Harry Truman's Presidency is at the edge of our modern world to fit into our value set, but far enough away to be drained of partisan passion. And he is easy to like. That life story can get someone with depression out of bed in the morning. Harry Truman came back and won an election no one said he could! He got one over on the media with that Dewey Defeats Truman headline! Harry Truman contained communism and integrated the military! He was born poor, unexpectedly became President, left office penniless and unpopular, and today counts among the greats. Harry Truman is the patron saint of underdogs everywhere.

So why the huge discrepancy between contemporary public opinion in 1952 and the opinion of historians today?

a. Korea

By 1952, the US was bogged down in a miserable bloody stalemate in Korea. More than thirty thousand Americans were killed in what was neither a great showdown with the Soviets nor a rallying demonstration of American superiority. Instead it was an ulcer of snow and heat and Chinese counter-attack. The President fired the insubordinate Gen. Douglas MacArthur in one of history’s great showdowns. Write Mueller, “The first polls, conducted as the General was making his triumphal, “old soldiers never die” return to the United States in April 1951, suggest more than twice as many people supported the General as supported the President.” People blamed Truman.

Historians view Korea against the lens of Vietnam, an even more terrible conflict that reflects particularly poorly on Presidents Johnson and Nixon. In comparison, Korea seems like a measured response to an international crisis that ended relatively quickly with a negotiated truce. At the same time, conventional wisdom among historians today is that the firing of MacArthur was a critical assertion of civilian rule.

b. Domestic policy

Truman engaged in very difficult disputes with unions that saw him try to nationalize steel mills to end strikes. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, costing him support with union members AND their opponents. Truman stood up to racism and ordered the military integrated and an end to discrimination in civil service hiring. This cost him among white Southerners and mid-Westerners particulary. He was beset in his second term by corruption scandals among administration officials and friends. These played into the “two-bit machine politician aura” around Truman’s rise, and turned off progressives.

Truman’s actions on unions and civil rights burnish his standing among historians. It is a powerful narrative when Presidents defy their base, as Truman did with unions and Southern Democrats. And historians see Truman himself as almost saintly in his financial purity. He left office with only his military pension.

c. Cold War

Truman was the first Cold War President. His actions set the template for the next eight Presidents. The choices he made were controversial at the time, and many were unpopular. Some wanted confrontation with the Soviets, even if it meant war. Some wanted peace, even if it meant letting the Soviets continue to expand. Some even advocated pure isolationism. Few contemporary voters saw Truman as a great leader by 1952.

But containment of Communism remained the fundamental strategy of the United States until 1991. By the time Reagan was in office, the Truman Doctrine was a convenient touchstone to reassert stronger containment after the mild nod to détente under Nixon, Ford and Carter. American economic support of nations imperiled by Communism while avoiding direct military engagement with the Soviets was Reagan’s policy and praise for Truman a convenient political appropriation.

d. Different Comparative Sets

Truman followed FDR, and the comparison in the mind of contemporary voters did Truman no favours. How popular was Roosevelt during Truman’s presidency? Sanford says that in November of 1945, Gallup asked “who was the greatest person, living or dead, in world history?” Roosevelt was given in 28% of answers, beating Lincoln with 19%, Jesus (!) with 15% and Washington with 8%. And it lasted. In 1948, Roper surveyed Americans on who they admired most in public affairs. Roosevelt was mentioned in 43% of answers, while Eisenhower was second at 17%.

And February 1952 saw Truman being compared to the man who finished second in that survey quite dramatically. The Draft Eisenhower movement was at its height, with the Republican Party's internationalist wing pressuring the former General to run as an alternative to the isolationist Taft. In contemporary minds, Truman was caught between the great FDR and the sainted Ike.

Historians compare Truman against all the Presidents and with the benefit of hindsight but also the leveling of context. Against Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the Roosevelts, most politicians have feet of clay. Truman first joins the “near-great” rank in 1962 but it is in 1972 that Truman’s public legacy was full reversed. As Watergate was unfolding, Truman died. The contrast between the eulogies for Truman and the venality of the Nixon White House turned him into a symbol of the integrity of a by-gone day.

e. Bias of Historians

Just because historians say Truman is great or near-great doesn’t objectively mean he was great and the contemporary voters were wrong. Historians surveyed are of a type: educated and intellectual, skewing white, male and upper-middle class, and living in our time. Julie Azari, a political science professor at Marquette, wrote a piece about this for 538.

[T]he further removed we are from a particular historical crisis, the easier it is to lose sight of its complexity. That distance allows us to forget that presidents don’t line up evenly at the starting line but rather have bigger or smaller distances to travel depending on the type of crises they face when entering office. In addition, historic acts of racism — even extreme cases — are often overlooked. And evidence shows that experts consistently see presidents through a political and often partisan lens. In other words, historical overview doesn’t necessarily provide more rigor or objectivity to a process that arguably lacks both. As such, these ratings might tell us as more about our own political era than about the presidents they survey.

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Sources:

Sanford, Fillmore H., “Public Orientation to Roosevelt,”

Mueller, J. Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson.

McCulloch, David. Truman.

Dalleck, Robert. Harry S Truman

Azari, Julie. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/presidential-ratings-are-flawed-which-makes-it-hard-to-assess-trump/

Edit: Spelling, grammar and added the bit about Eisenhower