Harry Truman by Margaret Truman

Author:Margaret Truman [Margaret Truman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Presidents & Heads of State
ISBN: 9781612308593
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2015-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

By now, my father had enough experience to take a pretty dim view of many of the ultra liberals who had tended to cluster around President Roosevelt. After attending a meeting of the Roosevelt National Memorial Committee in the East Room, he wrote on his appointment sheet: “Same bunch of Prima Donnas who helped drive the Boss to his grave are still riding his ghost.”

One of the Truman prima donnas who eventually got the ax was Jake Vardaman. A former St. Louis banker who had served in the army in World War I, he had done some work for Dad in his Senate campaigns and gone into the navy in World War II. Dad made him his naval aide, and Vardaman immediately acquired an acute case of Potomac fever. Aboard the presidential yacht, he became the sailor par excellence, hurling nautical terms right and left. Before lunch one day, he announced he was going to “break out the silver.” This aroused guffaws and hoots from ex-army artillerymen Truman, Vaughan, and Snyder. In the White House, Vardaman proceeded to stick his nose into almost every office and tell them how it should be run. Then he made the blunder of all blunders. He descended upon Mother’s side of the White House and started telling them how to do the job. That was the end of Vardaman as naval aide. Dad elevated him to the Federal Reserve Board, and he repaid him for this kindness by voting against every Truman policy for the next seven years. He also went around Washington spreading the nasty story that he was kicked out of the White House because he did not drink or play cards.

A Roosevelt prima donna who was also on his way out at this time was Harold Ickes. A complex man with many good qualities - my father admired him because he had administered the Interior Department with great integrity and complete disregard for special interest pressures - Ickes had an exaggerated opinion of his own importance. He had brawled repeatedly with President Roosevelt, and at one point, had been barred from the White House for six months. He loved a quarrel - the more spectacular, the better - which put him and Dad at opposite poles. Worse, Ickes also loved to gossip. It did not take Dad long to notice that almost everything discussed at a Cabinet meeting was paraphrased, after having been dipped in acid, by Drew Pearson on the following day. Dad suspected Ickes and finally proved it. At Eddie McKim’s suggestion, the staff planted a story on “Honest Harold” that they told to no one else. Dad recalls with a grim smile that it too showed up in Pearson’s column. Thereafter, Ickes’s days in the Truman Administration were numbered.

Early in 1946, Ickes practically handed my father the reason for his resignation. Dad had appointed Ed Pauley Under Secretary of the Navy. He was very impressed by the firmness and negotiating skill Pauley had displayed in dealing with the Russians on the tricky matter of reparations.

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