Harry S. Truman’s Early Political Career & Its effects Essay

Preface This Research paper is meant for the academicians, students and those concerned with the international politics.   The complicated international politics is well understood by the prevailing American politics which has great bearings.   This report gives a brief insight of the Truman presidency and its impact. An Abstract   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This report delves into the early political career of 33rd President of the USA.   His presidency is analyzed briefly concerning New Deal, World War and the Cold War.   A brief conclusion is appended at the end. Rationale of the Study The motivation of this study is to draw a fair conclusion about Truman’s early political career and the effect that his policies had on the America people up to the end of World War II. Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972): His Early Political Career With the demise of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman took over the Oval Office.   He knew he faced a difficult set of challenges.   However Truman’s most frightening task perhaps was following his predecessor, Roosevelt, who had restructured American governance, the Democratic Party, and the office of the presidency during his twelve years in office. Truman’s appointees were mostly undistinguished and contributed little to his presidency.   Ã‚  He inherited Roosevelt’s staff of presidential advisers.   By the mid-1940s, the President’s staff included administrative assistants, appointments and press secretaries, and counsels to the President.   It also included the Bureau of the Budget, formerly a part of the Treasury Department but, owing to the Executive Reorganization Act of 1939, now housed in the Executive Office of the President.   The New Deal and the war years focused the increasingly important and powerful role that a President’s staff played in policy-making. During the Truman years, the President’s staff continued to grow in size.   On the domestic side, the most important addition was the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). The Employment Act of 1946 created the CEA to help the President make economic policy; liberal Democrats in Congress particularly wanted the CEA to be a preserve for progressives and liberal New Dealers.   Truman instead staffed the CEA with a mix of conservatives and liberals,   Truman treated the CEA as a set of presidential advisers, rather than as an independent body, and made sure that it remained under his control. Depression, New Deal, & World War Truman took office just as World War II entered its final stages.   His main task, then, was to outline to Americans his vision for the country’s future.   Ã‚  Two related issues — the future of New Deal liberalism and the re-conversion of the American economy from a war-time to a peace-time footing topped his agenda. With the war’s end, Truman needed to restructure the nation’s financial system towards consumer production and spell out the government’s future role in the economy. Truman presented to Congress a detailed twenty-one point message that nevertheless attempted to set the post-war political and economic agenda.   Truman called for new public works programs, legislation guaranteeing â€Å"full employment,† a higher minimum wage, extension of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, a larger Social Security System, and a national health insurance system. Overall, these requests showed an interest in maintaining and building upon the New Deal.   On reconversion, Truman pushed for quick demobilization of the military — a political necessity as the troops and their families clamored for a quick return to civilian life and the temporary extension of governmental economic controls. Truman’s program went nowhere.   Republicans and conservative southern Democrats in Congress were dead-set against many of the other proposed reforms, including an extension of FEPC, national health insurance, and a higher minimum wage.   The public, in addition, divided over the prospects of an enlarged social welfare state and continued government intervention in the economy; liberal Democrats and key constituents of the Democratic Party supported them, but many other Americans did not. Reconversion was rejected and stalled and Truman received the blame.   As a matter of fact, rapid reconversion would have been difficult for any President, because of the variety and challenge of its objectives: increased production of consumer goods, full employment, higher wages, lower prices, and peace between labor unions and industrial management. Paradoxically, a key Democratic constituency namely labor gave Truman the most headaches.   In August 1945, Truman stated that he would maintain price controls however that unions could pursue higher wages.   Ã‚  Beginning in late 1945 and lasting throughout 1946, a wave of strikes hit the steel, coal, auto, and railroad industries, and devastating key sectors of the American economy and stifling production of certain consumer goods. To end the strikes and restore industrial peace, he recommended compulsory mediation and arbitration, warned that the U.S. government would draft striking railroad workers, and even took a union — the United Mine Workers to court.   However by taking such a hard line, Truman had damaged his relationship with an important element of the party coalition. Truman’s other major economic problem was the time it took to convert from military to civilian production.   Consumer goods in high demand were slow to appear on the nation’s shelves and in its showrooms, frustrating Americans who desperately wanted to purchase items they had forsaken during the war. Price controls proved a principally difficult problem.   Ã‚  As controls began to disappear in mid-1946, prices shot upward; the rise in the price of meat which doubled over a two-week period in the summer, received the most attention.   In response, the government reinstituted price controls, angering meat producers who then withheld meat from the market. The combination of high prices and shortage infuriated consumers and voters, who often criticized the President.   By September of 1946, Truman’s popularity rating had sunk to 32 percent.   Many Americans, including the President’s supposed Democratic allies, wondered if Truman could successfully lead the nation. In his State of the Union address, he identified the need for legislation to solve the persistent problems of labor unrest and strikes. He offered no solution of his own, nevertheless, proposing only a temporary commission to study the issue and a declaration that he would sign no bill attacking organized labor. Republicans in Congress took up Truman’s challenge and passed the Taft-Hartley bill, which limited the power of labor unions by curbing union participation in politics, by approving state â€Å"right to work† laws, and by allowing the President to block strikes through a judicially mandated eighty day â€Å"cooling-off† period.   Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley in June 1947, declaring that it â€Å"would take fundamental rights away from our working people.† Congress superseded the veto; Truman, in turn, declared to accomplish the law’s provisions and he even applied several of them including the court injunction to bring an end to some strikes.  Ã‚   However, in opposing Taft-Hartley, Truman mustered the support of organized labor. Inflation continued to be a problem in 1947 and 1948 too, although prices did not rise as sharply as they had in 1946.   Food prices, especially, continued to rise.     Truman suggested a return to price controls, although with the knowledge that congressional Republicans would reject such a measure and which they did. Finally, in 1947, Truman reaffirmed his support for liberal initiatives like housing for the poor and federal assistance for education. He vetoed Republican tax bills perceived as favoring the rich and rejected a Republican effort to raise tariffs on imported wool, a measure he deemed isolationist.   These positions, combined with his veto of Taft-Hartley and his sympathy toward price controls, situated Truman as the chief defender of the New Deal against Republican encroachments. Truman also took a stand in 1947 on civil rights.   Ã‚  His failed 1945 proposal to extend FEPC was, partially, an effort to woo black voters so important to the Democratic Party.   In the summer of 1947, Truman became the first President to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to whom he declared his forthright support of African-American civil rights.   Speaking to a crowd of 10,000, Truman declared that â€Å"The only limit to an American’s achievement should be his ability, his industry, and his character.† Truman however, proceeded warily on Civil rights front.   In early 1948, he sent his civil rights proposals to Congress, but did little to urge their passage.   He also announced that he would issue executive orders in the future to integrate the armed forces and to ban discrimination in the civil service.   Ã‚  By early 1948, therefore, his support for civil rights was more rhetorical than substantive.   However, as he followed this strategy with increasing skill throughout the year, Truman stood poised to win Democratic votes. In his 1948 State of the Union address, Truman again called for civil rights legislation, national health insurance, a housing program, and a higher minimum wage. On a cross-country train tour in early 1948 dubbed a â€Å"whistle stop† tour by Republican Senator Robert Taft.   Truman used a new extemporaneous speaking style.   Audiences warmed to this new public persona: the plain-spoken, hard-fighting Harry Truman from Missouri.   Still, most political observers and many Democrats thought Truman would not win re-election in 1948. Truman also embraced more fully the cause of black civil rights by issuing executive orders desegregating the military and outlawing discrimination in the civil service.   Ã‚  He won an upset victory that fall over his Republican opponent, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York. Fair Deal Propped up by his dramatic victory, Truman announced an agenda in early 1949, which he called the â€Å"Fair Deal.†   It was a collection of policies and programs much desired by liberals in the Democratic Party: economic controls, repeal of Taft-Hartley, an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of the Social Security program, a housing bill, national health insurance, development projects modeled on the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority, liberalized immigration laws, and ambitious civil rights legislation for African-Americans. Conservatives in the Republican and Democratic parties had little use for Truman’s Fair Deal.   National health insurance and repeal of Taft-Hartley went nowhere in Congress.   Ã‚  Moreover Truman’s agricultural program, the â€Å"Brannan Plan,† designed to aid the family farmer by providing income support, had difficulties; it was replaced by a program that continued price supports.   Congress did approve parts of the Fair Deal; Truman won passage of a moderately effective public housing and slum-clearance bill in 1949, Noticeably, Truman had misjudged in reading his electoral victory as a mandate to enact a liberal political, social, and economic agenda. Just as important, Truman believed the â€Å"Fair Deal† as an opportunity to transform the Democratic Party into an alliance of urban dwellers, small farmers, labor, and African-Americans.   Absent from this proposed coalition were white conservative southern Democrats. In addition, public opinion polls showed that most Americans wanted Truman to protect the New Deal, not expand it.   Ã‚  Similarly, Truman misjudged congressional opposition to a larger social welfare state — opposition strengthened by the public’s lack of support for the Truman agenda.   Whatever enthusiasm remained for the Fair Deal was lost, after the summer of 1950, amidst preoccupations with the Korean War. Economic Growth At the same time as Truman fought for the Fair Deal in 1949, he also encountered a rather severe economic retardation.   Ã‚  Both unemployment and price increases rose during the first six months of that year, reinforcing fears that the nation’s post-war economic boom was over.   Truman’s economic policy sought to balance the federal budget through a combination of high taxes and limited spending; any budget surplus would be applied to the national debt.   As the economy slowed down, Truman in mid-1949 abandoned his hope for a balanced budget and gave some tax breaks to businesses. The economy responded by perking up in 1950. Frum states candidly: â€Å"No American president ever proposed worse economic policies than Harry Truman. The great post-war economic boom that began in 1945 appalled and disgusted Truman, and he exerted all his political power in an attempt to shut it down. Truman wanted to impose a permanent war economy on the United States† (p. 85). (1) Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan & The Cold War: An Analysis The Truman Doctrine was the drive for the change in United States foreign policy, from isolationist to internationalists; thus Americans were drawn into two wars of containment and into world affairs.   The Truman Doctrine led to a major change in U.S. foreign policy from its inception. The outcome of World War II inspired the U.S. to issue a proclamation that would stop Communist influence all over the world.   Nevertheless, zeal in that achievement sent American soldiers to die in Vietnam and Korea for an apparently pointless cause. A direct result from the Truman Doctrine was the Marshall Plan. This came about when Truman appointed General Marshall as Secretary of State. In that position, he observed â€Å"Europe’s economic plight.† Marshall proposed a plan that would offer aid to all nations â€Å"West of the Urals.† (p. 355) (2). The Truman Doctrine has impacted everyone in the U.S. and nearly every country in the world since its declaration in 1947.   Some critics castigate the Doctrine: â€Å"Critics blamed involvement in Korea and Vietnam on the Truman Doctrine. Without the Doctrine . . . the U.S. might have minded its own business.† (p. 571) (3). Moreover, in 1949 the Soviet Union dared to acquire a nuclear capability, and so the Cold War started because the West had to respond to this sudden threat.   On July 25, 1945, the day Truman recorded in his diary, â€Å"We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world,† adding, â€Å"It is certainly a good thing that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover the atomic bomb.†(4).  Ã‚   It seems that the Cold War developed in the mind of a skeptic Truman.   It has been argued that his dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan was to some extent motivated by a desire to intimidate Russia–as Cold War strategists often said, Russia respects nothing but power and force (5)(6). Conclusions Almost as soon as World War II ended the United States found itself entangled in a somewhat subtler and more complex Cold War with the Soviet Union.   This ideological conflict was an overwhelming influence in the formulation of American foreign and domestic policies for the next 45 years and redefined the America’s role in the world community.   American foreign policy that was founded upon George Washington’s warning to â€Å"beware foreign entanglements† soon found itself rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan, defending it under NATO, and eventually struggling to contain communism on a worldwide scale. Accusations of corruption troubled Truman since his earliest days in politics.  Ã‚   During his presidency, the corruption charges proliferated, in part because they were effective political weapons for Truman’s opponents. However these charges also resonated as some members of the administration did participate in ethically questionable, if not illegal, activities. End Notes Frum, David. What’s Right: The New Conservative Majority And The Remaking Of America, 1996, Basic Books. Truman, Margaret. Harry S. Truman, 1973, New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 344-372. McCullough, David. Truman, 1992, New York: Simon and Schuster, 550-575. Truman quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, 1980, New York: Harper and Row, 55-56. Williams, Appleman William. The Cold War Revisionist, 1967, The Nation, 13 November, 492-495. Lerner, Mitchell. Review of Dennis D. Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, 1997, H-PCAACA, H-Net Reviews.