduate college, failed at multiple businesses,

00:01:36.840 and stumbled into politics before being thrust into the role of the world's most powerful man

00:01:41.260 and required to make monumental decisions, including dropping the atomic bomb

00:01:44.820 that would affect the course of history for the next 70 years.

00:01:48.400 Today on the show, I talk to writer A.J. Boehm about his new book,

00:01:51.020 The Accidental President, that highlights the unexpected rise of Harry Truman to Commander-in-Chief.

00:01:55.280 We discuss how an unassuming, nerdy-looking fella commanded the respect of fellow soldiers during World War I,

00:02:00.140 how Truman became vice president under FDR,

00:02:02.700 how he felt when Roosevelt died and had to assume the presidency,

00:02:05.380 and how he managed his self-doubt and insecurities after taking up residence in the White House.

00:02:09.500 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash accidentalpresident.

00:02:13.880 And A.J. joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:02:16.580 A.J. Boehm, welcome to the show.

00:02:35.880 It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

00:02:37.900 So you got a new presidential biography out about Harry Truman called The Accidental President.

00:02:43.620 Harry S. Truman and The Four Months That Changed the World.

00:02:47.540 Before we get into Truman and why he's the accidental president,

00:02:51.680 what was the impetus behind this book?

00:02:53.480 Is this a time period that you've been writing about,

00:02:56.080 and then you sort of naturally fell into talking about or writing about Truman?

00:02:59.960 Well, yeah, that's absolutely right.

00:03:01.420 Firstly, let me just say, biography, I actually studied biography in graduate school,

00:03:05.320 which makes me kind of a rare specimen,

00:03:07.360 and especially a guy who studied writing biography actually writes biography.

00:03:10.780 It's pretty rare. But this is an interesting book because it's sort of a portrait of a guy,

00:03:14.900 but it's really just four months of his life. It's the first four months of his accidental

00:03:19.440 presidency, which is basically the World War II presidency of Harry Truman. But my previous book

00:03:24.760 was called The Arsenal of Democracy. And there's this chapter in there where this unknown senator in

00:03:29.140 1943 is investigating Detroit car companies, wondering why these car companies are not producing

00:03:34.920 military equipment as fast as they said they would.

00:03:36.940 And it struck me as amazing that this guy who was so obscure in 1943, very few people really

00:03:41.960 understood who he was, should become the most powerful man in the history of the world just

00:03:46.400 two years later. And that's what the book's about is what happens after that. Suddenly he becomes the

00:03:51.480 most powerful man in the history of the world. What does he do next?

00:03:54.300 All right. So we're going to talk about, we're going to get to how Truman became president

00:03:58.600 by accident. And like his whole political career, as we'll see, is like, it's a complete accident,

00:04:04.220 pretty much. But before we get there, let's talk about, you know, his political education,

00:04:08.280 like what allowed him to get to that point where he was kind of thrust into the world stage in this

00:04:13.020 position of supreme power and do okay, as we'll say, as we'll see here. So first, I mean,

00:04:19.540 like Truman, what was his childhood and teenage years like? Was he grew up in a farm? What was,

00:04:25.680 what was that like? Well, one of the things that, well, let me just begin answering the

00:04:30.280 question like this. People were amazed when he became president, that this was a guy who had

00:04:34.800 never gone to college, never had the money to own his own home. And, you know, he's following in

00:04:39.020 Franklin Roosevelt's footsteps and people are stunned who is this obscure man. And one of the things

00:04:44.220 that was so interesting about it was his upbringing. You know, he came from rural Missouri. He was raised

00:04:50.960 on a farm. He was a failed businessman. He was pretty much a failure at everything he'd ever tried.

00:04:56.120 He was a haberdasher. He had a clothing store and that failed. And the only thing he'd have really

00:05:00.660 been successful at was as a soldier. He was a captain in World War I and he led troops into

00:05:05.760 battle successfully. And the only other thing, the only other tools he had were the teachings of his

00:05:11.280 mother. His mother instilled in him these really basic rural principles, you know, sort of the fabric

00:05:18.200 of a human being. Always tell the truth. Honesty is the best policy. Do the right thing. Those were the

00:05:23.820 tools he had. No college education, but he did have these principles, you know. And the other thing

00:05:27.580 he had was as a kid, he'd been ill a little bit as a kid and he was a voracious reader and he had read

00:05:33.180 the entire Independence Library. So he didn't have a great education the way, you know, Roosevelt did,

00:05:39.320 but he had this extraordinary knowledge of American history and American leadership.

00:05:44.380 Yeah. Speaking about his mom, when he became president, I loved her advice to him. She said,

00:05:51.760 be good, Harry, but be game. I just, I love that. I just, it's so, it epismized what you need to do in

00:05:57.940 order to be a president or a politician. You got to be good, but you got to be kind of savvy too.

00:06:02.600 I, that was one of my favorite moments in writing this book was actually typing out that line. Cause

00:06:07.360 I remember when I found it during my research, I was like, oh, this is good. And it's really

00:06:11.740 this dramatic moment where again, he becomes president by accident. It's the night of April

00:06:16.240 12th, 1945. You know, we'll get to, we'll get to the point of how he gets there. But when he finds out,

00:06:22.240 he has no knowledge of the atomic bomb. He's never been the mayor of the city, never been the governor

00:06:26.380 of state. And all of a sudden he's president of the United States and he goes home. He's shocked.

00:06:30.660 His wife is in tears because she doesn't want to be the first lady. She doesn't want her husband to 1.00

00:06:35.040 be president. He goes into a room and shuts the door and calls his mom. And his mom says,

00:06:39.760 dot, dot, dot. What you just said, be game, Harry. Be game, be good, but be game. Well,

00:06:45.120 let's talk about his military career. Cause I thought it was interesting. Cause I didn't know that about

00:06:48.300 Truman because as you highlight in the book, Truman as a kid was kind of a nerd. Like he had glasses.

00:06:55.380 He wasn't very athletic. He hung out mostly with women, his mom, his sister,

00:07:00.500 like those are the close people in his life. But somehow he was able to manage or command a lot

00:07:09.060 of respect from the men that he led. So what was it about Truman, despite having the stature of like

00:07:14.440 sort of being a pencil neck that he was able to command the respect of the men he led?

00:07:20.260 But that's a great question. And you're right. He was a nerd. He would wander around in his glasses,

00:07:23.980 you know, for a kid, his age growing up, it was very rare in a real place for a kid to wear glasses.

00:07:28.480 Everybody called him four eyes. He was not allowed to play sports because glasses were very expensive

00:07:33.020 in rural Missouri and at the end of the 19th century. And, you know, by the time he goes to

00:07:37.960 war, he's already well into his thirties. And I think one of the reasons he was, he wanted to go,

00:07:42.580 he enlisted was because he had nothing going on in his life. He was a farmer and a failed businessman

00:07:47.880 and chasing this woman around, you know, who ended up being the first lady who really wanted not that 0.95

00:07:54.040 much to do with them. And here comes this war. And he's like, you know what? I don't want to live

00:07:58.280 my life in this boring, obscure way. I want to go and find heroism. I want to be a hero,

00:08:02.980 like all of the people that I've read about in books. So he listened, he goes overseas and

00:08:08.040 he suddenly finds himself for two reasons. One is because he helped recruit soldiers back in Kansas

00:08:13.440 City and two, because of his age. So he takes a test to be a captain and he passes and he's terrified.

00:08:19.320 And I found these really moving, I actually create the scene where he has to walk out in

00:08:24.360 front of these troops for the first time and say, Hey, I'm the boss. And it's a very moving moment.

00:08:29.060 And he finds in himself, he doesn't even realize he has these leadership qualities. And it's during

00:08:34.560 World War I that he realizes that there's things in him that he doesn't know about that he wants to

00:08:39.960 explore. And that's when he gets back, he begins his political career.

00:08:43.900 Yeah. I think that's sort of the reoccurring theme throughout Truman's life. Like he

00:08:47.380 was filled with self-doubt. He was put in positions. He thought, and he even said,

00:08:51.360 I can't do this. He would tell his wife, he'd write letters. I don't know if I,

00:08:54.660 but he somehow found it in him to rise to the occasion. And like, we'll see that started in the

00:08:59.240 military and it goes all the way throughout his political career. Well, let's talk about his

00:09:03.660 political career. So he didn't start off as a Senator. He started off as a County judge in Jackson

00:09:10.500 County, Missouri, right? That's right. So he's a judge in a rural place and he becomes sort of

00:09:17.360 well-known in the County where he lives as the sort of tool of a guy named Boss Pendergast.

00:09:23.660 There was a gentleman named Boss Pendergast. Some wouldn't call him a gentleman who had liquor

00:09:28.120 rackets and he owned a cement company. And he was basically kind of a crook and he was in control 0.72

00:09:34.200 of the Democratic Party in Kansas City and in much of Missouri. And he liked Truman because Truman had

00:09:40.400 served in the war with his son or nephew. I forget which way. It was his nephew. And so Boss

00:09:46.500 Pendergast has his eye on this guy, Truman, and he gives him a chance. He gives him, you know,

00:09:50.460 he has to be elected. So Truman runs for office. He's never run for anything in his life, but he has

00:09:56.000 this guy who has tons of money and tons of backing who basically gets the job for him. And so now he's

00:10:01.620 the judge in this County and that's where he gets his start. And his whole beginning of his political

00:10:07.300 career is basically a table set by this guy Pendergast. So when he finally runs for Senate,

00:10:13.980 he gets, he wins against all odds. He gets to Washington and no one will shake his hand because

00:10:19.080 they think he's just the stooge of this crook named Pendergast, which is true. In fact, and 0.99

00:10:24.740 eventually Pendergast goes to prison while Harry's a Senator. It's a great, it's a great embarrassment for

00:10:29.900 him and appears to be at that time, the end of his career.

00:10:32.960 Well, I mean, what's interesting about him being, you know, elected County judge,

00:10:38.200 right? I mean, basically County judge in that, that it was like a County commissioner,

00:10:40.960 right? They don't really do judge.

00:10:42.680 Right. It was like, it was basically an executive position in the County.

00:10:46.380 They had to decide, you know, who would get, who would be employed and where County money

00:10:50.840 would be spent.

00:10:51.860 I mean, what was interesting is the way you described it. He, yes, he was elected by this

00:10:55.120 Democratic, you know, machine boss, but at the same time, he was kind of a, he was a stooge,

00:11:00.140 but at the same time, he had the reputation of being, of having integrity and making sure,

00:11:05.340 you know, County money was spent wisely. I mean, how was Truman able to do that, both

00:11:11.100 being like sort of a, you know, political pawn, but at the same time, develop this reputation

00:11:15.820 as someone who, who got stuff done, but did it also with integrity?

00:11:20.080 Well, that's a great point. Now the boss Pendergast, Tom Pendergast, everybody knew he was a crook. 0.97

00:11:25.000 Everybody knew he controlled and fixed elections. And Pendergast, one of the things Pendergast 0.54

00:11:29.240 really liked about Harry Truman was that Harry was a local boy. Everybody knew him in the county

00:11:34.360 and these were in this rural County as being an honest little fellow. Nobody thought that Harry,

00:11:39.800 nobody, you know, they thought he was little and that nor, I mean, normal, like there's nothing

00:11:43.480 special about him, but he was a guy who could be trusted. And so boss Pendergast, you know,

00:11:48.800 he tried it out. Harry Truman said, look, Truman's my boy. Nobody can say anything bad about Harry

00:11:53.520 Truman. And Truman was in fact fought against corruption in the county. And there was this

00:11:59.800 one point in the 1930s where he realizes it's a very dramatic moment. He realizes where he's at

00:12:06.320 and what he's a part of. And the fact that, you know, Pendergast has created his whole political

00:12:10.200 career and he's still just a little guy in this rural County. And he sits, he starts renting this

00:12:14.600 hotel room in Kansas city and he sits up all night, probably with a bottle of bourbon. And he writes

00:12:19.740 out this political philosophy and those documents exist. You see him exploring who he is, what is

00:12:25.240 right? What is wrong? What is a political philosophy? Where do I fit into this whole thing? And through

00:12:30.420 reading those diary entries, essentially, you really get this wonderful window of who he is and who he

00:12:34.680 wants to become. As county judge, did he get stuff done? Like did he actually improve the lives of

00:12:41.540 people who lived in Jackson County, Missouri? Absolutely. So basically one thing he did that was

00:12:46.660 the most important thing that he did was he convinced the county to issue a bond. I think

00:12:51.320 it was $6 million, which at the time was a tremendous amount of money for this rural county

00:12:56.280 to build roads. And it's the 1920s. And Harry says, listen, you know, we have all these cars now,

00:13:04.300 but you have to look 10 years from now, we're going to have five times this number of cars. So we should

00:13:08.580 have paved roads that go, you know, within two and a half miles of every farm in this county. And people

00:13:14.340 thought he was crazy. But he won, he won the public over to issuing this bond. And everybody

00:13:21.080 thought that the $6 million raised by the county was going to go to crooks. And Harry Truman saw to

00:13:26.260 it that it did not. The roads were built. That's really how he earned his reputation. And as I write

00:13:31.800 in the book, you know, those roads, you know, those roads just created his career and he followed them

00:13:36.220 all the way to Washington, DC. All right. So he gets elected as Senate. And I mean, even though it was,

00:13:41.920 you know, the boss helped him get there, it was a, it was a fight. Like he had, it was kind of like,

00:13:46.220 he wasn't sure he was going to win this thing.

00:13:48.580 Absolutely. I mean, in Kansas City and in rural Missouri, politics at the time, especially during

00:13:54.460 the depression, when it was so important who won an election, because everybody, if I won an election,

00:13:59.600 all my friends have jobs. So it was, these, these were very bitterly fought contests. And in fact,

00:14:05.440 during these elections, especially in Kansas City, there were instances of beatings, of murders.

00:14:10.300 You know, election day could be a very violent affair.

00:14:13.900 Yeah. I mean, whenever I read about elections in the past, I'm like, it's always crazy. Like how

00:14:20.020 crazy it was. I'm always surprised at how nuts it was. People, you know, stabbings at the ballot box.

00:14:24.280 It was terrible. Gun play.

00:14:27.300 Right. Right. Well, so he gets elected Senator. No one knows who he is. No one, everyone ignores him.

00:14:33.000 I'm sure Truman was, you know, typically filled with self-doubt. So what did he do to rise the,

00:14:39.680 rise to the occasion of being, you know, in one of the most hallowed halls of, you know, elected,

00:14:45.200 elected office in America?

00:14:47.280 For starters, he keeps his mouth shut. He remains very obscure. And he just votes pretty much on

00:14:54.880 everything according to Roosevelt. However Roosevelt voted, he voted because he thought Roosevelt was

00:15:00.280 the answer to the Democratic, Democratic Party's prayers. And in fact, he was. So Truman was an honest

00:15:07.120 guy. He was accused of all of this kind of stuff of being Pendergast's stooge. He was called the

00:15:12.160 Senator from Pendergast. But very gradually over these years in the late 1930s, he becomes friends

00:15:20.300 with all these other senators. And they realize that he is a man of great integrity, of total honesty,

00:15:26.980 super hardworking. And very slowly he gains the respect of all of these other senators who begin

00:15:32.960 supporting him and working with him on different committees and things. He remains very obscure.

00:15:38.840 And Tom Pendergast goes to prison in 1938-39 for fraud and all this other stuff. And Truman is sure

00:15:47.040 his career is over at that point because he's Pendergast's stooge. And that leads to the 1940 election,

00:15:53.440 which is one of the most exciting annals of politics is the 1940 Senate election in Missouri.

00:15:59.480 It's incredible because everybody expects Truman to lose. Nobody gives him a chance. And he gathers

00:16:05.440 his team together. He's got no money and he puts together this grassroots campaign and he wins. It's

00:16:10.300 fascinating. Yeah. And one of the things that he did to build that trust is he was a Truman loved

00:16:15.180 playing poker. That was his thing to do. That's absolutely right. And the descriptions of his poker

00:16:21.220 games. And that's another way that he made friends and he loved to play poker. So there's quite a few

00:16:25.800 scenes in the book where he's playing and, you know, especially when he becomes president,

00:16:29.420 because one of the lines I have in Andromeda, you know, I can really, there's so much material,

00:16:35.660 source material to work with that you really, I was able to really paint these scenes very vividly

00:16:40.500 and cinematically. And there's this one moment where Fred Vincent, who's a fellow politician,

00:16:45.840 Truman is president. He leans over and forgets, you know, you have one, you're supposed to address

00:16:49.780 the president as Mr. President. And Vincent leans over to the table and says, you son of a,

00:16:55.600 oh, I'm sorry, Mr. President. They're great. He loves poker.

00:17:00.640 Yeah. All right. So he gets elected. Surprise victory. What is Truman? This is, I think it's

00:17:05.600 this moment, this is where Truman started actually making a name for himself as a politician is after

00:17:11.560 this election, right? That's right. So World War II starts and Truman founds this committee to

00:17:18.360 investigate the defense effort. Now, you know, I think young people today would find it difficult

00:17:25.220 to understand what happened in the United States during World War II, unless you've read a lot.

00:17:30.500 The entire, everybody was affected. Everybody's life changed. To turn this capitalist economy we had

00:17:38.500 into the great arsenal of democracy, as FDR called it, that meant closing any business that didn't have

00:17:45.120 something to do with the war effort and turning all these businesses, car companies, insurance

00:17:51.200 companies, farms, everything to serve the war effort, because that was the only way we were going to

00:17:57.900 defeat Hitler. Now, as this conversion of our economy is happening, it's a bumpy ride. A lot goes wrong. 0.98

00:18:04.660 There's a lot of war profiteering. There's labor strikes, all kinds of stuff going on.

00:18:09.400 And Truman founds this committee to go around the nation and figure out where the bottlenecks are,

00:18:16.100 who's cheating, and how to make sure that our soldiers are getting the best airplanes,

00:18:20.680 the most airplanes. Because really, the great arsenal of democracy, World War II,

00:18:24.340 was lining up to be a contest of mass production. Whoever could build the most trucks, tanks, airplanes,

00:18:29.780 guns, field tents, field kitchens, helmets, cigarettes, you know, rations, whoever could build more

00:18:36.460 would win. So Truman goes around and he starts reporting on national defense and fixing problems,

00:18:42.620 right? And he creates this first report, and he slaps it on the desk. It goes all over Washington.

00:18:48.760 And the next day, the New York Times wrote, the first question we have about the Truman report is,

00:18:53.740 who the hell is Truman?

00:18:54.660 And it made a dent. And I'm sure that, I mean, he was sort of like a burr 1.00

00:19:00.820 in the saddle of a lot of, you know, maybe even Roosevelt, too. Like, it was kind of sort of this,

00:19:06.440 who's this guy mucking things up for us?

00:19:09.500 He absolutely made a lot of enemies in the process. But by 1943, you know, he's still very

00:19:14.760 obscure, but he ends up, he lands on the cover of Time magazine, which at the time was an important

00:19:19.600 thing. And he's called the Billion Dollar Watchdog. And that's how he sort of gets to be known in

00:19:25.620 America.

00:19:26.180 We're going to take a quick break for you, Ward, from our sponsors.

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00:21:34.020 And now back to the show. Yeah. Again, he's, again, building on that reputation of doing the

00:21:40.840 right thing, being good, but being game, right? As Ma, Ma Truman told him to do. Well, okay. So

00:21:47.980 1944, US is in the middle of World War II, got in fighting Japan, ending in Europe. There's a

00:21:56.960 presidential election. This is a big, big election because you don't want to, you know, Roosevelt 0.95

00:22:03.220 had been leading the war effort. You don't want to interrupt that. At the same time, Roosevelt

00:22:07.620 is sick. People are aware that he's not doing well. So there's a, people know that, okay,

00:22:13.820 whoever gets selected as vice president is probably going to be president within a few months and is

00:22:19.220 going to be leading the war effort. So you think, okay, we're going to pick a vice president that has

00:22:24.140 some experience with international affairs, experience with the war effort. So how the heck did

00:22:29.960 Harry Truman end up on the ticket with FDR in that election?

00:22:34.700 It's a great question. I spent a whole chapter talking about the 1944 Democratic National

00:22:40.640 Convention in Chicago, where Truman shocks the nation, ending up on as the VP on the ticket.

00:22:46.560 So basically what happens is everybody's talking about who's going to be the vice president for

00:22:51.000 exactly just what you said. People sort of assumed that FDR was going to beat Thomas Dewey and win.

00:22:57.400 And they also assumed that there was a good chance that FDR was not going to live through the next

00:23:03.080 term because he clearly just looking at him, it was apparent that the war had taken its toll and

00:23:08.480 he was not doing great. So there was a meeting in the White House, not long before the Democratic

00:23:14.160 National Convention in Chicago, where all these leaders from the Democratic Party get together and

00:23:18.380 try to decide who the VP is going to be. And they start bringing up all these names. And essentially

00:23:23.060 what happens is all of the most qualified candidates have something wrong with them. For example,

00:23:29.220 James Burns would have been the best choice for most of the American public. However, Burns had

00:23:37.040 left the Catholic Church to marry a Protestant woman and Catholics hated him. So you have this vast

00:23:43.020 population in America who might vote against the ticket just because Jimmy Burns was on it. Plus,

00:23:47.880 he was from South Carolina, which meant that the black vote in northern cities might vote against

00:23:53.080 the ticket because they didn't, you know, because they didn't like the South. Okay. Then you had

00:23:58.680 Henry Wallace, who was the current vice president, who was too far to the left, and he made everybody

00:24:03.160 very, very nervous. So he was out. Albin Barkley, he was a great choice. But Barkley had gotten in a

00:24:09.740 dust up with Roosevelt, they had an argument about something, there was some bad blood there. So the way it was

00:24:15.000 termed at the time was, quote, Truman just dropped into the slot. So Truman goes to the Democratic

00:24:20.780 National Convention expecting to nominate James Burns for the VP, for VP on the ticket. At the time,

00:24:28.000 a Gallup poll says 2% of Americans, 2%, actually 2% of Democratic voters think that Truman should be the

00:24:34.680 vice presidential candidate. But all of these machinations happen. And Truman himself is shocked

00:24:41.540 to find out that FDR wants him to be on the ticket. And he has no choice but to accept against

00:24:47.520 his wishes. He doesn't want the job. But when FDR gets on the phone and says, you have to do this,

00:24:52.240 or you're going to split up the Democratic Party in the middle of the biggest war in history,

00:24:56.060 you know, that's on you. So Truman ends up on the ticket. The nation is shocked. They don't really

00:25:00.020 know much about this guy. And of course, they win. Well, why didn't Truman want to be on the ticket?

00:25:05.280 I mean, a lot of people, I mean, today you think, oh, you know, everyone wants,

00:25:08.640 if you got asked to be vice president, yeah, heck yeah. Why would, what was Truman against?

00:25:13.120 Well, a few reasons. One is the vice president had relatively little to do. The only official job

00:25:19.400 that the vice president had was to preside over the Senate and vote if there was a tie in the Senate.

00:25:24.660 So it was basically, you know, it was, it was a boring job. The second thing is Truman was very

00:25:31.860 nervous. He didn't want to follow FDR's footsteps into the White House. If FDR died and he became

00:25:37.040 president, he was not prepared to lead the United States during the climactic months of World War

00:25:41.880 II. He had no college degree, never been the mayor of a city or governor of a state. He didn't know

00:25:47.280 how, how the, you know, he, he was not the, he was clearly not the best man for the job and he knew

00:25:52.900 it and he was terrified, but he had no choice. And when he becomes vice president, he basically is

00:25:58.760 just praying that FDR is going to live through the term. And 82 days later, FDR is dead.

00:26:03.800 What was interesting about this, you'd think, okay, the inner circle of Roosevelt, they know

00:26:09.240 he's not doing well. They know Truman's next in line because he's vice president. You'd think

00:26:14.140 they'd like educate him about what's going on with the war effort. You think they'd let them know about

00:26:17.640 the development of the atomic bomb, all the, but Truman, like he even said, like, I know about as much

00:26:23.420 about the war effort as the guy on the street knows. Like why, why did, why was Truman kept out of

00:26:29.500 what was going on with the war effort, even though he was vice president? Well, a lot of

00:26:34.120 historians have said that that was FDR's greatest fault. So soon after the election, FDR takes all

00:26:41.120 of his top advisors and they go off to negotiate with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta. And Truman is

00:26:48.600 left in the dark. He's left at home. He has no knowledge of the atomic bomb project, the Manhattan

00:26:53.800 project. And so, you know, he just never worked his way into FDR's inner circle. And I think FDR,

00:27:00.840 that was his biggest mistake as president. So yeah, Roosevelt dies. Truman, suddenly he's

00:27:07.420 president. And the way you describe it, I love how you start off the book talking about how he became

00:27:12.340 president and sort of the cinematic. I mean, like you said, it's very cinematic. It's just so fun to,

00:27:16.340 so much fun to read. Again, I'm sure he, he feels completely out of his depth. Like what was going

00:27:22.820 through his mind and maybe his wife, what were the conversations he's having with his wife about

00:27:26.980 whether or not he could, you know, step into this job and do a good work, do a good job with it?

00:27:33.980 Well, thank you for saying that. Firstly, I spent the first 38 pages on one day. It's April 12th,

00:27:39.880 1945. And I, I lead the reader through Truman's day, wakes up that day, it's raining. He takes a car to,

00:27:46.680 he drops his daughter off at George Washington university. He goes to work. He's, he meets with a

00:27:52.260 buddy named McKim for lunch and they're planning this poker game. And he tells his butter to go,

00:27:56.620 buddy McKim to go make sure there was tons of whiskey. And they were going to play in a hotel

00:28:00.360 room at the Statler hotel. And then suddenly the day finishes, it's five o'clock. He goes over to

00:28:05.560 Sam Rayburn, speaker of the house. He's in the office and Sam Rayburn hands him a bourbon with

00:28:09.740 water and says, Oh, by the way, the president called, uh, no, the white house called, uh, call Steve

00:28:14.900 really at the white house. Truman calls over and he's told the event has to come to the white house

00:28:18.580 immediately. And he right away, you know, something's wrong. So the next thing, you know,

00:28:22.660 he's running, he's like sprinting through the halls of the United States Capitol,

00:28:26.600 gets down to the white house. And sure enough, Mrs. Roosevelt is there and he finds out that the

00:28:30.640 president is dead. And there's all of this stuff that has to happen. He calls the cabinet. He has

00:28:35.900 to get the cabinet together. He has to call the chief justice, you know, and get all these people to

00:28:41.360 the white house. So he could take this 35 word oath and that happens. And it's this extraordinary,

00:28:47.560 dramatic moment. He's sorry that his mother can't be there. So he asks if he can have a photographer

00:28:53.780 take a picture. That picture is now one of the most famous pictures of, of, you know, of World War

00:28:58.920 II of when Truman is taking the oath. Uh, his wife is there of course. And right after it all takes

00:29:04.260 place, uh, the secretary of war, Henry Stimson pulls him aside and privately says, Oh, by the way,

00:29:09.100 we have this secret weapon you should know about. And, uh, that's really all I can tell you about

00:29:13.680 now. So even then he still really doesn't know about the Manhattan project.

00:29:17.840 So, I mean, how did, I mean, Roosevelt for people who weren't alive at the time or don't know about

00:29:22.640 World War II history, Roosevelt was like a very beloved figure in America at that time. Like

00:29:27.380 people put up portraits of them in their house. How did the American people respond to this guy

00:29:33.860 from nowhere, Missouri, suddenly being president of the United States did, was he able to just as,

00:29:40.220 you know, when he was World War I, you know, a battalion commander command the respect of the

00:29:44.820 American public and maybe even the, you know, the inner circle of Roosevelt?

00:29:48.480 Well, that's really what the book is really about because I say right on the first page that you

00:29:53.640 cannot underestimate the shock to the world, the world felt when Roosevelt died. And you read this

00:30:00.040 in the diaries of everybody who was powerful at the time writing in their diary on April 12th,

00:30:06.620 oh my God, Truman will be president. You know, in Moscow, in Germany, Eisenhower is smoking cigarettes

00:30:13.980 and, you know, it's recorded what he was saying at that time. The world was stunned because they

00:30:18.480 don't know who this guy is. And the narrative of the book is, to me, very inspirational because it's

00:30:24.920 really the story of this guy who comes out of nowhere, stuns the world, becomes president,

00:30:29.380 completely unprepared to do so. And in four months wins the war and has an 87% approval rating higher

00:30:36.500 than FDR's had ever been. So he unites the nation, drops the bomb, wins the war.

00:30:41.900 I mean, how did he do it? I mean, I imagine like you talk about, he was filled with self-doubt. I

00:30:45.520 remember at one, he had a conversation with his wife and his wife was like, I don't know,

00:30:48.760 even his wife was like, I don't think you can do this.

00:30:50.740 Even his wife doubted him.

00:30:52.440 Isn't that, I mean, so how, again, how did he rise to the occasion? Like, what was it about

00:30:59.060 Truman that allowed him just to keep plugging along and doing the job that he had to do?

00:31:06.220 That's an excellent question. And I'll go back to something that we talked about at the beginning

00:31:09.440 of this conversation. You know, he really didn't have an understanding of all of how anything worked

00:31:16.300 in the White House, who the people were who staffed the White House. He didn't have, you know,

00:31:21.060 experience in executive government. Again, never been mayor of a city, never been governor of a

00:31:26.080 state. But the thing he did have were these rural 19th century principles. Honesty is the best policy.

00:31:33.420 Do the right thing. Make yourself useful. And then of course, you know, he puts the sign on his desk

00:31:39.400 that says the buck stops here. And that meant that he understood that he was responsible. And it was

00:31:46.420 those sort of principles that carried him through.

00:31:48.360 Yeah. One thing that impressed me about Truman was his ability to make decisions. And I think

00:31:52.800 that impressed a lot of the sort of inner circle of Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt, his kind of leadership

00:31:58.400 styles was he would pit, you know, cabinet members against each other and kind of see things play out.

00:32:04.080 But Truman, again, the buck stopped with him. He made a decision. He made sure that it got done.

00:32:09.040 That's right. His decisiveness at times alarmed people around him. And I don't want people to think

00:32:13.520 that the accidental president in this book is just a canonization of Truman. It's more than that.

00:32:18.520 You know, he made some big mistakes, one in particular, during the first four months of his

00:32:23.560 presidency. And that really had to do with his decisiveness. He felt like that was his job was

00:32:27.880 to decide things. And sometimes he would decide, you know, on a matter before he was entirely educated

00:32:33.920 and move on quickly. And so not everything went as smoothly as he would have liked. And he understood

00:32:39.120 that that was going to be part of the learning process. Well, I mean, one of his most controversial

00:32:43.540 decisions was using the atomic bomb. Was he just like, did he make that decision? Like,

00:32:48.980 didn't really think twice about it? They just, they had it. So they had to use it. Or did he

00:32:52.460 wring his hands about it? What was that process like for him?

00:32:55.640 I think it was a terrible, terrible decision to have to make. But I think actually, it was easier to make

00:33:03.060 than people may imagine today. For two reasons. One is, all the major advisors around him who knew

00:33:11.000 about the bomb, including Winston Churchill, there was never any doubt that the weapon should be used.

00:33:18.200 And the reason why was very clear to Truman. On June 18, 1945, he held a meeting in the White House

00:33:26.400 to figure out, we had already defeated Germany. Third Reich was gone. Hitler was dead. We were still

00:33:32.460 fighting the Japanese. And the Japanese were fighting us savagely. They would not, they would 0.99

00:33:36.700 choose death and suicide over defeat. We didn't know how to get what we wanted from the Japanese, 1.00

00:33:44.020 which was unconditional surrender. So at that meeting on June 18 in the White House,

00:33:48.900 General Marshall, head of the army says, okay, we're going to plan this ground invasion. It worked

00:33:53.940 with the D-Day invasion in Normandy. We're going to do that again in Japan. And they're sitting around 0.55

00:34:00.340 the table talking about, you know, how savagely the Japanese fought. We're going to fight if we

00:34:05.720 attack them in their homeland. Women and children are going to take up arms and fight to the last

00:34:10.000 square foot of land. It was going to be an awful, awful, bloody battle. And the attacking force was

00:34:16.060 going to be 766,700 American soldiers. Think about that number. That's how many soldiers we were going to

00:34:22.220 send over to attack the mainland of Japan. And Truman said, well, you know, he says to himself,

00:34:29.460 well, we have this bomb and we can end this war now, save potentially hundreds of thousands of

00:34:34.660 American lives, maybe even save Japanese lives if we just use this bomb and get it over with. And 0.98

00:34:40.720 that's what happened. He, you know, he talked about this decision for the rest of his life and it

00:34:44.640 remains the most controversial decision any president has ever made. But in the end, I don't think it was

00:34:50.300 as difficult to make as one might imagine. Right, right. Well, I mean, as you, you know,

00:34:56.060 another thing you, the thing you point out in the book, you know, it's about the first four months of

00:34:59.380 his presidency. So much happened in those first four months, you know, so that he won world war,

00:35:04.580 won the war in Europe, won the war in Japan, had to decide to use the atomic bomb. And basically he was

00:35:11.080 also part of the discussions that set the world order for the next 70 years or 60 years in the entire

00:35:19.160 world. And, uh, people don't, I think like people forget that, that that was Truman. He had a role

00:35:24.280 in that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, uh, this book ends when, when the war ends, my next book

00:35:30.200 is about the year 1948. And that has a lot more of what we're talking about here, the Truman

00:35:35.780 doctrine, the Marshall plan, the founding of Israel, all of this stuff that really, you know, launched us

00:35:42.120 into the post-war war, war, war world. You could make the argument that the Truman doctrine and the

00:35:47.940 Marshall plan were the most influential public, you know, government, foreign policy government,

00:35:54.540 you know, plans since the war. And we're probably, you know, you could say we're, you know, highly

00:36:01.560 useful to us until the last six months or year. Right. And what's crazy, he was, he's a guy from

00:36:08.220 Jackson County, Missouri, just, he was a nerdy kid from Jackson County, Missouri who didn't go to

00:36:14.440 college. And he was the guy that put all that into place. It's very unexpected. I mean, he's

00:36:19.980 basically the ultimate underdog. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious as you were, you know, as you wrote this

00:36:24.740 book and, you know, there's a lot of debate about Truman's legacy with the bomb and even the fire

00:36:30.080 bombing that happened in Japan and some of the other decisions he made later on. I mean, as I read this

00:36:35.940 book, I thought there was like so much you can learn from his experience of being suddenly thrust

00:36:40.780 into positions that you didn't feel like you're ready for, but you somehow be able to rise to the

00:36:46.480 occasion. I mean, is that something you got out of the book? And if so, like, what do you think is,

00:36:51.640 what do you think besides the rule, like the sort of the rule advice that he got from his mom? Like

00:36:55.820 what, what was it about Truman? Is that replicable? Like, can other people do that? Or is that something,

00:37:02.160 was there something special about him?

00:37:03.600 I think yes. You know what really in the end is the guy just had guts. He had courage. I have to say

00:37:10.460 when I was writing this book, it was inspiring to me because when you write a book like this,

00:37:17.320 you spend thousands and thousands and thousands of hours reading and thinking and organizing and

00:37:25.460 you're by yourself and you can get very lost in your material and you can get very nervous that

00:37:30.520 you're not going to get hit your deadline. And it's, it's a difficult thing to do. And it's a

00:37:34.840 difficult way to make a living. You find you have to start taking your blood. I'm not an old guy,

00:37:39.500 46 now. I was younger than that when I was writing this book. And I'd have to take my blood pressure

00:37:44.060 every day because it can get that intense. Sometimes you find you can't sleep because you can't get the

00:37:48.580 stuff out of your head. And the reason why I bring that up is because the character I was writing

00:37:53.380 about sort of helped me through because I thought to myself that Truman can survive what he's going

00:37:57.960 through in the first four months of his presidency. I'm not going to start complaining about my life.

00:38:03.780 Well, AJ, this has been a great conversation. There's just some place people can go to learn

00:38:07.020 more about the book. Trumanbook.com or my Facebook page, which was facebook.com slash AJ Bame,

00:38:14.660 B-A-I-M-E. But you can get it anywhere. Amazon, I encourage people to just read the reviews on Amazon.

00:38:20.220 It's a new book. There's already 183 reviews up on Amazon and it's five-star book, man.

00:38:25.640 Awesome. Well, AJ Bame, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:38:28.380 It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

00:38:29.680 My guest today was AJ Bame. He's the author of the book, The Accidental Presidents,

00:38:33.320 available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also, check out our show notes at

00:38:36.860 aom.is slash accidental president, where you find links to resources,

00:38:40.660 where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:38:41.960 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:38:58.740 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy

00:39:02.120 the podcast, you've gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a

00:39:05.660 review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider

00:39:09.660 sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think gets something out of it. As always,

00:39:13.940 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:39:17.600 manly.

The Art of Manliness - July 19, 2018

#424： How Harry Truman Handled Being Out of His Depth

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