I have a strange affection for Harry Truman. Maybe it's because we were both born in Missouri—and both proud to be so—or maybe it's because David McCullough's biography of him is one of the first full-scale biographies I read of a President. Whatever it may be, I love him. He never let the office of the President of the United States—or the perks of the office—get to him or his head. And unlike so many others after they leave the White House, he moved back to where he was from: Independence, Missouri.

Merle Miller's oral biography is remarkable, there's really just no other way to put it. The content of the book was originally recorded on camera because Miller was working on a TV show about Truman and his presidency. Though for reasons explained in the book, the production company decided not to move forward with producing it. So, in the summer of Watergate, Miller decided to combine the tapes into this oral biography, and I'm glad he did.

Not very often, especially today, is someone able to experience such a raw and first-hand account of a President, their childhood and early career, their time in office, and what life was life was like when they walked out of the White House for the last time. Miller does an exceptional job of asking Truman about all of the controversial moments from his presidency like deciding to drop the bomb, escalate Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Though Truman's wit and wisdom shines through those moments, his personality and philosophy on life is revealed even more so through his off-hand comments about work ethic, leadership, and his favorite topic of all—integrity. Perhaps Miller understood this as well, for before the title page is this quote from Plutarch about Alexander the Great:

For, the noblest deeds do not always shew men's virtues and vices, but oftentimes a light occasion, a word, or some sport makes men's natural dispositions and manners appear more plain, than the famous battles won, wherein are slain ten thousand men, or the great armies, or cities worn by siege or assault.

Something that kept Truman grounded was that he, "never got to thinking that I was anything special. It's very easy to do that in Washington, and I've seen it happen to a lot of fellas. But I did my best not to let it happen to me. I tried never to forget who I was and where I'd come from and where I was going back to. And if you can do that, things usually work out alright in the end."

A saying Truman was found of: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Old Tom Jefferson wrote that, 'Whenever you do a thing, thought it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world watching you, and act accordingly.'" – Truman

"You'll never find me in anyway criticizin' or jumpin' on the people who are trying to help me. If a fella can't be patient and considerate of the people who are actually doin' the work for him, then he's not any good, and I don't like him."

"I always had my nose stuck in a book," he said, "a history book mostly."

"Some people think [the Stoics] are old-fashioned, but I don't. What [Marcus Aurelius] wrote in Meditations, he said that the four greatest virtues are moderation, wisdom, justice, and fortitude, and if a man is able to cultivate those, that's all he needs to live a happy and successful life. That's the way I look at it anyway." – Truman

Miller writes this in a footnote appended to that statement:

Mr. Truman's copy of Meditations, which he lent to me to take back to the hotel one night, was by the look of it one of the most read books in his library. He was a great underliner...I was interested to see that these passages in Meditations were underlined:

"If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it."

"First, do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose. Secondly, see that your acts are directed to a social end."

"Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within, my opinions."

"It is not fitting that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another."

"Always be sure whose approbation it is you wish to secure, and what ruling principles they have. Then you will neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor will you want their approbation, if you look to the sources of their opinions and appetites."

"When another blames or hates you, or when men say injurious things about you, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to take trouble that these men have a good opinion of you. However, you must be well disposed toward them, for by nature they are your friends. And the gods, too, aid them in all ways, by dreams, by signs, toward the attainment of their aims."

In the margin of this particular paragraph Harry Truman had written, "True! True! True!"

Mr. Truman had an incredible memory, and a knack for memorizing that which was important to know:

In Cabell Phillips book The Truman Presidency, he says that in 1951, when Hillman was interviewing the President for the book Mr. President, Mr. Truman was talking about Alexander the Great, who had, he said, made the mistake of overextending himself.

Phillips writes:

"And then the people around him," he told Hillman, "made him think he was immortal, and he found that thirty-three quarts of wine was too much for any man, and it killed him at Babylon." Working over the proofs of his book later, Hillman paused to puzzle over the President's mention of the thirty-three quarts of wine. Obviously, he thought, it was some sort of allegory; he, him-self, had never heard of it, nor was he sure what it meant. He called the Library of Congress and asked their scholarly assistance in running the item down.

A few days later they called back to say, sorry, they could find no link, real or poetic, between Alexander and thirty-three quarts of wine. Hillman was convinced that the President had mixed either his metaphors or his kings and was about to challenge him on it when, a few days later, he received another call from the researcher at the Library. In the manner of librarians everywhere, this one had not given up the search after the first admission of failure. He had pursued his quarry behind the locked doors of the Rare Books Section, and into an obscure and long-out-of-print volume of the history of the ancient Greeks, and, by golly, the President was right after all!

"And you know what?" the researcher added. "That book has been checked out of the shelves only twice in the last twenty years, and the last time was for Senator Harry Truman in 1939."

"I wouldn't think much of a man that tried to deny the people and the town where he grew up. I've told you. You must always keep in mind who you are and where you come from. A man who can't do that at all times is in trouble where I'm concerned."

I liked this paragraph Truman read to Miller, from Browen's John Adams and the American Revolution:

On the Fourth of July, 1826, America celebrated its Jubilee—the Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence. John Adams, second President of the United States, died that day, aged ninety, while from Maine to Georgia, bells rang and cannon boomed. And on that same day, Thomas Jefferson died before sunset in Virginia.

"In their dying, in that swift, so aptly celebrated double departure, is something which shakes an American to the heart. it was not their great fame, their long lives or even the record of their work that made these two seem indestructible. It was their faith, their boundless, unquenchable hope in the future, their sure, immortal belief that mankind, if it so desired, could be free."

"Worrying never does you any good. So I've never worried about things much. The only thing that I ever do worry about is to be sure that where I'm responsible that the job is properly done. I've always tried my best and to some extent have succeeded in doing the job as well as it's been done before me."

"On the morning of his eightieth birthday he told reporters, 'Remember me as I was, not as I am.'"

When asked if Truman was ever bored as a kid, he said, "Oh, my, no. We didn't know the meaning of the word, and I'll tell you another thing. I can't remember being bored, not once in my whole life. How in the world can you be bored if you have things to think about, which I must say I always have."

Asked whether or not he thought that the times were better then, he said,"Oh, I don't know about that. Comparisons like that. They're so easy to make, but I'm not sure they're ever right."

He thought for a moment, and then he said, "The only thing I'm sure of: people weren't so nervous then. All these things people have now that are supposed to entertain them and all. They just seem to end up by making everybody nervous."

He said this in the 1960s. Imagine what he would say now. If he saw it then with just TVs and radios, it's undeniable that social media, streaming, and endless scrolling has had a large factor in the epidemic of anxiety and mental health issues.

Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State:

Mr. Truman read, I sometimes think, more than any of the rest of us. It was never necessary to digest anything for him, to simplify, to make it understandable to the...shall I say meanest intellect. Mr. Truman read the documents themselves, and he understood and acted on them. It was, I believe, the habit of reading and, moreover and possibly more important, of understanding that followed all through his life, from his boyhood on.

Don't just read; understand.

General Omar Bradley said that no matter what time of day it was, he saw President Truman pouring over papers in his office. "Now I know some people think that's going into too much detail. But from my own experience I found that even though I might be commanding a large unit, I had to know enough of the details to get a true picture of the big picture—the big problem. And I think that that was one of the attributes of President Truman. He always knew enough of the details to know what the big problem was."

You have to know enough of the details to get the big picture. It's been my experience that when leaders delegate the details to someone else, they lose sight of what's working and what's not. They know the map, not the territory. I think in an age of delegation and work-life balance, it's popular to espouse the values for CEOs and managers to stay high level, but I think that's a big mistake.

The people who are in the details often work with others in the wrong way, though. Instead of caring and making the product or team better, they lead from abuse and get branded a "micromanager." I think micromanaging is required to do great work—to a certain degree—but you don't have to be a jerk about it. I'm reminded of what Truman said earlier: "You'll never find me in anyway criticizin' or jumpin' on the people who are trying to help me. If a fella can't be patient and considerate of the people who are actually doin' the work for him, then he's not any good, and I don't like him."

"I've never regretted [the time I've spent reading] either," Truman said, "and I suppose considering the fact that I became President of the United States, it wasn't time wasted."

It's easy to think the time you spend reading, learning, or getting better might be time wasted, but I don't think that's ever true. You have no idea what your life will look like in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years. And I can almost guarantee that no matter what you're doing, the time spend reading and learning will pay off at some point.

I love this part too:

Miller: I mentioned that someplace not long before, President Kennedy had made a speech in which he listed a whole series of books he had read recently. I said that to my knowledge, Mr. Truman had never done that.

Truman: Well, no. I never thought reading was something you went around bragging about. It was just something you did. And when I was a boy you kept quiet about it as you possibly could. Reading wasn't any too...wasn't the most popular thing to do around these parts.

At one point in time, Truman's grandfather owned much of what was to become Sacramento, but he sold it to pay off his debts. Miller asked about this.

Mr. President, if he hadn't sold that land, I guess you would have been born rich.

"I guess that's true, but people who spend too much time thinking about things like that are likely to wind up feeling sorry for themselves. So I haven't given it much thought...Anyway, if I'd been rich, I wouldn't have wound up President."

And given a choice...

"I didn't have a choice. What's your next question?"

A lesson in not falling prey to regrets and staying focused on what is, not what could've been.

--- `` > Miller: I understand that you learned a good deal about politics from Plutarch's Lives and that your father read it aloud to you when you were a boy. > > Truman: He did...I tell you. They just don't come any better than old Plutarch. He knew more about politics than all the other writers I've ever read put together. > > When I was in politics, there would be times when I tried to figure somebody out, and I could always turn to Plutarch, and nine times out of ten I'd be able to find a parallel in there.

When asked if Truman would say his father was a success, Truman replied sharply: "He was the father of a President of the United States, and I should think that that is success enough for any man."

Talking about his days working at the bank, Truman said, "Another thing I didn't like [about working there] I didn't have any responsibility. I just added up figures all day, and it didn't seem to me there was much future in it..."

"[Farming and plowing land] gave me plenty of time to think. Farmers really all have time to think, and some of them do it, and those are the ones who have made it possible for us to have free government. That's what Jefferson was writing about. Farmers have more time to think than city people do."

Even though Truman had strict discipline as a child, he never went overboard on punishment even when he could have. I think that says a lot about his view on power. Some people do whatever they can to make sure people know that they are in charge and no one else. And for the most part, those are the people you want to keep power away from. You can see it in little moments; as soon as they get a lick of power or responsibility, they make sure everyone knows it. They speak up in meetings to give "direction," but really it's just so everyone knows they have "power."

Truman: Why put a man through the disgrace of a court-martial, something that will follow him the rest of his life, unless you absolutely have to? And ninety-nine times out of a hundred you don't.

You have to have faith in a man—that if he makes a mistake, and if you treat him like a man, you'll find that he won't repeat that mistake. That's been my experience in any case, and it was the same in the Army and in politics.

On the best definition for a leader, Truman said this:

I've always felt that the best definition of a leader, and it doesn't matter where it is, in the military or the White House. It doesn't matter. The best definition of a leader is a man who can make the people who served with or under him do what they don't want to do and like it.

You can take this reading too far, of course, to where it gets into manipulation, but that clearly isn't how Truman meant it. Rather, when a leader could inspire the people who worked with him or her to do what the leader thought was best, and not what any one faction of the group whom they were leading thought was best, that's a good definition of a leader.

A corollary to this is that if a group of people are under a leader and are disgruntled with their tasks, saying stuff like, "I don't know why we have to do this, but X is making us," then their leader is probably not very good.

During the days of being a haberdasher, Bluma Jacobson, Truman's business partner wife, explains that

There were slack days as well as good days, and if Harry wasn't around, you could always look up in the balcony, and Harry would be up there with a book, reading or studying. He studied law a good deal in those days. Just picking it up, not going to law school at that time. He later went to Kansas City and studied law, but at that time you would always find him reading a book.

Jacobson describes how Truman was practicing what Robert Greene calls "Alive Time." We all have slow seasons in our life where there isn't much to do. Maybe it's a few weeks where you're sick, or the weather is too brutal to be outside. During those times, what do you do? The 24 hours still pass. Do you binge reality TV shows, or do you try to learn a new skill, or become better in something you already know?

When Judge Albert A. Ridge was planning on going to law school, he talked to Truman about it. Ridge explains:

He encouraged me to go to night school and study law, but he said that just knowing the law wasn't enough. He said that was the trouble with far too many lawyers, that they knew the law but did not know much of anything else. He said...he encouraged me to also study about the nature of man and about the culture and heritage of Western civilization in general...

Harry Truman always said that...a man could do anything he set his mind to, and that encouraged me...He volunteered once to give me a list of about ten or so books that I ought to read...I can remember that it included Plutarch's Lives. And Caesar's Commentaries. And Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. He used to say, "Al, you'll find a good deal in there about how to make use of every minute of your day and a lot of horse sense about people."

This is my plan for August, and why I'm excited to start law school. I know every lawyer who passes the bar knows the law, but few will continue studying history, science, philosophy, and psychology as I (hopefully) will do. Ideally, I can have a broader understanding of the people and details pertaining to my case because I have different mental models to view the situation from.

Truman's haberdasher store failed, and although he could've declared bankruptcy—and indeed was counseled to do so—he refused. "It took him fifteen years to pay off his debts, but in 1934 he finally did it."

Abraham Lincoln did the same. While he could've left town in the middle of the night after his general store went up, he refused. He paid off all of the debt, and it was this incident that earned him the nickname "Honest Abe." I can't help but wonder if Truman was so inspired to stick it out based on Lincoln's example.

Truman hated complaining or talking about what "could've been." Regrets had no place in his mind.

You'll notice if you read your history, that the work of the world gets done by people who aren't bellyachers.

I had to look up what "bellyachers" meant because I'd never heard it before: "a person given to excessive complaints and crying and whining."

Bellyachers are the worst. I can't stand people who think the world is out to get them. I remember people in high school who said a certain teacher "gave" them a bad grade because the teacher didn't like them. Uhm..no, sorry. You gave yourself a bad grade by never doing the assignments.

Truman believed the presidency didn't bestow power on anyone, but rather allowed someone to be the instrument, or channel, of presidential power. Some people were more effective at the presidency than others because they wielded the power they were given better.

Truman, at one point during his either judgeship or as a Senator, denounced the KKK. Miller asked him if it wouldn't have been wiser to not go after them like that, because of the power they weilded. Truman's response:

It might have been, yes, but once a man starts thinking that way, about what it's wise to say and what isn't, he might just as well cash in his chips and curl up his toes and die.

I tried never to act that way, and for the most part I think you can say I succeeded. Sometimes I was advised to hold my fire on this and that because they said telling the truth would offend people. But whenever I took such advice I never thought much of myself.

If you keep your mouth shut about things you think are important, hell, I don't see how you can expect the democratic system to work at all.

Truman held a similar philosophy when it came to attending Tom Pendergast's funeral while he was the Vice President. After Pendergast's tax evasion conviction, and common knowledge that he didn't play fair in politics, and Truman was a product of his shenanigans, people told Truman to stay away from him, and definitely not to go to the funeral. Of course, Truman didn't listen. "What kind of man would it be...wouldn't go to a friend's funeral because he'd been criticized for it?"

That theme runs throughout this book—and Truman's life. He was always worried about doing what was right. Maybe it was his back-home, southern/mid-western education and value instillation, but he would never compromise his values to make a political party or section of a political party happy. Never, ever. How did he do it? Espousing the values is one thing. Actually making the decisions, and following through on the actions, is a completely other thing.

Truman had an amateur love for architecture. When he had the chance to build and remodel a courthouse in Kansas City and Independence, he left nothing to chance. He travelled all over the country looking at other courthouses to see what style he liked the most. In Shreveport, Louisiana, he found a courthouse that he liked, so he hired the same architect to build the courthouse in Kansas City. He noted that he travelled to Shreveport on his own dime.

There's a lesson there: if you want a job done a similar way, hire the person who did it!

During construction, Truman spent a considerable amount of time observing the workers. He explains, "That courthouse was costing the people of Jackson County a lot of money, and I didn't want anybody, the workers or the contractors or anybody, to lay down on the job. When you're spending the taxpayer's money, you've got to have a sense of responsibility."

This is perhaps the seeds of the Truman Committee—Truman's effort to ensure contractors were spending war money the right way—being planted.

He also spent a lot of time trying to find the right sculptor for the statue of Andrew Jackson that was to be placed in front of the courthouse. So, he hired Charles Keck, someone who made a statue of Stonewall Jackson that Truman thought was "the best equestrian statue in this country and maybe the world." He went to the Hermitage, Old Hickory's place in Nashville to see pictures of him on horses and measure his uniforms and gave the measurements to Keck so they would be "just right." Then he contacted the War Department to see what a general of Old Andy's stature would be wearing during that time.

Truman didn't have to do any of those things. But he did because:

I wanted that courthouse and that statue to be the best they could be...When I was a boy, that was the way everybody went about things. Or so it seems to me. Nowadays in politics and just about everywhere else all anybody seems to be interested in is...not how much he can do but how much he can get away with.

If you want it to be great, put in the effort to make it great. Ask not how much you can get away with, but how much you can do!

Truman loved Justice Louis Brandies and Oliver Wendell Holmes. (I love Holmes. I don't know enough about Brandies yet, other than what I learned in a Holmes biography.)

Every youngster as he grows up knows he was a darned sight smarter than his daddy was, and he has to get to be about forty before he finds out the old man was smart enough to raise him.

I'll tell you one thing for sure. The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

During Truman's first term in Congress, he was on a committee to investigate railroads. To learn more about what he'd be investigating, he checked out fifty or so books from the Congressional Library to read up on the subject.

He explains:

I like to be thorough, to have a thorough knowledge of whatever I'm involved in...What surprised me about the Congressional Library was how few members of Congress ever seemed to use it; I used to go in there, and there sometimes wouldn't be anybody else there except a few young people and the librarians.

You can be ahead of 99% of people if you actually do the reading.

In a senate race against Lloyd Stark, Stark criticized Truman for receiving support from Tom Pendergast, a local political boss. At that time, Truman had a letter from Stark thanking Truman for introducing him to Pendergast so he too could get such support. When asked about why Truman didn't release that letter, he explained, "I didn't think it would be right to do a thing like that."

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Winning isn't everything. It's important to keep your dignity.

I was always particular about where my money came from. Very few people are going to give you large sums of money if they don't expect to get something from it, and you've got to keep that in mind.

We've all suffered from sleepless nights—or weeks—when something important is on the horizon and is stressing us out. Maybe it's a big meeting with an important client, an interview for a job you desperately need, or maybe your boss just texted you before you got in bed, "Let's chat tomorrow." (We've all been there.)

Whatever it is, it's easy to let it eat us alive. But Harry Truman had a better way.

On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt breathed his last in Warm Springs, Georgia. That night, at 7:09 P.M., Vice President Harry S Truman was sworn in as President of the United States.

"Did you sleep," Merle Miller asked in an interview with Truman years later about that day. "Of course," he said. And right away, too.

Truman continued:

I knew I had a big day coming up. I had to sleep.

[...]

If you've done the best you can—if you have done what you have to do—there is no use worrying about it because nothing can change it, and to be in a position of leadership...you have to give thought to what's going to happen the next day and you have to be fresh for...what you have to do the next day. What you're going to do is more important than what you have done.

Miller: If you've done the best you can.

Truman: That's right. That's the main thing. A man can't do anything more than that. You can't think about how it would be...if you had done another thing.

"If you've done the best you can, there's no use worrying about it..."

There are two takeaways from this:

1. If you've done the best you can, leave it at that and get some sleep.
2. If you're perpetually worried, maybe you know that you didn't do the best that you could've. Perhaps there's a small part of your "worry" saying, "I could've made that a little better, and I didn't." Or "I could've prepared more, but it's too late."

If that's the case, now you know for next time.

Harry Hopkins was a consummate ambassador for the United States and a close advisor for FDR. After FDR passed, and Hopkins got back from successfully talking to the Russians, Hopkins revealed a great aspect of Truman's personality. Upon his return, Truman thanked Hopkins for his service and left the room.

Harry Hopkins, as he went out, said to Steve Early, "You know, I've had something happen to me that never happened before in my life...Why, The President just said, 'Thank you' to me.

Miller: You mean in all those years he'd worked for Roosevelt he'd never been thanked for all he did?

Truman: Now I told you what he said. And that's all I told you.

That last comment reveals another aspect of Truman. He was hesitant to speak ill of anyone behind their back and weary of gossiping or making assumptions.

Alonzo Fields was a butler in the White House for twenty-one years. He wrote in his book that Truman was the only person who ever took the trouble to understand him as a person.

You can tell Truman did, too, because when Miller asked Truman about Fields, Truman responded: "He was a fine old fellow. He had wanted to be a singer, but it hadn't worked out..."

How many other presidents would even know Fields's name, let alone what he aspired to do in life, but failed? That only comes out through constant conversation and trust. That's no small-talk-in-the-hallway type of conversation. This shows Truman spent time with the White House staff. In fact, he knew Fields lived in Boston, and whenever Truman was there after he left office, they would hang out.

Perhaps something that helped Truman maintain his humility was that he had an exceptional ability to separate himself from the office.

You see the thing you have to remember. When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one-gun salutes, all those things, you have to remember isn't for you. It's for the Presidency, and you've got to keep yourself separate from that in your mind. If you can't keep the two separate, yourself and the Presidency, you're in all kinds of trouble.

During the 1948 campaign against Dewey, Democratic Senators told Truman that if he would just invite certain donors and big money guys on the Presidential Yacht, that the Democratic Committee would have no trouble raising money (they didn't have a lot of it at the time). But Truman refused. His reasoning:

Because it's the Presidential yacht. It belongs to the President.

Truman learned early in his Presidency, thanks to his extensive reading of the Gospels, that no two people saw the same thing the same way, and if their tales differ, it's not that they're lying, it's that they just saw it in a different way.

And that is one of the reasons that when I got into a position of power I always tried to keep in mind that just because I saw something in a certain way didn't mean that others didn't see it in a different manner. That's why I always hesitated to call a man a liar unless I had the absolute goods on him.

Reading history, Truman noticed this as well. He could read four or five books about the same topic or person and get four or five versions of the story. This is one the reasons it's important to read a variety of sources. You can't just read one biography and call it good, because each biographer focuses on, for them, what they're most interested in or the story they want to tell. It's important, before you read different history books though, to ensure you're actually reading different takes on someone's life. There are a lot of full scale biographies of Abraham Lincoln that are essentially the same book, while others differ in their focus. Some focus more on his childhood and early education and career as a lawyer. Others blow past his childhood and spend more time on his presidency. Some focus on his relationship with slavery; others focus on his cabinet. Still others focus on just his personal life revealed through his writings and scraps. Before you read a book, know what the focus of the book is.

Truman: I told him I knew all about experts. I said that an expert was a fella who was afraid to learn anything new because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore.

There's only one time in the book that Truman is noted to cry. A year after Israel became a state, the Chief Rabbi came to see the President and said, "God put you in your mother's womb so that you could be the instrument to bring about the rebirth of Israel after two thousand years."

"At that," Miller writes, "great tears started rolling down Harry Truman's cheeks."

During his presidency, Truman brought Herbert Hoover to visit him at the White House. He said to him, "Mr. President, there are a lot of hungry people in the world, and if there's anybody who knows about hungry people, it's you. Now there's plenty of food, but it's not going to the right places. Now I want you to—" and Truman explained how he wanted Hoover to do just what he did after the first World War.

Truman: Well I looked at him. He was sitting there, just as close to me as you are, and I saw that great big tears were running down his cheeks. I knew what was the matter with him. It was the first time in thirteen years [since Hoover left the Presidency in 1933] that anybody had paid attention to him.

I thought that was...touching. It reveals the human side of all of us, even those who once held the most powerful position in the world. At the end of the day, we want to be needed. We want to work hard and do important things. We want to make a difference. And it takes a leader, as Truman demonstrated here, what it means to find the right person for the job, what it would mean for that person to do the job well.

Dean Acheson: "I have never know a man who kept so clearly in mind what were first things. Mr. Truman was unable to make the simple complex in the way so many men in public life tend to do. For very understandable reasons, of course. If one makes something complex out of something simple, then one is able to delay making up one's mind. And that was something that never troubled Mr. Truman."

Lesson: When someone seems to be making something simple utterly complex, it's either 1) they don't really understand what they're thinking about or having to decide or, 2) they are delaying acting on the decision by telling themselves they are still "figuring it out." No. It's figured out just fine. You just have to have to guts to make the call now.

Truman didn't like how advertising men were getting more and more involved in political campaigns. Why?

I'm sure they're very good at what they're trained to do, but in politics what you're doing, and I've said this a few times before, what you're doing or ought to be doing is discussing ideas with people so they can decide which is better, yours or the other fellow's.

I loved this quote: "I didn't have time [for being bitter]. Being bitter...that's for people who aren't busy with other matters."

Abe Lincoln said something similar, about how people who are serious about being great and excellent don't have time to quarrel.

"If you can't win an election without attacking people who've helped you and who're friends of yours, it's not worth winning." – Truman

Dean Acheson: "I am something of a stoic both by nature and by inheritance. And I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured."

When you're faced with a decision, and need to act quickly but are waiting on a superior's response, if you can, start the momentum. If you're waiting for them to approve a plan, do the plan. If they approve, the thing will already be in motion. If they don't, it should be easy to stop.

This was Dean Acheson's philosophy on the Korea decisions:

If the President approved this plan, they would have already started on it. If he disapproved it, they could stop it at once. But I thought that time was so pressing that we should not even delay while I spoke to the President.

Talking about firing General MacArthur, Truman said:

I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

He said later, about taking so long to fire him:

The only thing I learned from the whole MacArthur deal is that when you feel there's something you have to do and you know in your gut you have to do it, the sooner you get it over with, the better off everybody is.

The whole MacArthur situation reminds me of Lincoln's woes with his generals for the Army of the Potomac, especially McClellan and his overt disrespect for Lincoln and the office of the President.

In fact, in another chapter titled "On Generals in General" (such was the extent of Truman's views on generals that it deserved it's own chapter), Truman references McClellan and his political ambitions while "leading" the Army.

...they asked Lincoln if he was going to issue a reply to something or other McClellan said.

Lincoln said, "No," he wasn't. He said he wouldn't do that, but he said the whole thing reminded him of the fella whose horse started kicking around and got his foot stuck in the stirrup. The fella looked at the horse, and he said, "Look here, if you want to get on, I'll get off."

Truman liked Grant, though. As a General, not as president. Instead of relying on fancy strategies and techniques (that both sides of the war were relying on), Grant's strategy was simple, Truman explained:

He said what you have to do to fight a war, you have to find the enemy, and you have to hit him with everything you've got, and then you've got to keep right on going. And that's what he did. He never stopped to issue fancy statements about this and that. He just kept right on going.

That matches what Lincoln was trying to get his commanders to understand as well. They were obsessed with taking land and big cities. But Lincoln thought the cities didn't matter. What mattered was destroying the army. Find the Confederate Army and attack. And that's exactly what Grant did. And when Grant won, he kept on attacking. Other commanders, when they had a small glimmer or victory, stopped or even retreated. Not Grant.

Even after attending West Point, Grant said, Truman explains that, "what he'd learned there wasn't nearly as important as what he'd learned as a boy, which was that if you undertake a job, you have to finish it."

Truman hated Eisenhower's reliance on his staff to help him make decisions while in office. He explains, "When Castro decided to go in the other direction for support, Eisenhower was probably still waiting for a goddamn staff report on what to think."

"As you may have observed," Miller writes, "Mr. Truman was often a profane, a mildly profane man to me anyway, but 'staff report' were the two dirtiest words he uttered in all our talks together."

If you're in a position of power, you have to make the decisions.

Truman explained that we had the Civil War because we had five weak Presidents in a row.

What I do know is that when you have weak Presidents, you get weak results.

There's always a lot of talk about how we have to fear the man on horseback, have to be afraid of the...of a strong man, but so far, if I read my American history right, it isn't the strong men that have caused us most of the trouble, it's the ones who were weak. It's the ones who just sat on their asses and twiddled their thumbs when they were president.

If you have weak leaders, you get weak results.

Talking about those five weak leaders, Miller says that to him, it seemed like they were just being cautious. As long as they didn't rock the boat, the tension between free and slave states would disappear.

"That's right," Truman said. "And that's the one thing that won't ever happen, not in a million years. That's the meaning of government. If you're in it, you've got to govern. Otherwise, you're in the wrong business."

Truman liked Thomas Jefferson's idea that as a country, we'd be worse off without newspapers, no matter how much we dislike them.

In a letter in 1787, Jefferson wrote:

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a free government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

And in 1799 to Elbridge Gerry, presumably in response to the Alien and Sedition acts, he wrote:

I am for...freedom of the press and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force, and not by reason, the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agent.

Truman thought three things can ruin a man: power, money, and women. He explains:

If a man can accept a situation in a place of power with the thought that it's only temporary, he comes out all right. But when he thinks that he is the cause of the power, that can be his ruination.

And when a man has too much money too soon, that has the same effect on him. He just never gets to understanding that getting enough money to eat and getting a roof over his head is the thing that throughout history most people have spent their lives trying to do and haven't succeeded...If you've got too much money too soon, it ruins you by setting you too far apart from most of the human race.

And a man who is not loyal to his family..can be ruined if he has a complex in that direction.

The few times a Ms. Jane Wetherell had to deliver material to Mr. Truman in his hotel room while he was visiting New York to take part of the project, Truman let her into her sitting room but "then very deliberately left the door wide open for as long as she was there."

Billy Graham had a similar idea about perception; he wouldn't ride in elevators with women if it was just the two of them.

Lincoln, on his administration, said: "I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if, at the end...I have lost every friend on earth, I shall have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me."

Dean Acheson: "I have almost invariably found that charm is used as a substitute for intelligence in persons of both sexes. Thus I have always been and will remain wary of it."

I love this whole two pages from Acheson:

"But to me his greatest quality as President, as a leader was his ability to decide. General Marshall, who also had that quality, has said that the ability to make a decision is a great gift, perhaps the greatest gift a man can have. And Mr. Truman had that gift in abundance. When I would come to him with a problem, the only question he ever asked was, 'How long have I got?' And he never asked later what would have happened if he had decided differently. I doubt that that ever concerned him. He was not a man who was tortured by second thoughts. Those were luxuries, like self-pity, in which a man in power could not indulge himself.

"I would say that Mr. Truman had an Aristotelian understanding of power. He had not only read the Greek and Roman philosophers, he understood them. And by understanding what men had done in the past he was able with a sometimes terrifying reality to anticipate what a man would do in the present. He had an almost unbelievable ability to judge character.

"And he was as near to being totally unselfish as any man I have ever known, with the possible exception of General Marshall.

"Mr. Truman was a good friend of Justice Brandeis, and when he was in the Senate, he used to go, almost every week, I believe, to the Justice's at-homes. On Monday evenings. It may have been Justice Brandeis who told him, as the Justice once told me, that: 'Some questions can be decided even if not answered. He meant by that that it isn't always necessary for all the facts on a given situation to be available. They almost never are, perhaps never are.

"And it isn't necessary that one side be wholly right and the other totally wrong, because that seldom happens either. "It is enough, the Justice used to say, that the scales of judgment be tipped in one direction, and, after a decision is made, he would say, 'One must go forward wholly committed.'

"I have been with Mr. Truman through a great many decisions, foreign policy decisions, decisions about war, peace, whether or not to go through with a difficult, unpopular operation, and never once have I seen him pause to consider whether or not he ought to do something because of its possible effect on his electoral future or the political future of his party.

"Now I can understand that many people would think this isn't a compliment, and it isn't really meant as a compliment. It is meant as an analysis of the man.

"I suppose that a President has to remain President in order to do great things, and therefore he ought to do sensible things to be re-elected. But I am also perfectly certain that if too many things get between the President's vision and the target he's shooting at, his vision is going to be deflected. Ambition is one of the great things that intervenes. Political considerations. Will this get me votes or will it lose me votes? That deflects the aim.

"Ego is a great deflector of aim. One of the major elements of Mr. Truman's greatness is that these matters did not get between his eye and the bull's-eye. He looked at what he was doing without the myopia of ambition or extraneous events or any of the other weak-Lesses of important people.

Something Truman believed in deeply was common courtesy, especially when he was the President.

Courtesy is the cheapest thing in the world, and it's a wonder to me that people aren't that way more of the time. When I was President myself, I never ran anybody out. If you're willing to work a little extra, you can see everybody it is necessary for you to see, and you can spend as much time with them as need be. There's always, almost always plenty of time. There are always twenty-four hours in a day if you make use of them. I think I mentioned that that's one of the lessons I learned from reading old Benjamin Franklins's Autobiography. He give you some very good hint on how to make the best use of your time.

Continuing on the theme of courtesy, he explains:

It's very, very easy to hurt people, and if you don't have to do it, you should do everything possible to avoid it.

Eric Sevareid quotes Truman as saying:

Mr. Truman went on to observe that a word, a harsh glance, a peremptory motion by a President of the United States, could so injure another man's pride that it would remain a scar on his emotional system all his life.

Then Sevareid recalled:

During the question period a boy got up and said, "Mr. President, what do you think of our local yokel?" He meant Pat Brown, then governor.

Mr. Truman told the boy that he should be ashamed of himself, that to speak of the governor of a state in such a disrespectful way, even if he disagreed with him, was a shameful thing. The boy, close to tears, sat down.

When the question period was over, Mr. Truman went to the boy and said that he hoped he would understand that what he had said had to do with the principle involved and that he meant nothing personal. The boy said that he did understand, and the two shook hands.

Afterward, Mr. Truman went to see the dean [of the college he was speaking at] to ask him to send reports from time to time on the boy's progress in school. The dean said he would and had.

Mr. Truman wrote the boy, and he Mr. Truman, a few times since the incident had taken place, and the boy was doing well.

Sevareid said of the incident, "The simple point here is that Mr. Truman had instantly realized how a public scolding by a former President could mark and mar the boy's inner life and his standing in the community."

In an article, Sevareid wrote:

A man's character is his fate, said the ancient Greeks. Chance, in good part, took Harry Truman to the presidency, but it was his character that kept him there and determined his historical fate. He is, without a doubt, destined to live in the books as one of the strongest and most decisive of the American Presidents.

I don't think knowing what's the right thing to do ever gives anybody too much trouble. It's doing the right thing that seems to give a lot of people trouble.

Books and other resources mentioned

• John Adams and the American Revolution by Catherine Drinker Browen
• Missouri's Struggle for Statehood
• Bunker Bean
• Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
• An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
• My Twenty One Years in the White House by Alonzo Fields
• Eisenhower Was My Boss
• A Soldier's Story by General Bradley
• Mr. Citizen
• An Unknown Side of Truman, Eric Sevareid
• The Truman Presidency, Cabell Phillips
• Truman Speaks
• Locksley Hall, Tennyson