While in Key West over Spring Break, I visited the ‘Little White House’ museum which got its name because it was a favorite retreat of President Harry S Truman during his time as president. While touring the museum and hearing about the legacy left by Truman, it was appalling to think that President George W. Bush seems to not have learned a single lesson from Truman. As president, Truman faced many important decisions that would shape events for the next half-century.
Truman’s administration began on April 12, 1945, with a lot of popular support as America was engaged in World War II. But, his popularity began to waver as various events unfurled between 1945 and 1953. Truman was a humble man who was put on the Democratic ticket for the 1944 election when party leaders realized that FDR was likely to not make it through the whole term, and they wanted to install a ‘running mate of profound importance.’
Truman’s presidency saw him make the hardest decision an American president has ever made, to drop two atomic bombs on Japan and end one of the bloodiest wars America had ever engaged in. Immediately following the war, Truman was extremely popular, but his popularity would fall sharply after he was blamed for ‘losing’ China to Communism and then becoming involved in Korea. When Truman left office in 1953, according to Noemie Emery, he was ‘so toxic that most of his party had shunned him’ and incredibly exhausted from the pressure the presidency placed on him.
Truman is well-known for a sign that was given to him by Warden L. Clark Schilder that on one side read ‘The Buck Stops Here’ and on the other read ‘I’m From Missouri.’ The sign sat atop his desk and was occasionally referred to in speeches and interviews while he was president. ‘The Buck Stops Here’ slogan is derived from old poker games when the dealer was recognized as the person holding a buckhorn-handled knife. Passing the buck occurred when a player did not wish to deal and passed the knife on to the next player. According to literature from the Little White House museum, Schilder gave Truman the sign because he saw in the president a leader who would not ‘pass the buck’ and would take responsibility for his actions. In his farewell address Truman said, ‘The president, whoever he is, has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.’
Truman left office with a low approval rating, having hit as low as 23 percent in his last year (that is even lower than Nixon experienced at the height of the Watergate scandal). Despite the popular opinion then, Truman, over fifty years later, no longer appears so low in the public mindset and often appears on lists as an ‘Above Average’ or ‘Great’ President. The recently deceased Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. released a survey of leading historians in 1996 that placed Truman as the eighth best president, having achieved ‘near great’ status, according to those surveyed.
I mention Truman and ‘The Buck Stops Here’ because today we see an entirely different leader in the White House. George W. Bush moved to Washington by judicial decree and not even eight months later was faced with a great crisis ‘- September 11. Following these attacks, he managed to turn nearly universal American support from across the globe into widespread animosity towards the United States. Bush has faced many tough decisions, much like Harry Truman did. These include going into Afghanistan after the war, dealing with a troublesome dictator in Iraq and pursuing terrorists worldwide to protect American citizens. The trouble is that, unlike Harry Truman, Bush has made mistake after mistake and has done a lot to damage the integrity and image of America.
In addition to these mistakes, Bush and the like-minded yes-men he surrounds himself with in the White House have tried to restore an ‘imperial’ executive branch that flagrantly disregards any rules or laws it sees as obstacles to achieving its policies, in addition to altering and distorting the truth in order to further an agenda that seems to be created with no form of debate whatsoever. What Bush is forgetting is that debate is an important part of the democratic process, and no decisions should be made without weighing the costs and benefits and considering the counter-position.
In his attempt to restore imperialism, Bush has repeatedly passed the buck and refused to take responsibility for just about any decision he has made. We saw the buck passed recently when Scooter Libby was found guilty for perjury and became the sacrificial lamb for a destructive and corrupt White House. Even more recently we have seen Democrats actually demonstrating leadership qualities by opening investigations into the dismissal of eight U.S. Attorneys which are believed to have happened for no reason other than to advance the political careers of dedicated White House and Republican supporters.
Bush has repeatedly said that these attorneys ‘served at the pleasure of the President.’ Their firings, he claims, were not politically motivated but the result of the attorneys’ poor performance. But documents about these attorneys seem to say otherwise, as all seem to have done well on their performance evaluations. The buck was passed when D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to the attorney general, resigned after Democrats started asking questions. The buck, however, does not appear to have stopped making its way around the table as more evidence shows that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not admitted how big his role in the firings actually was.
President Truman was the type of leader who would not let the buck pass on by and would take responsibility for what occurred on his watch. Bush, on the other hand, seems willing to let anybody but himself take responsibility for what occurs in his very un-orderly White House. What Mr. Bush seems unable to understand is that he serves at the pleasure of the American people. With an approval rating that is hovering in the low thirties, it is not the American peoples’ pleasure to see him impose upon us an imperial presidency. Although he left office with an abysmally low approval rating, Harry Truman’s leadership has allowed the historians to forget his approval rating and remember him fondly. The same can’t be said of Bush, who continues to pass the buck and relies on far too many others to do the deciding for him.