Spitball Army

What would Harry Truman say?
When pols compare themselves to my grandfather

by Clifton Truman Daniel
Chicago Tribune
12 September 2008

Friends and family have been telling me lately that I should say something about Gov. Sarah Palin comparing herself to my grandfather, Harry S. Truman.Presidential contenders have been doing this for years. During the ’92 election, when George H.W. Bush squared off against Bill Clinton and both of them invoked Grandpa, my mother, Margaret Truman Daniel, weighed in on the matter. In an op-ed piece, she stated emphatically that it was ludicrous for Mr. Bush to make the comparison. It was OK for Mr. Clinton, of course, because he was a Democrat.

Personally, I am happy that politicians from both sides of the aisle compare themselves to my grandfather. Through no action of my own, I enjoy kinship with a man generally regarded as one of the best presidents this nation has ever produced. However, I think the politicians should be careful, because they may be setting a rather severe standard for themselves.

It’s not enough to come from a small town, as Gov. Palin implied in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. To be truly like Harry Truman, you have to make a major sacrifice that I think modern politicians might find restrictive: If you reach the presidency, you have to be willing to lose the job almost the moment you get it.

You can’t make decisions based on polls or whether those decisions will keep you in the White House. You can’t kowtow to your advisers, consultants, public relations people or the media. You have to do the right thing, opinion and politics be damned.
During his Senate years, Grandpa kept a sign on his desk that quoted Mark Twain: “Always do right, this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Later, in the Oval Office, he said he’d rather be right than president. In fact, he once cracked that he’d rather be anything than president, which caused White House counsel Clark Clifford to blanch. George Elsey, another key aide, once told me how Grandpa made decisions. For a given problem, Elsey would present several solutions, then launch into an explanation of the political pros and cons. After just a few minutes of this, Grandpa would stop him and say, “George, which one solves the problem and does the most good for the most people?”

“This one,” George would say. “But you’re going to catch hell for it.”

“Fine,” Grandpa would say. “That’s the one I want.”

Doing the right thing is expensive. In the year before he left office, Grandpa’s public approval rating sank to 22 percent, almost the lowest of all time and 2 points lower than Richard Nixon’s during Watergate. The only guy who has sunk lower is our current president, George W. Bush, who hit 19, according to one poll back in February. A couple of years earlier, Bush’s consternation over the war in Iraq caused him to muse that he and my grandfather were kindred spirits, making monumental but unpopular decisions and suffering for it. He implied to congressional leaders that he, like Grandpa, would eventually be vindicated.

With respect to the Grand Old Party and my three Republican friends, I’ll just say I’m interested to see how that plays out. Maybe Mr. Bush was thinking about another Harry Truman, the one who lived on the volcano, Mt. St. Helens, in 1980. That Harry Truman sat on a powder keg, refused to come down when it threatened to erupt, and perished when it blew up under him.

Gov. Palin simply implied that she and my grandfather shared the same sort of small-town upbringing and values.

But I’m glad the Republicans have a well-grounded vice presidential nominee. To be completely Truman-esque, she’ll also need to be self-confident but modest and self-critical, unfailingly honest and direct (good luck with this in 2008), and driven by the desire to work from sunup to well after sundown day after day.

I hope she and other aspirants from both sides will go on comparing themselves to Grandpa, even if they only pick out one or two character traits. I’m still waiting for the day when someone shows up who has the whole enchilada.

Clifton Truman Daniel, President Harry S. Truman’s oldest grandson, is the director of public relations at Truman College in Chicago.