#424： How Harry Truman Handled Being Out of His Depth
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
200.43591
Summary
Writer A.J. Boehm talks about his new book, The Accidental President, about the unexpected rise of Harry Truman to Commander-in-Chief, and how he managed his self-doubt and insecurities after taking up residence in the White House.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by Online Great Books.
00:00:03.120
If you've made a goal for yourself to read the great books of the Western world,
00:00:06.360
but have had trouble following through, check out Online Great Books.
00:00:10.760
They're going to mail you a physical copy of the book that you're assigned that month.
00:00:13.540
They're going to provide you a reading schedule and send you reminders on how you should read
00:00:18.060
Then at the end of the month, you're going to have a online video seminar
00:00:20.860
where you can discuss the book with other people in your group.
00:00:23.340
So if you want to learn more about this, go to OnlineGreatBooks.com.
00:00:26.500
And when you're ready to sign up, use code AOM at checkout.
00:00:31.580
Again, OnlineGreatBooks.com, code AOM at checkout.
00:00:36.580
This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by LifeProof Backpacks.
00:00:40.360
Commutes can be killers, but you'll arrive with your gear intact inside LifeProof Backpacks.
00:00:44.400
Made to move, LifeProof Backpacks are packed with smart features to thrive in all conditions.
00:00:50.340
Sealed tech pockets protect electronics from weather.
00:00:52.480
And front tie-downs hold oversized stuff outside.
00:00:54.860
Get your LifeProof Backpack now at a 15% discount by going to LifeProof.com slash manliness.
00:01:00.660
Again, LifeProof.com slash manliness for a 15% discount.
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?
00:01:31.500
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,
00:02:02.700
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.
00:02:35.880
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,
00:02:53.480
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?
00:03:01.420
Firstly, let me just say, biography, I actually studied biography in graduate school,
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
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
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
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
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,
00:10:42.680
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
00:10:51.860
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.
00:11:25.000
Everybody knew he controlled and fixed elections. And Pendergast, one of the things Pendergast
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,
00:13:48.580
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.
00:14:27.300
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,
00:14:47.280
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.
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,
00:18:54.660
And it made a dent. And I'm sure that, I mean, he was sort of like a burr
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,
00:19:09.500
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
00:19:26.180
We're going to take a quick break for you, Ward, from our sponsors.
00:19:28.400
Jeremy here, producer for the AOM podcast. Support for today's show comes from Starbucks
00:19:32.640
Double Shot. Double Shot starts with bold Starbucks coffee and is blended with milk for a smooth,
00:19:37.460
creamy, delicious flavor. It's enhanced with ginseng, guarana, and B vitamins to create an energy
00:19:42.000
coffee drink that not only tastes great, but gives you the energy to go from point A to point done.
00:19:46.380
There's a couple things I love about this refrigerated beverage. I normally hate the
00:19:49.560
flavor of energy drinks. They're just too sugary and there's always something a little
00:19:52.440
gross about them. But since the Double Shot is a base of coffee and milk, you don't get any of
00:19:56.000
those off flavors. With two young kids at home, my day starts before the sun rises and ends well
00:20:00.200
after it sets. So I need all the energy I can get to be a dad, husband, podcast producer, etc.
00:20:05.080
The Double Shot provides me the perfect boost. Second, while I'm admittedly a hot coffee guy,
00:20:09.240
on those blazing summer days, the last thing I want is a steaming beverage. Double Shot is the
00:20:12.960
cold, refreshing drink you need when the mercury is on the rise. Double Shot's available in six
00:20:16.520
delicious flavors. Mocha, vanilla, hazelnut, white chocolate, coffee, and Mexican mocha.
00:20:21.140
Starbucks Double Shot. It's energy to do things you actually do. Find it in your local convenience
00:20:25.240
store. Well, thank you, Jeremy. This episode's also brought to you by The Great Courses Plus.
00:20:29.000
Summer is the perfect time to learn something new. The Great Courses Plus is a great place to get
00:20:32.660
started. The Great Courses Plus gives you unlimited access to explore anything about everything from
00:20:36.560
topics like philosophy, history, science, strength training, and so much more, all taught by the top
00:20:40.740
professors and experts in their field. You can watch or listen wherever you are,
00:20:44.620
whenever you want with The Great Courses Plus app. It's perfect for long play rides or road trips,
00:20:48.840
you name it. One course I recommend you check it out is How to Master Outdoor Cooking. It's
00:20:53.120
summertime. It's grilling season. This course, you're going to learn all about the art of grilling,
00:20:56.880
not only meats, but also vegetables, flatbreads, pizza, Latin American style grilling. You'll also,
00:21:02.400
they have a section on barbecuing. So how to make rubs, sauces, and how to smoke things. I like a pork
00:21:07.140
butt. Great insights. Even if you think you're an expert, there's always things you can learn
00:21:10.620
with this course. So if you'd like to try this out, got a special offer for you. You can get a
00:21:14.600
full month of unlimited access to all their video lectures for free, but you got to go to my
00:21:18.260
special URL. Go to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash manliness. Again, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com
00:21:24.580
slash manliness to get a full month of unlimited access to all their video lectures for free.
00:21:28.660
Again, one more time, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash manliness to start your free month now.
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
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.
00:30:52.440
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
00:33:36.700
choose death and suicide over defeat. We didn't know how to get what we wanted from the Japanese,
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
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
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,
00:37:03.600
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.
00:38:29.680
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,
00:38:41.960
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