His big decision made, Harry Truman, President of the U.S., was talking like a new man. In some ways, he sounded a good bit like Candidate Harry Truman, yearning for the whistle stops again. But to the old back-platform folksiness and give-em-hell zest, he had added another quality: the regardless candor of a man who is soon to become plain Harry Truman, U.S. citizen.
Last week he moved his regular press conference (his 300th in seven years) into the dim, cavernous auditorium of the Smithsonian Institution so that 400 visiting editors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors could hear the new Truman in action. After the picture-taking and handshaking, A.S.N.E. President Alexander F. ("Casey") Jones of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal began the show with a planted question that none of the White House regulars had thought to ask before. He asked the President to comment on his "political philosophy in retiring," and Harry Truman was off.
The Job to Do. In a relaxed and expansive mood, he let his broad smile travel across the room and offered a few homely reflections for direct quotation. Said the President: "I have been a very close student of the presidency of the United States and also of the individual Presidents who have occupied the place since Washington's time, and my reason for not running again is based on the fact that I don't think that any man, I don't care how good he is, is indispensable in any job . . .*
"When a man has been in this very responsible post for eight years, which I will practically have been by the 20th day of next January, he has, or he should have by that time made all the contribution he possibly can to the welfare of the country. He has either done it well or done it not well.
"I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I had to do it, and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Ariz.: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest."
A Rain of Questions. Harry Truman's damndest, as he saw it, took in a lot of territory. Aside from the prevention of World War III, he thought, the greatest accomplishment of his Administration has been keeping employment at full tilt. Said he: We have been able to fix the income of the country so that it is fairly distributed —an even economy, well-balanced so everybody has a fair chance. And after the rearmament program is finished a Point Four program—if it raises the standards of living of the underdeveloped parts of the world at least 2%—can keep U.S. production going for the next 25 years.
As the questions rained down, Truman tossed off his answers with obvious relish.
¶ On political experts: Editors don't know anything about politics, and he is trying to learn them something.
¶ On a Southern Democrat as the presidential nominee: A Southerner could be nominated at the convention if he is willing to run on the Democratic platform; you can't be a Democrat with reservations.