One day last September, in California's Central Valley, Candidate Harry Truman made his political advisers wince with an off-the-cuff attack on hard-shelled Republican Congressman Bertrand W. Gearhart. Said Harry Truman: "You have got a terrible Congressman here. He has done everything he possibly could do to cut the throats of the farmer and the laboring man." Some of his aides, remembering the lesson of F.D.R.'s purge, argued that personal attacks often boomeranged in favor of the target. But wherever he went, Harry Truman never ceased to "pour it on" Republican members of...
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