The Evening Star (April 12, 1946)
Editorial: Truman’s first year
At the end of his first year in the White House, a post to which he succeeded upon the death of a president who had risen to pre-eminence both as a great national and international leader, the people of this country know a good deal more about Harry S. Truman than they did on that shocking day when the news came that Franklin D. Roosevelt was gone. Even after the passage of a full year, however, not enough is known to warrant more than a superficial appraisal of Mr. Truman as president.
He is, at one time, both the beneficiary and the victim of his political inheritance. It is in the handling of international problems that Mr. Truman has profited most from the legacy left by his predecessor. Mr. Roosevelt had planned far into the future for the peace, and it was under his guidance that the essential foundations of the peace structure were laid. Mr. Truman has built upon these foundations, but it has been largely a matter of following the blueprints. The pioneering work had been done. Obviously, there is much in the structure that falls short of perfection, and Mr. Truman has had his bad days as the work of building went on. Yet it is equally obvious that a great deal of progress has been made, and while there are those who wonder whether Mr. Roosevelt would have done better, the fact remains that, in this respect, Mr. Truman has done very well indeed.
He has been less successful in dealing with domestic problems, although in this field, too, he inherited a blueprint which he has tried faithfully to follow. There has been much criticism of Mr. Truman on this score, but what is frequently overlooked is the fact that Mr. Roosevelt left him not only a blueprint, but also a political organization which was coming apart at the seams.
During the war years there were two things which tended to obscure the split within the Democratic Party. One was the necessity of subordinating domestic political friction to the requirements of national unity. The other was the fact that the president, occupied as he was with military and postwar international problems, had neither the time nor the inclination to force a showdown on controversial domestic issues.
When Mr. Roosevelt died, however, none of these issues had been resolved and, with the end of hostilities, the responsibility of facing them fell upon Mr. Truman. Despite his best efforts, he has accomplished very little, and it is exceedingly doubtful that Mr. Roosevelt, had he lived, would have been able to do any better.
For all his qualities of leadership, the late president was confronted with a domestic political failure by the end of his second term, and it was only the threat of war which saved his administration from being reduced to political impotence as a result of the breaking up of the party organization which he had thrown together during his first two terms. The organization has been breaking up because of the struggle for control of the Democratic Party between the right and left wings of American politics. In Congress this struggle has reached the point of stalemate and the administration’s legislative program is stalled on dead center.
From the standpoint of his own political fortunes, it is this problem – a problem not of his own making – which poses the supreme test for Mr. Truman. He will wrestle with it with the courage and the patience and the humility which are his outstanding virtues. But at the end of his first year in the White House it is too early to pass judgment on Mr. Truman’s ability to find a way out. About all that can be said is that his own and his party’s political life expectancy will be shortened to the extent that he fails to find the answer.