Presidency of Harry S. Truman
's tenure as the 33rd president of the United States began on April 12, 1945, upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ended on January 20, 1953. He had been vice president for only days when he succeeded to the presidency. Truman, a Democrat from Missouri, ran for and won a full four-year term in the 1948 presidential election, in which he narrowly defeated Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey and Dixiecrat nominee Strom Thurmond. Although he was exempt from the newly ratified Twenty-second Amendment that established a two-term limit for presidents, Truman withdrew his bid for a second full term in the 1952 presidential election because of his low popularity. He was succeeded by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Truman's presidency was a turning point in foreign affairs, as the United States engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. During his first year in office, Truman approved the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequently accepted the surrender of Japan, which marked the end of World War II. In the aftermath of World War II, he helped establish the United Nations and other post-war institutions. Relations with the Soviet Union declined after 1945, and by 1947 the two countries had entered a long period of tension and war preparation known as the Cold War, during which a hot fighting war with Moscow was avoided. Truman broke with Roosevelt's prior vice president Henry A. Wallace, who called for friendship with Moscow and ran as the presidential candidate of Progressive Party in 1948. In 1947, Truman promulgated the Truman Doctrine, which called for the United States to prevent the spread of Communism through foreign aid to Greece and Turkey. In 1948 the Republican-controlled Congress approved the Marshall Plan, a massive financial aid package designed to rebuild Western Europe. In 1949, the Truman administration designed and presided over the creation of NATO, a military alliance of Western countries designed to prevent the further westward expansion of Soviet power.
Truman proposed an ambitious domestic liberal agenda known as the Fair Deal. However, nearly all his initiatives were blocked by the conservative coalition of Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats. Republicans took control of Congress in the 1946 elections after the strike wave of 1945–46. Truman suffered another major defeat by the conservative coalition when the 80th Congress passed the Taft–Hartley Act into law over his veto. It reversed some of the pro-labor union legislation that was central to the New Deal. When Robert A. Taft, the conservative Republican senator, unexpectedly supported the Housing Act of 1949, Truman achieved one new liberal program. Truman took a strong stance on civil rights, ordering equal rights in the military to the disgust of the white politicians in the Deep South. They supported a "Dixiecrat" third-party candidate, Strom Thurmond, in 1948. Truman later pushed for the integration of the military in the 1950s. During his presidency, fears of Soviet espionage led to a Red Scare; Truman denounced those who made unfounded accusations of Soviet sympathies, but also purged left-wing federal employees who refused to disavow Communism.
When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Truman sent U.S. troops to prevent the fall of South Korea. After initial successes, the war settled into a stalemate that lasted throughout the final years of Truman's presidency. Truman left office as one of the most unpopular presidents of the twentieth century, mainly due to the Korean War and his then controversial decision to dismiss General Douglas MacArthur, resulting in a huge loss of support. In the 1952 presidential election, Eisenhower successfully campaigned against what he denounced as Truman's failures: "Korea, Communism and Corruption". Nonetheless, Truman retained a strong reputation among scholars, and his public reputation eventually recovered in the 1960s. In polls of historians and political scientists, Truman is generally ranked as one of the ten greatest presidents.
Accession
President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought re-election in the 1944 presidential election. Roosevelt personally favored either incumbent Vice President Henry A. Wallace or James F. Byrnes as his running mate. However, Wallace was unpopular among conservatives in the Democratic Party. Byrnes, an ex-Catholic, was opposed by many liberals and Catholics. At the behest of party leaders, Roosevelt agreed to run with Truman, who was acceptable to all factions of the party, and Truman was nominated for vice president at the 1944 Democratic National Convention.Democrats retained control of Congress and the presidency in the 1944 elections, and Truman took office as vice president in January 1945. He had no major role in the administration and was not informed of key developments, such as the atomic bomb. On April 12, 1945, Truman was urgently summoned to the White House, where he was met by Eleanor Roosevelt, who informed him that the President was dead. Shocked, Truman asked Mrs. Roosevelt, "Is there anything I can do for you?", to which she replied: "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now." The day after assuming office Truman spoke to reporters: "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me." Bipartisan favorable opinion gave the new president a honeymoon.
Administration
Truman delegated a great deal of authority to his cabinet officials, only insisting that he give the final formal approval to all decisions. After getting rid of the Roosevelt holdovers, the cabinet members were mostly old confidants. The White House was badly understaffed with no more than a dozen aides; they could barely keep up with the heavy work flow of a greatly expanded executive department. Truman acted as his own chief of staff, as well as his own liaison with Congress—a body he already knew very well. Less important matters he delegated to his Special Counsels, Samuel Rosenman in 1945–46, Clark Clifford in 1946 to 1950 and Charles S. Murphy in 1950 to 1953. He was not well prepared to deal with the press. Filled with latent anger about all the setbacks in his career, he bitterly mistrusted the journalists, seeing them as enemies laying in wait for his next careless miscue. Truman was a very hard worker, often to the point of exhaustion, which left him testy and on the verge of appearing unpresidential. He discussed major issues in depth with cabinet and other advisors, such as the atom bomb, the Truman Plan, the Korean war, and the dismissal of General MacArthur. He mastered the details of the federal budget as well as anyone. Truman's myopia made it hard to read a typescript, and he was poor at prepared addresses. However, his visible anger made him an effective stump speaker, denouncing his enemies as his supporters hollered back at him, "Give Em Hell, Harry!"At first Truman asked all the members of Roosevelt's cabinet to remain in place for the time being, but by the end of 1946 only one Roosevelt appointee, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, remained. Fred M. Vinson succeeded Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. in July 1945. Truman appointed Vinson to the Supreme Court in 1946 and John Wesley Snyder was named as the Treasury Secretary. Truman quickly replaced Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. with James F. Byrnes, an old friend from Senate days. However Byrnes soon lost Truman's trust with his conciliatory policy towards Moscow in late 1945, and he was replaced by former General George Marshall in January 1947. Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was the main force in foreign affairs along with a group of advisers known as the "Wise Men," Marshall emerged as the face of Truman's foreign policy.
In 1947, Forrestal became the first Secretary of Defense, overseeing all branches of the United States Armed Forces. A mental breakdown sent him into retirement in 1949, and he was replaced successively by Louis A. Johnson, Marshall, and finally Robert A. Lovett. Acheson was Secretary of State 1949–1953. Truman often appointed longtime personal friends, sometimes to positions well beyond their competence. Such friends included Vinson, Snyder, and military aide Harry H. Vaughan. Outside of the cabinet, Clark Clifford and John R. Steelman were staffers who handled lesser matters while Truman acted as his own chief off staff on big issues.