Harry S Truman ascended to the Presidency in perhaps the most formative years of America's role on the world stage.Within the first four months of his residency in the White House, victory would be declared in Europe, Truman would travel to Potsdam to meet with Prime Minister Churchill and Generalissimo Stalin to discuss the eventual dividing of war-ravaged Europe, and, supported almost unanimously by his advisers, Truman would execute the orders to drop two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus ending the war with Japan. That these four months could be handled with such grace, determination and care by a man who may have been uniquely unqualified to the office of the President may be perhaps the greatest testament to the strength of the American political system; it certainly resounds to the credit of Harry Truman.
David McCullough's biography of the 33rd President - a title Truman hated, claiming that counting Cleveland twice was simply asinine - traces the roots and path of a man born to a world very different from the one he would have to steer in the years following World War II. A child of the plains of Missouri, as a young man Truman's ambitions scarcely surpassed those of being a local alderman. McCullough's biography traces the almost accidental nature of Truman's political career. His seemingly untainted rise through the powerful Pendergast political machine, his barnstorming senate election campaign and his seemingly incidental choice as FDR's Vice President in 1944 almost seem to convey a man who was simply lucky to be a man of character, in the right place at the right time.
Yet that he was a man of exceeding character is without question. If McCullough's biography has a glaring shortcoming it is his insistent focus on the doings and character of Truman himself, often giving short-shrift to the complexities of issues which Truman was forced to wrestle with. Yet with this singular focus the reader emerges with a view of what we would term a "late-bloomer" but of a man whose dogged determination, hard work and total dedication to ensure that government remain an instrument of the people saw him through to the highest office in the land. While perhaps a man born to another time, Truman's conviction that government existed primarily to guarantee the welfare, liberty and self-determination of the individual transcended the coming of a new technological and world order. Though he may have seen out of place sitting and the table with Stalin and Churchill, or hopelessly naive in the corridors of Washington, Truman's perseverance, drive and commitment to governance, not just within the borders of the United States, but internationally as America would become a greater player on the world stage, helped see the country and indeed the world out of the era of war and into the second half of the twentieth century.
