The Pittsburgh Press (February 7, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
We, the incurables!
By Florence Fisher Parry
We like to think of ourselves as wise guys; were from Missouri; we have a special know-how; we’re Yankees, see? Nobody can put anything over on us – not for long they can’t. We’re super.
Don’t tread on me! with a rattler ready to strike, is the device on one of our state flags. The American Eagle is the Bird for us.
Yet we are ridden with a disease that marks us like the scars of smallpox. We’re incurable optimists.
Which means, of course, that our capacity to be taken in is limitless. Credulity is our national trait. We’re ready to believe anything – for a time.
We are just as quick to get fed up, change our minds, repudiate utterly that which we accepted hook, line and sinker only yesterday. And that’s only proof of our weakness, of our credulity. We are just as passionate disbelievers as we are believers. No people on earth can erect an idol as readily and topple him as quickly as we are.
That’s because we’re incurable optimists. We are in a chronic state of believing and endorsing, in the fond assumption that this time we have something. We are suckers, really. We can be sold a bill of goods faster than anyone on earth; and we can unload it in record time.
Already!
Now take the case of President Truman. Were we sold that man! In the first hundred days of his administration, we were as sold on him as ever we were on President Roosevelt.
Look at the record. By all the national polls it was estimated that three or four months after Mr. Truman took office, if a vote had been polled he would have had a greater majority than any President ever to sit in the White House.
Mr. Truman was sitting pretty with the biggest opportunity ever given a President of the United States to get things done. Washington needed a housecleaning with a brand-new staff of servants to do the job, and Mr. Truman had the power to hire them. We had just won the war and stood, in the eyes of the world, the greatest single factor for good on earth, the greatest single power.
We were rich beyond the dreams of avarice. No longer the Allies’ arsenal, we were still their Cornucopia. Our Horn of Plenty lay heavy with promise at the World’s feet.
Now look at us. Look at our President.
We’re in a mess: and our President already is being called a failure.
Why are we so quick to endorse our public figures only to crucify them later? Why do we so relish debunking those human beings whom we insist upon elevating?
The only national figures to escape this scourge seem to have been George Washingion and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was, to be sure a hated figure in the South, and during his life suffered unmercifully at the hands of his political rivals who envied and hated his power. But when he died he became – except to the bruised and beaten South – a sainted martyr. Woodrow Wilson is only now emerging as a great historical figure; in his life he was worshipped and reviled.
As for Franklin D. Roosevelt, appraisals of this man will not settle into any mold for generations! No American – during his life – enjoyed such blind devotion from his worshippers, or suffered such abuse from those who hated him.
Strange anti-climax
His successor, Harry S. Truman, was catapulted into almost instant, almost relieved acclaim; and enjoyed a brief unchallenged period during which both parties accepted him with astonishingly unqualified support!
We had hoisted another public figure in the image of our optimistic ego!
Then, like bad boys, we started to plaster our new idol with mud – the great American pastime!
Why must we always be extreme? Why must our congenital, our incurable optimism, lead us into such brash. immediate appraisals of our public figures?
Charles A. Lindbergh – do you remember him? He could not send his shirts to the laundry for they were shredded into confetti to serve as souvenirs! Then we turned against hum as though to vent upon him our own hysterical folly.
Shocking mob frenzy has been exhibited at public appearances of Frank Sinatra, Van Johnson. Sports idols have been mobbed time out of mind. The spell exerted by Franklin D. Roosevelt extended over the longest period ever recorded in our national history. But it, too, finally wore itself out.
Now Truman is the victim – a man no different now than during the months of his greatest popularity. An honest, well-meaning, Main Street citizen who went into politics as a profession and let it lead him into deep muddy waters where he is floundering unhappily.
The same old American optimism! Credulity; disillusionment! Always ready to be taken in by wishful thinking, and later paying the inevitable penalty.