Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "What Nixon Thought About Harry Truman" video.

  1. I wasn't alive when Harry Truman was president but I admire a lot about him, his personal integrity, decisiveness, intuition, and his willingness to do what he thought was right even if he knew he would take grief from the press and people in his own party. Of course, his decisiveness was a bit of a double edge sword in that he didn't always think matters through that should have been pondered a bit more closely. He could also hold a grudge like few others and he did have a habit of surrounding himself with people who had no real qualifications and for placing them into positions they had business being in, Louis Johnson and Fred Vinson being classic examples. It was a habit of machine politics he picked up from his days with Tom Pendergast. He also had a bit of an authoritative streak in him but that was typical of New Deal politicians, a habit they picked up from FDR. But he read Stalin better than FDR did and the country dodged a major bullet when the democrat leaders selected him over Henry Wallace as VP. They knew FDR was dying and Wallace wouldn't have sold the farm to the Soviets, he would have just given it to them. Of all the democrat presidents Truman is by far my favorite, the only one in the 20th Century worth a damn. As for Nixon's recollections, that was classic Nixon having selective memory. Nixon went hard after Truman in 1950 and 1952. It's to be expected, it's politics, but Nixon was an up and comer and he knew the best way to get ahead was to display a willingness to be an attack dog, especially when it came to communism. He was the one who exposed Alger Hiss and Dean Acheson, Truman's secretary of state was one Hiss's best friends, someone who wouldn't denounce him. That put a big bullseye on his back and by extension, Truman. Truman took it personal too. In 1960 Joe Kennedy called Truman in order to get him to endorse JFK. Truman didn't like Joe Kennedy and the feeling was mutual. Initially he was lukewarm about JFK and said as much publicly but after Acheson met with him Truman got on board. He said "Kennedy is young and inexperienced, but that SOB Nixon went around the country calling me a communist." Acheson appealed to Harry's grudge tendency to get him to back Kennedy and it worked. He didn't like any of them, but he liked Nixon the least. And Nixon wasn't too fond of Harry while Harry was alive. Like I say, this is typical Nixon revisionism. He was trying to get people to like him again after Watergate. He became quite gracious at that stage of his life.
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