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Democrats roar when Truman whales away at Dwight Eisenhower: "Any Democrat can beat him." They delight in his jibes at Republicans: "The country needs a Democratic Administration as bad as it ever did in history. [Pause.] No, it couldn't be worse than in 1929." They grin when he describes his talents: "I never was overly blessed with brains, but had a lot of energy and liked to work." They approve when he lectures parents: "I believe in the woodshed treatment ... I got plenty of it when I was a boy. I don't know whether it did any good, but I've never been in jail."Most of all in the Year IV of Dwight Eisenhower, Democrats find cause for hope in the Harry Truman who stood before them at 2 o'clock on the stifling Philadelphia morning of July 15, 1948, and told them how to win an election they were ready to concede to Tom Dewey. Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make those Republicans like it," cried Truman. "Don't you forget that! We will do that because they are wrong and we are right." That is the Truman the Democratic Party hopes to see next week. It is the Truman who represents the unquenchable Democratic spirit of the past — which the party must rediscover if it is to leave its clearest mark on the present.
Between the Eyes. Missouri's Truman was born and bred in the Democratic whirl. One of his treasured memories is the scene of his father raising the American flag over the house in Independence to celebrate the election of Grover Cleveland in 1892; Fighting Democrat John Truman vowed to keep Old Glory flying for as long as a Democrat was in the White House (as it happened, four years).
As a page boy at the Kansas City convention of 1900, 16-year-old Harry joined full-throat in the bedlam when William Jennings Bryan ("He was one of my heroes") stampeded his second convention with his silver-tongued, silver-oriented (16 oz. of silver to 1 oz. of gold) oratory. In 1924, then a member of the Jackson County Court under the auspices of hard-knuckled Democrat Boss Tom Pendergast, Politician Truman sat with ears growing numb under his crystal-set earphones. He listened to almost every word of the 14-day, 103 -ballot convention in Madison Square Garden (Alabama—"24 votes for Oscahhh W. Undahhhwood") that finally nominated John W. Davis to run against Cal Coolidge (and Charles G. Dawes). At that convention the governor of Colorado was trampled in a melee, and the convention chairman banged so hard for order that his gavel flew apart, its head striking Delegate Herman Schoernstein squarely between the eyes.
Up to the Eyeglasses. That boisterous Democratic spirit has not flagged in Private Citizen Truman. At 72, his grey hair is thinning, his belt is let out a little (Vietta Garr, the Trumans' longtime cook, has orders to hold down on her specialty, chocolate pie). Nowadays, without the White House valet to start him out, he sometimes wears his tropical suits a day too long. The white dress shirts of his presidential days have given way to soft sport shirts, the crisp handkerchief is no longer inevitable in his breast pocket.