What Nixon Thought About Harry Truman

what were your impressions of him as a as a man or as a president as a leader well my Impressions I think were colored a great deal by my first meeting with him uh on this occasion of course was not a meeting it was a handshake uh but in July of that year that first year of 1947 a group of Four Freshman Republican congressmen uh met with Truman in the Oval Office the way it came about is that Charlie Kirsten from Wisconsin requested an appointment uh and it was given uh incidentally at the time uh

since we were members of Congress we all thought we were important enough to deserve to be invited down to see the president but as I look back at it in retrospect I really Marvel that Truman ever did it uh but then I think that tells us something about him uh he was a very good politician uh he knew that the Republicans had an overwhelming majority in the house and in the Senate he needed Republican votes he also knew something else that the four of us and I'm sure our records were checked before we ever got

into the Oval Office had supported uh the Greek Turkish aid program whereas many liberal Democrats had opposed it uh he needed uh us as friends and then I think he might have been impressed by the fact he just like the fact that uh we had the tarity to ask and so he sort of appreciated that because that's the kind of thing he might have done uh what were your feelings as you stepped over the threshold of the Oval Office for the first time time well my feelings were of course uh one of uh profound respect

uh for that place it's a hallowed place I'd read about it and seen pictures of it uh but I think my recollection of the meeting is more of the man than of the office uh President Truman before we went there was one who had not received a particularly good press uh when he succeeded Franklin D Roosevelt uh there were many in the media and many in the country for that matter who said can this little pipsqueak from Missouri uh poorly educated and so forth step into the shoes of Franklin D Roosevelt who was a great

heroic figure for so many years uh and many wondered whether he could uh I would say that nobody could have filled the shoes of Franklin Roosevelt but Harry Truman made his own footprints in the Sands of History uh at this particular point however having read about him as being somewhat uneducated rather crude and and rather limited I was impressed by the fact that he had a sense of History uh he demonstrated that by taking us over to the globe which was there in the office and turning it to Manchuria and pointing out which was quite

prophetic at that time how important Manchuria in terms of its natural resources could be in the future and how important that whole area of China could be in the future for this country and for the world for that matter and then he turned the globe a little further to the Soviet Union he saidou know I I like the Russian people they got along very well the Russian soldiers did with our soldiers at the El uh he said as far as I'm concerned they can have any kind of a system they want provided they don't try

to impose it on us uh he spoke uh not in a dramatic way but uh almost in a matter of fact way that the most difficult decision he'd ever made was to drop the atomic bomb a decision which I think incidentally was his greatest decision the most courageous one and was totally right uh I would say too that in terms of his manner at that point before he was elected in his own right in 1948 uh he was somewhat humble uh very direct uh but not at all overbearing not at all cocky as he sometimes

later came to be so all in all I would say that he made a good personal impression on all of us uh I thought right then uh that those that criticized him because of his lack of Education failed to recognize a truth which I have always felt uh was the case where many leaders are concerned education sometimes can strengthen the brain and weaken the backbone uh Harry Truman had a pretty good brain but I can say that his backbone was strong and that's what sustained him through those years