The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  Truman’s performance and the machinations of some good political friends were soon to put him on the path to the vice presidency. When Roosevelt decided in July 1944 that he would run for a fourth term, he was persuaded by his chief political strategists that Wallace should not be retained as his running mate. Apparently to let Wallace down easily, the president insisted on going through a masquerade that ultimately brought Truman into the picture. FDR disingenuously told Wallace he preferred him but was leaving the choice to the convention delegates.

  As related in the previous chapter, the anti-Wallace strategists dined with Roosevelt at the White House in what FDR’s poker-playing friend and raconteur George Allen dubbed “the conspiracy of the pure at heart.” They did not consider Wallace one of them, but rather an altruistic do-gooder with an otherworldly air foreign to their club. As Allen wrote, “They were determined that Roosevelt’s successor would not be the boomerang-throwing mystic from the place where the tall corn grows.”14

  The list of Wallace’s possible replacements started quite naturally with James F. Byrnes, oft referred to as the “assistant president” and FDR’s original preference. But Ed Flynn, the New York party boss, had already reported that Byrnes wouldn’t do, “because he had been raised a Catholic and had left the Church when he married, and the Catholics wouldn’t stand for that; organized labor, too, would not be for him; and since he came from South Carolina, the question of the Negro vote would be raised.”15

  Flynn wrote later that he and the president “went over every man in the Senate to see who would be available, and Truman was the only one who fitted.” Flynn continued promoting Truman, saying his record as head of the Senate investigating committee on the defense program was “excellent,” his labor votes were good, he came from a border state, and had never made any “racial” remarks. Of Truman, Flynn wrote, “He just dropped into the slot. It was agreed that Truman was the man who would hurt him [FDR] least.”16

  During the strategists’ dinner, the president suddenly injected the name of the liberal Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, who at age forty-nine seemed to intrigue him. Observing that because of his youth he had “a kind of Boy Scout quality,” Roosevelt added that he played an “interesting game of poker” and had finished at the top of his class at the Columbia Law School. None of the political bosses at the table seemed interested; Douglas, like Wallace, was not a professional politician as they were.17

  Finally, Roosevelt turned to Hannegan and said, “All right, Bob. Start talking.” The party chairman seized the opportunity to boost his fellow Missourian Harry Truman as a loyal, popular, and effective New Deal senator who, in coming from a border state, could help the ticket in the South. Roosevelt raised the question of Truman’s age, which he thought was nearly sixty. FDR’s son-in-law John Boettiger was sent to fetch a Congressional Directory, which showed that Truman had just reached sixty, but Pauley intercepted it and held it before Roosevelt could ask again. The president finally cut off the meeting by saying both Truman and Douglas looked like strong candidates and, according to some recollections, turned to Hannegan and said, “Bob, I think you and everyone else here want Truman.”18

  As the visitors got up and started out of the room, the president took Postmaster General Frank Walker aside. “Frank,” he asked, “will you go over tomorrow and tell Jimmy [Byrnes] that it’s Truman and that I’m sorry it has to be this way?”19 On the stairs down to the first floor, Walker, knowing Roosevelt’s penchant for changing his mind, whispered nervously to Hannegan of FDR’s comment about Truman: “Go back and get it in writing.” Claiming he had forgotten his coat, Hannegan ducked back in and asked Roosevelt for a note. The president scribbled on an envelope and handed it to him. He dashed back down the stairs and told Walker, “I’ve got it.”20 In his rush, Hannegan did not look at what FDR had written until later. Rather than mentioning Truman only, he had also listed Douglas as acceptable to him as his running mate.21

  Meanwhile, Byrnes was still under the impression that he was the president’s choice. Hannegan and Walker informed him after this meeting that the odds now favored Truman or Douglas. Byrnes, disconcerted, phoned FDR, who told him, as Byrnes wrote later, “You are the best qualified man in the whole outfit and you must not get out of the race. If you stay in, you are sure to win.”22 On the basis of that conversation, Byrnes called his old Missouri friend and told him, “Harry, the old man is backing me. I’m going to be the vice presidential nominee. Will you make the nominating speech?”23 Truman told him he’d be happy to. According to Byrnes, on the Saturday before the convention opened, Ed Kelly called him from Chicago. He said the argument that blacks would be against him had been discredited, adding, “The President has given us the green light to support you and he wants you in Chicago.” Byrnes caught the next available plane and was told by Kelly and Hannegan of FDR’s instructions to them: “Well, you know Jimmy has always been my choice from the very beginning. Go ahead and name him.”24

  Before long the report was out that FDR wanted Byrnes. Roosevelt was again sending out different signals to different suitors. Hannegan turned to Kelly and reminded him that FDR had also said, “Clear it with Sidney [Hillman],” the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and an organizer of a new CIO political action committee committed heavily to Roosevelt’s reelection. It proved to be a pivotal caveat; Hillman wanted no part of Byrnes.

  On the same Sunday morning before the opening of the convention, Truman met a stone wall when urging Byrnes’s nomination over eggs with Hillman, later telling oral historian Merle Miller, “I told him I was going to nominate Jimmy, and he said, ‘Harry, that’s a mistake. Labor will never support Byrnes. He’s against labor. His whole record proves it.’ And I said, ‘Who the hell do you want then?’ He said, ‘We’re supporting Wallace but we have a second choice, and I’m looking right at him.’ ” Truman also met with Philip Murray, head of the CIO, and heard the same comments. He told Miller, “But I said, ‘You needn’t be for me. I am not going to be a candidate.’ ”25

  Meanwhile, Ed Flynn continued to pursue his case for Truman at Roosevelt’s bidding. With the president en route by train from Hyde Park to San Diego for an appearance at the naval base there, Bob Hannegan caught up with Roosevelt in the Chicago rail yards of the Rock Island Railroad, where the train was briefly sidetracked. Joined by Mayor Kelly, Hannegan got FDR to write a note addressed to him in longhand: “Dear Bob, you have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and believe that either one of them would bring real strength to the ticket. Always Sincerely, FDR.”26 Roosevelt’s implication that he was being sincere as always was a nice if unintentional touch.

  Hannegan would have preferred that Roosevelt mention only Truman, but the president chose otherwise. The note was postdated July 19, two days after the opening of the convention, and Hannegan pocketed it, not eager to reveal that it also included Douglas’s name. An account of the episode by Roosevelt’s secretary, Grace Tully, held that originally the president had written Douglas’s name first, to the distress of Hannegan, who feared readers would conclude that Douglas, not Truman, was his prime choice. She wrote that at the earlier White House meeting Hannegan had come out and handed her the letter and told her, “Grace, the president wants you to retype this letter and to switch the names so it will read Harry Truman or Bill Douglas,” and that she did so.27 Later investigation by the Wallace biographers John C. Culver and John Hyde found, however, that both the handwritten and the typed letter bore Truman’s name first. So much for the what-could-have-beens of a Douglas presidency and all that could have followed.28

  At the ensuing convention, when FDR’s renomination was confirmed and shouts of “We Want Wallace!” rained down from the galleries, Hannegan finally decided to release to reporters the FDR letter naming both Truman and Douglas. Then, playing his trump card, he arranged a private hotel room meeting with Truman and a few of the other bosses. In
a prearranged scenario, the president placed a call to the room. Hannegan picked up the phone and held it away from his ear so that all present could hear. FDR’s easily recognized voice blared into the room: “Bob, have you got that fellow lined up yet?” Hannegan replied, “No, Mr. President, he is the contrariest Missouri mule I’ve ever dealt with.” Roosevelt commanded, “Well, you tell him that if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of a war, that’s his responsibility,” and hung up. Hannegan turned to Truman: “Now what do you say?” Truman: “Oh, shit. Well, if that’s the situation I’ll have to say yes, but why the hell didn’t he tell me in the first place?”29

  Truman was nominated in an outcome that the press widely described as a triumph of bossism and Truman as a good but undistinguished man. The New Republic wrote, “He will make a passable Vice President, but Truman as President of the United States in times like these?”30 As for the nominee himself, the first time he saw Roosevelt thereafter he was shocked at the president’s faltering physical appearance, realizing that if elected he might soon find himself president.

  The defeated Henry Wallace pledged support of the Roosevelt-Truman ticket and campaigned vigorously for it in the fall. Truman meanwhile crisscrossed the country in what clearly was a subordinate role, even though Roosevelt had a limited part in the campaigning for reasons of his health and the war. Those closest to the president observed his weariness and aging but kept it to themselves. Little was said about the question of succession that hung over the campaign.

  The Republican Chicago Tribune, which in 1948 would claim journalistic infamy with its page-one photo and headline proclaiming, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” labeled him “Truman the bankrupt. Truman the pliant tool of Boss Pendergast in looting Kansas City’s county government, Truman the yes-man and apologist in the Senate for political gangsters.”31 None of this labeling, however, seriously threatened the Democratic ticket. On Election Day, the result was the closest of the Roosevelt presidency, by a margin of three million votes in winning thirty-six of the forty-eight states over Dewey and John Bricker of Ohio.

  Truman eased into the role of president-in-waiting. As a former senator, he was familiar with the ways of the body in which he now became presiding officer, and as such he held an open-door policy toward his old colleagues. One of his first tasks was to encourage the Senate confirmation of Henry Wallace as secretary of commerce in his unusual retention in the administration.

  Only two days after the inauguration, FDR, under the deepest secrecy, slipped away aboard the cruiser Quincy for Malta, in the Mediterranean, and then on by plane to the Black Sea and the Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Truman was left at home with no special instructions on his duties other than to contact the White House if any urgent matter occurred.

  Six days after having been sworn in, Truman was faced with a sensitive political decision. His old Missouri benefactor, the Kansas City boss Tom Pendergast, died at age seventy-two, nearly five years after he had finished serving a prison term for conviction of tax evasion. Truman had had no contact with him since that time but decided that as an old friend and recipient of Pendergast’s support, he had a personal obligation to attend his funeral in Kansas City. His much-photographed presence drew considerable news-media coverage and criticism, but he declined to turn his back on his old friend.32

  A couple of weeks later in Washington, Truman showed up at a National Press Club canteen for servicemen and entertained them at the piano. Movie actress Lauren Bacall accommodatingly and alluringly posed on the piano as he played, providing photographers with a field day that brought more criticism down on him. The pictures brought some delight to many fans but not to the vice president’s wife, Bess, who told him not to play the piano in public thereafter.33

  On March 1, after Roosevelt had returned from Yalta, Truman sat behind him on the raised platform of the House chamber. The president reported in optimistic but halting terms the results of that historic meeting, which later was to bring Republican allegations of the “surrender” of Eastern Europe to the Russians. “I saw the president immediately after his speech had been concluded,” Truman wrote later. “Plainly he was a very weary man.”34

  The new vice president saw Roosevelt only twice more, on March 8 and March 19, before FDR departed ten days later for his vacation cabin, “the Little White House,” in Warm Springs, Georgia, for a hard-earned and much-needed rest. Two weeks later, on the afternoon of April 12, Truman was in the Senate president’s chair as routine business droned on. The Senate recessed just before five o’clock. Truman walked over to his office, just off the chamber, and told his aide Harry Vaughn that he would be at House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office if Vaughn had to reach him. Eluding the Secret Service guard recently assigned to him, Truman walked briskly across the Capitol through the rotunda, over to the House side, and down another flight to Rayburn’s “Board of Education.”

  On arrival, Rayburn told Truman, “Steve Early [the White House press secretary] wants you to call him right away.” The vice president mixed himself a drink and dialed the White House. A tense Early asked him to come “as quickly and quietly” as he could. According to aide Lew Deschler, who was also present in Rayburn’s office, Truman turned pale and declared, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” a favorite expletive. Then he walked out, ran across the ground floor of the Capitol to his Senate office, grabbed his hat, and left, ordering Vaughn to tell nobody.

  His driver took him down Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the northwest gate, where two ushers awaiting him took him to the elevator up to the residential quarters on the second floor. Mrs. Roosevelt was waiting in her study along with Early and her daughter and son-in-law. Greeting Truman, she put her hand on his shoulder and said simply, “Harry, the president is dead.” He stood there a moment, before asking her, “Is there anything I can do for you?” She replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”35

  Only eighty-two days after Truman’s swearing-in as vice president, Roosevelt’s death of a cerebral hemorrhage had made him president. His first order as chief executive was to authorize Eleanor Roosevelt to use a government plane to fly to Warm Springs. Then he summoned the Roosevelt cabinet and phoned the news to his shaken wife. He took the oath of presidential office, administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fisk Stone, then asked all the cabinet members to remain in their posts.

  As they left the room, the senior member, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, stayed behind. He told Truman there was a matter of the most utmost importance he needed to discuss with him concerning a new weapon of unbelievable power, but gave him no further details. The next morning, the first of his presidency, Truman went to the Oval Office and met with several cabinet and war officials, including Stimson. But again in the rush and confusion of the new situation, the war secretary told him nothing more of what he had briefly mentioned the night before.

  Truman surprised Congress by going to Capitol Hill for lunch with a group of his old legislative friends, mostly from the Senate, and told them earnestly he needed their help. When he came out of the lunch a large group of reporters who had covered him in the Senate were waiting. “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now,” he said. “I don’t know if you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”36

  Amazingly, not until twelve days after FDR’s death did Stimson remind Truman that he had a most important secret to impart to the president. In a brief letter, the war secretary wrote, “I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office but have not urged it on you since on account of the pressure you have been under. It, however, has a bearing on our present foreign relations and has such an important effect on all our thinking in this field that I think you ought to know about it without further delay.”37

  On April 25, the day the United Nations Conference was opening in San Francisco, S
timson arrived alone at the White House. Later he was joined only by General Leslie G. Graves, head of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Stimson handed Truman several typewritten pages, the first sentence of which read, “Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.”38

  This was arguably the most significant development in terms of world history ever to be placed before any American president, or for that matter any other world leader. There was immediate agreement among the other Allied leaders informed that use of such a weapon would bring a swift end to World War II. Remaining, however, was the concern over what the existence of such a weapon would mean to world survival, especially if the United States were to go ahead and put it to use. In the first months of Truman’s presidency, therefore, he was confronted with what turned out to be the most critical decision of the nearly eight years of his fateful presidency.

  When his presidency came to an end, in January 1953, Harry S. Truman retired to his home in Independence, later to be judged one of the nation’s most respected, even loved, White House occupants and perhaps the best of the nine “accidental presidents.” More than any other circumstance, his ascendancy to the Oval Office without knowledge of the atomic bomb offered a paramount reason for keeping vice presidents fully informed of the most critical secrets of the administration in which they are serving.

  Roosevelt himself should have told Truman about the bomb’s development before his death, particularly as a man who much earlier had proposed the idea of making the vice president a sort of assistant president. At the time, however, FDR already had Byrnes in that role, and upon assuming his fourth term in the presidency, he had rushed off to Yalta with his mind already fully occupied.