Alan Zendell, April 5, 2024

As a student, and later, as a young man, my hero was President Harry Truman. Imagine if you can, what it must have been like for the brash Senator from Missouri, who became Franklin Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944 because then Vice President Henry Wallace was unacceptable to Democratic Party leaders. With Roosevelt’s health failing, it seemed likely that his Vice President during his fourth term would ascend to the presidency before the 1948 election. Thus, Truman, a high school graduate, farmer, piano player, and haberdasher became VP in March, 1945.

While Roosevelt was not expected to survive a fourth term, no one expected him to die five weeks after his inauguration. With World War 2 finally nearing its end, Truman became our thirty-third president on April 12, 1945. It was left to him to negotiate post-war treaties and to shepherd the America-led Allies into a future in which Europe was threatened by Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. But before he could do that, he had to make a decision that dramatically impacted the entire world.

Germany had surrendered unconditionally in May, but Japan vowed to hold out until the bitter end, and Truman’s military advisors told him that invading the Japanese homeland could cost tens of thousands of American lives, a prospect few could stomach after the U. S. military had already suffered over a million casualties. The alternative – use our two atomic bombs to destroy Japan’s ability to resist. Despite misgivings, Truman made that choice, which weighed heavily on him for the rest of his life. I had the unique good fortune to hear that directly from the lips of his widow, Bess Truman, years after his death.

Truman went on to be a driving force behind the Marshall Plan, which enabled Europe to recover from the devastation of the world war with remarkable speed, but looking back on his record today, his championing of a new western alliance to defend against Soviet expansion is what stands out most prominently. The new alliance united Europe, with the startling result, that after fighting two world wars among themselves in the space of thirty years, all the countries of western Europe have been united and at peace with each other since 1945. After decades of war and strife, the feature of the alliance that is most important today, is that every member nation pledged to defend every other member if it was invaded or attacked.

That alliance, which began with twelve nations and has now grown to a membership of thirty-three, is NATO, which came into existence on April 5, 1949. If you haven’t checked your calendar, today is NATO’s 75th anniversary. NATO has kept the world safe from nuclear war during all that time, and with its political counterpart, the EU, has fostered prosperity among the member nations and mutual respect for the rule of law. In 2024, as extremists fight over abortion rights and hypocritically attack each other over border security and defense of our democracy, the issue that will have the greatest impact on our children and grandchildren going forward is the health of NATO.

In terms of our coming election, we see a clear choice among our candidates. President Biden considers support for NATO critical to our future, while Donald Trump would withdraw us from the alliance. The issue of NATO by itself is enough to make me fear for our future if Donald Trump is re-elected. It’s time Americans starting prioritizing issues. Nothing in this year’s presidential campaign is more important than preserving and supporting NATO.

With that said, it’s worth comparing Truman as a president with the choices we face today. Truman, for all his direct, in-your-face approach to politics would be horrified by Donald Trump. The things for which Truman is best remembered have one thing in common – they were all forward-looking efforts to create a positive, peaceful future for all Americans and the allies whose blood was shed alongside ours. As politicians go, Truman was a humble man, much like our current president, the polar opposite of his narcissistic, self-serving opponent who has no respect for the rule of law.

Almost fifty years ago, three years after Truman’s death, our nation mourned his loss in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s cover-up (which Trump says should not have ended Nixon’s presidency.) The nostalgia for Truman was immortalized by the band Chicago in their hit song, aptly titled, Harry Truman. You can find the original Chicago rendition on U-tube. I listened to it five times while I was writing this, and I haven’t felt so uplifted in months.

The lyrics are as appropriate today as they were in 1975. See if you agree.

America needs you
Harry Truman
Harry could you please come home

Things are looking bad
I know you would be mad
To see what kind of men
Prevail upon the land you love

America’s wondering
How we got here
Harry all we get is lies
We’re gettin’ safer cars
Rocket ships to mars
From men who’d sell us out
To get themselves a piece of power

We’d love to hear you speak your mind
In plain and simple ways
Call a spade a spade
Like you did back in the day
You would play piano
Each morning walk a mile
Speak of what was going down
With honesty and style

America’s calling
Harry Truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin’ round and losin’ lots of ground

Oh Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

Oh woah woah woah
America’s calling
Harry Truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin’ round
And losin’ lots of ground
So Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

Oh
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love
Harry
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love