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Despite the sentiment of the Chicago song, it is doubtful that "harry"—who lived in an age when everything, including the problems of the presidency, seemed simpler—would know what to do now. Some of his style, however, might well be recycled for the '70s. For if it is impossible to imagine what Truman would have done 25 years later, it is easy to picture what he would not have done. He would not have maintained a closed presidency: his press conferences were regular and scrappy, and he was constantly bantering with reporters on his brisk strolls around Washington and New York. Instinctively, he would have rejected military advice that violated his common sense; thus, when MacArthur tried to escalate the Korean conflict, Truman fired him for "insubordination." He would not have lied to the public or cared what the press said about him—one of the few journalists who ever felt his ire was a Washington Post music critic who had panned a Margaret Truman song recital.
The Truman boom suggests that charisma and overweening ambition are played out in American politics, that frankness and solidity are back in vogue. It is a promising sign of the times that a Truman bust now stares out from an honored place in Gerald Ford's Oval Office. For the statue is a symbol—a genuine recognition by one plain man of another plain man who somehow managed to transcend his limitations. As Harry Truman would have said, there are far worse aspirations for elected officials—and damn few better ones.
—Stefan Kanfer
* In fact, Ford was not always so enthusiastic. In the '50s, the then Representative from Michigan's Fifth District decried Truman's "shabby lack of concern over the public welfare."