Truman

McCullough’s main theme throughout Truman is the rise of the underdog. Truman’s seemingly miraculous transformation from a Missouri farmer lacking a college education to the president of the United States was, in the author’s view, the result of resilience, hard work, perseverance, and personal integrity. The concept of achieving success by pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is at the heart of American mythmaking. Throughout his life, McCullough argues, Truman “held to the old guidelines: work hard, do your best, speak the truth, assume no airs, trust in God, have no fear” (1118).

The author sets up this theme from the outset. He describes the young Truman as “an exceptionally alert, good little boy of sunny disposition” who liked all his teachers and did very well in most of his classes (39). He was respected by his peers, even though he was a hardworking “bookworm” rather than a cool, popular boy: “They wanted to call him a sissy, but they just didn’t do it because they had a lot of respect for him” (42). Yet even in his youth, he faced challenges due to poor eyesight: he could not participate in some sports and, later, he was rejected from West Point.

When Truman’s father experienced catastrophic financial losses, he started working for wages for the first time. The family relocated to a “modest neighborhood,” and, later, worked from morning till night on a farm, “But there were no complaints,” McCullough says, because “[t]he Trumans were never a complaining people” (63). This environment in Truman’s family of origin seems to have been formative of his outlook of working hard and pushing through. It was the same attitude of working hard and being willing to learn that, in McCullough’s view, earned Truman glowing reviews for his tenure as a county judge. For instance, he consistently delivered on his promises of improving the local infrastructure.

Similarly, the author describes the way Truman entered big politics as a Missouri Democratic senator. Truman challenged two seasoned congressmen John Cochran and Jacob Milligan and was, McCullough says, “clearly outclassed” (250). Yet, once again, it was the underdog that won. His first years as senator were not easy. McCullough says: “He first arrived in Washington, at age fifty, knowing almost no one and entirely without experience as legislator” (255). Here, too, his peers underestimated him, and he gradually earned their respect, As would be said later in newspaper articles, he never lost the farm habits of early rising and hard work.

Of course, Truman was an American-born man of European descent, rather than a disenfranchised minority, a woman, or an immigrant, and, in that sense, privileged. However, it was his farming background, lack of college education, and low social status that made him an underdog at the highest levels of politics. In McCullough’s view, the fact that someone like Truman was able to become president is a testament that hard work, dedication, and resilience pay off under a correct political system—a testament to democracy itself. In this context, the author compares Franklin Roosevelt and Truman. Unlike farmer Truman, Roosevelt came from a life of socioeconomic privilege, a college education, and a long political career. McCullough calls him an “authentic American patrician come to power” (401). Not an eloquent orator like Roosevelt, Truman was straightforward, yet, at the same time, very relatable. For this reason, his 1948 reelection campaign focused on meeting over three million voters across America. Experts and media overwhelmingly predicted his loss to the Republican Dewy. McCullough says, “He had won against the greatest odds in the annals of presidential politics. Not one polling organization had been correct in its forecast” (832). He won because “[t]he people had made fools of those supposedly in the know” (832).