HSTruman Had His Problems, Too

Don't stop with the short hagiography, folks.

...President Harry S. Truman.

Shorthand: “Gutsy, tough, scrupulously honest Cold War hero.”

Truth: Gutsy and tough, yes. More corruption occurred under his administration than in all administrations from Warren Harding onward. One hundred sixty were fired from the Internal Revenue Service for corruption alone and an assistant treasury secretary was fired for involvement in seeing that wealthy Democrats skipped IRS enforcement. To clean it up Truman has his attorney general hire a special prosecutor. When the special prosecutor turned up material embarrassing to the AG, the AG fired him. Then Truman fired the AG.

Bitterly stubborn under attacks that he coddled Communists, Truman refused to fire Harry Dexter White from his undersecretary post at Treasury but allowed him to go to the World Bank. The Venona Report certifies that White was a Soviet agent and that Truman knew it.

Cold war hero? He sponsored the Marshall Plan, yes. But on his watch and largely because of his State Department’s ineffectiveness, aid to Chiang kai Shek was inexplicably cut off allowing the Communists to win and conquer China which has remained in Communist hands ever since.

I can tell you that dyed-in-the-wool (D)/Roosevelt voters viewed HST with disgust more often than not. Of the above few failures, his worst was to allow Mao to enslave China.

HT: Roeser