‘To err is Truman’

The phrase is attributed to the wife of Republican Senator Robert Taft, Martha, in the early 1950’s, and it wasn’t a compliment.

I’m reminded of the phrase by a recent Newsweek magazine report that US President George W. Bush was comparing his current unpopularity with that of former President Harry Truman during the early days of the anti-communist struggle.

Democrats don’t like an embattled Republican President comparing himself with a Democratic icon who, although unpopular during his time (Think atom bomb, the firing of Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War and his opposition to the McCarthy communist witch hunt!) is now regarded as a courageous, decent and visionary leader.

Truman is a favorite of presidents with low numbers in popularity polls. An enduring image of him is his triumphant lifting of the November 4, 1948 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman."

As we all know, Truman won those elections, despite negative pre-election polls and the endorsement of his opponent, Thomas F. Dewey, by such influential newspapers of the time as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Star, the Kansas City Star, St. Louis Dispatch, and The Wall Street Journal.

Truman biographer David McCullough recalls that the Detroit Free Press labeled HST "intellectually unqualified." The Chicago Tribune called him "an incompetent."

On Election Day, the odds were 4 to 1 in favor of Dewey. The New York Times predicted a Dewey victory with 345 electoral votes. But when the results came in, Truman had the last laugh. Newsweek put him on its cover and described him as the "Miracle Man." Truman won with 24,105,812 popular votes to Dewey’s 21,970,065. He carried 28 states with 303 electoral votes, Dewey 16 states with 189 votes.

Democrats won 54 Senate seats, to the Republican’s 42. In the House, the Democratic majority was an overwhelming 263 seats to 171 for the Republicans.

We fast forward to George W. Bush who is under assault from Democrats for his handling of the war in Iraq. Bush is quoted by a Democratic Senator as insisting that Truman’s policies had been unpopular at the time but "history showed he was right."

The Democratic legislator was present in one of those "reach-out" meetings last December where the President tried to forge a bipartisan approach to the Iraq war, in light of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

One issue that concerns many is whether Bush’s comparison of himself to Harry Truman is appropriate. Some contend that Bush’s grasp of history is a little shaky, although Newsweek concedes that no one doubts his commitment to the long-term defeat of Islamic extremism, or to the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Still, there is widespread disagreement over the feasibility of those goals, as well as to the way he is handling the process of reaching them.

What critics call hardheadedness, his supporters praise as enlightened conviction in the rightness of the basic values he promotes. What Democrats insist is rank incompetence in conducting an astronomically expensive war in Iraq, Republicans characterize as single-minded commitment to letting his fighting men decide for themselves how to fulfill an extremely difficult mission.

Bush knows he is hugely unpopular now, although his poll ratings, now in the negative 30’s range, have never sunk to the low 20’s Truman had to endure. But he is convinced that, in the long view of history, he will be proved right. Like Truman.

The context of Mrs. Taft’s barbed comment, "To err is Truman," is instructive. William Safire explains in his political dictionary that the background has to do with the phrase "red herring." The phrase had its origins in the practice in colonial America when a herring, cured with saltpeter and slowly smoked, turned red. The red-colored fish was then dragged across a trail so its strong odor would throw tracking dogs off the trail.

In American political practice, "red herring" came to mean a side issue which draws attention away from the main issue. But during the McCarthy hearings, the phrase assumed a different meaning when government officials in Washington, D.C. were accused of being communist spies and collaborators.

In August, 1948 President Truman was asked by a reporter whether he thought that the spy scare was a "red herring" to divert public attention away from inflation. He answered yes to the question. Republicans jumped on that reply to equate "red herring" with being soft on communism. In the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower asked, "Is it funny when evidence was discovered that there are Communists in government and we get the cold comfort of the reply, "red herring"?

Republicans branded the phrase a major blunder. Safire says its use haunted Democratic candidates for years. The Republican Eisenhower became President in 1952. But Senator Joseph McCarthy was soon discredited. Condemned by fellow Senators in 1954, McCarthy’s power faded quickly. He died in 1957.

The phrase "red herring" no longer carries any "soft on communism" connotation. Even before Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, the McCarthy era itself had been relegated to a divisive but largely forgotten footnote to American political history.

Today the clever phrase "To err is Truman," not only sounds unfair, it is essentially meaningless. George W. Bush obviously hopes the same revisionist sympathy will be given him in time. His supposed errors in Iraq, he hopes, will be seen as indicative of the prejudices and fears of his own time, as well as the work of partisan detractors.

But clearly, any comparison of George W. Bush with Harry Truman won’t wash. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s memorable put-down of the hapless Dan Quayle who had the gall to compare himself with John F. Kennedy: George, you’re no Harry Truman.