The morning after Harry Truman won the most stunning upset in presidential election history – at least before 2016 — the Washington Post hung out a banner that said, “Mr. President, we are ready to eat crow whenever you are ready to serve it.”
President Truman, who was photographed earlier that day cheerfully holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with its famous DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN headline, said he wasn’t interested in making anyone eat crow, but in making America a nation “where anyone can eat steak anytime he feels like it.” I don’t know if that offended what vegetarians there were in 1948.
But what Truman meant was that he intended to govern as President of all the people, including those who voted against him. Truman wasn’t perfect, and he was guilty of some demagoguery on the campaign trail; he hinted that Republicans might be the tools of fascists, and suggested that a few rich men were scheming to get a “front man to run this country for them.”
Overheated campaign rhetoric was nothing new, however; FDR had been, if anything worse. But after the election was over, Truman did attempt to govern as President of all the people. He had done so, in fact, from the moment that Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
Indeed, much of the reason he was thought not to have a chance of winning in 1948 was because of two courageous decisions he had taken: He stood up to the Soviet Union and indicated Stalin wasn’t to be trusted, which displeased liberals and the left. And he desegregated the Armed Forces, which threw the segregationists into a fury and cost him four Southern states.
Truman was also rigidly honest, even though he came from very humble origins, and had been given his start in politics by a crooked Missouri political boss. When he left the Presidency he had little money, but indignantly declined offers of cushy corporate jobs, saying the prestige of the presidency wasn’t for sale. He had to struggle financially for some years.
While historians today rank him as one of the “near-great” Presidents, largely for creating unity among the democracies and preventing World War III, his most important quality may have been integrity; he knew what the United States of America and the presidency stood for.
Now consider the Donald Trump revealed to us by his actions and the Mueller report. Assume, for a moment, that he is telling the truth and that he did absolutely nothing illegal.
Put the best possible face on what this report reveals, and you have a picture of a man who has no integrity, who lies constantly, who had no problem whatsoever in allowing a foreign power, one that clearly an enemy of this nation, to try to interfere in the election on his behalf.
Indeed, not only did the Mueller report not exonerate Trump, it makes it crystal clear that if he indeed isn’t guilty of crimes, it is only because his aides – especially former White House Counsel Donald McGahn – disobeyed his orders to do what McGahn called “crazy shit.”
This, from a President who has done his best to divide Americans against each other from his very first day on the campaign trail. There’s no gray area here at all.
How this all will end nobody can say, though I can’t imagine anyone who is familiar with our history or who cares about democracy not wanting this over.
But I can’t forget a line from Deadline USA, an old movie in which Humphrey Bogart plays a crusading newspaper editor who has to interview an immoral creep.
“Get him out of here,” he barks, adding, “And have this place fumigated.”
Not a bad idea. Though sadly, restoring the White House may take more.
