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April 18, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
54:05
The Buck Stops Here!
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Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
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The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
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In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
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I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority, and it ain't going to be that fun.
Hey, everybody.
It's good to have you back on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Before we get started in today's episode, in which we're going to be looking at another presidential speech, Harry Truman's farewell speech to the nation, an amazing individual.
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I've gotten so much comments back from you talking about these speeches.
Going back to when we did the speech by Reagan at the end of the year where we put out the Time for Choosing speech and that Rendezvous of Destiny that Reagan spoke of.
And we've talked about the speeches of George Washington and Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan's last speech that we just did just this past week.
Today I want to jump into one that's a little bit interesting for me.
It's one of a historical context.
I've always thought when I was in Washington and serving in Congress, I always viewed it as an honor, a privilege.
It was something that I looked at as a duty, not just to myself and my family to do my best that I could, but to the people that I represented.
Harry Truman was an interesting, interesting individual.
This is a man who, again, if you look at it, you would never say...
If you took his background, you would never believe that this gentleman would have become president, much less a senator or anything else.
He started off in...
His life in Missouri, he lived most of his life in Independence, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City.
Small, lived on a farm, very shy, very socially at times.
If you read biographies about him, very socially and awkward.
In fact, there's a book.
I went to the Truman Library.
And he actually kept an office in the Truman Library up until the time he died in the early 70s.
He kept an office and that office is still left the way he left it the last time he was there.
And if you look around, you see the simple realities of a man from the Midwest.
You see the simple realities of someone who believed that his part in history was important, But that really he wasn't the important part.
He viewed what he did as out of a call of duty and respect for a country that he loved.
And one of the books as I was leaving, and I'm a big book person, and as we look at it going forward, I will talk about books.
And one of the books, though, that I bought there in his presidential library was a book called The Accidental President.
I thought to myself when I first looked at this book, I said, they're actually selling this book in President Truman's presidential library.
Because if you read the title, The Accidental Presidents, you almost get this idea of the old movie that many of you may have forgotten or wanted to forget from about 20 years ago called Dave, where they found this guy who was the identical twin of the president, the doppelganger.
And he became president for a little bit and that was the accidental president.
But this was talking about a man who led us at one of the most vital times in our country's history.
You can talk about FDR and how he got us through the Depression and into World War II and started that process of defeating Nazism and the totalitarianism around the world.
But it was Truman that finished it up, got us out of that war into what would be the post-war growth and troubles and trials that was afflicting the world at the point And then, frankly, into another war of Korea.
So it's interesting to see in this speech, I want to talk about, it was given on January the 15th, 1953, a lot to see, but it also goes into a lot of what basically service is, is from the people like Harry Truman who believed that their service in life was from a calling of their upbringing.
He was the 33rd president.
He was born in 1884 and lived most of his life, as I said, outside Independence, Missouri.
Most people don't realize that he actually, early in his life, as he was trying to win Bess, his eventual wife, that he wanted to make some of himself.
He actually was a farmer, worked on a farm, got jobs, but he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.
So he did men's clothing.
The story went okay.
It didn't completely pan out, but it was a story of someone who tried in life and succeeded to a point in business.
But that was Harry Truman.
This was somebody who was always trying to do more.
He also served in World War I, which made a great impact on his thinking, especially as it came later.
He also met the Pendergrast family during his time in the Army, which later led him to his public life as a judge, which a judge in that time was more of like a county administrator and ruler.
But also he led him then to what became the United States Senate and how he got to Washington, D.C.
D.C. So a lot just going on there.
An interesting couple of side notes.
Not only he had trouble getting into the Army, in fact, he couldn't see.
He had very bad eyesight outside of his glasses.
And the way he got in there is, again, a lot of great individuals in the world adapt and overcome and Harry Truman adapt and overcome.
He actually memorized the eye chart.
That's how he actually got past his eye exam.
So a lot of stuff that went into Harry Truman's life that a lot of people may not know.
He was also a very accomplished piano player.
He played piano in the White House, played piano a lot of places.
It was much of an icebreaker a lot of times for Truman.
He was also, one last thing before we get into this speech itself, he is the last president that we have had that did not have a college degree.
And he was the first since McKinley in the 1800s that did not have a college degree.
And since then, of course, there's not been a president that we have had since that has not had a college degree.
So, a very interesting part.
So as we dig into this speech, as we dig into all these speeches, I look for things that speak to us today and speak to this art of what I do call it as an art of public service.
And the first thing that you see In him is the duty of the job.
And for most people, if you start thinking about a speech that he's giving to the American people from the Oval Office in 1953, you would think he would start off in a bigger fashion, in a bigger way.
But what he really starts off with is he starts talking about the inauguration of General Eisenhower.
In fact, he talks about the next Tuesday that Eisenhower will be inaugurated president.
And that he's going to go back home to be a...
And I love how he words this.
He said, I'm going back home to Independence, Missouri.
I will once again be a plain private citizen of this great republic.
He knew his position.
He knew his calling in life and he knew who he was.
There was never a pretense about...
The President Truman in his life.
But he goes on and it's interesting, he speaks of a couple of three or four paragraphs here where he talks about his role in helping Eisenhower make the transition.
Now understand, they were not the best of friends.
Eisenhower and Truman did not see eye to eye on a lot of things, especially Korea.
And things that were going on and Truman felt off-put by Eisenhower.
He never considered himself to be of a showy class and with Eisenhower's role and the big names and big jobs that he had held during World War II, I think there was probably a little bit of a Of a inferiority complex, the only way to determine if you look at the reading of history and through the biographies of Truman.
So they didn't get along very well, but he understood the duty of his job.
And for one president who put in perspective, and we'll talk about this in a moment, he talks about how he became president in this speech.
And I think this emphasized the first few paragraphs here where he talks about the transition.
Can you imagine how he talks about this transition with Eisenhower, how each of the cabinet secretaries worked with Eisenhower's potential cabinet secretaries, how he sat down with Eisenhower and told him where things were.
He felt a real sense to make sure that the transition went smoothly because even though he was not a fan of Eisenhower's politically, He understood that the office of president still had to go on.
I think that speaks a lot to us today about what it means to have a duty of a high office in public life to make sure that the next person understands what to do, how to do it.
They may bring their own stamp to it and we may disagree with it, but the people have elected.
So he spends a lot of time on that.
And you may say, why would he say that?
Why would he talk about the last two months and being an orderly transfer and those kind of things?
And I think it goes back to something that basically made the biggest impression upon him.
And the second biggest thing that I would say out of this speech was he talks about how he became president.
He gives a little bit of discussion about what the role of president is.
And in this speech, he talks about the fact that he worked 17 hours.
He talks about the countries that he went to.
He traveled 135,000 miles by air, 77,000 by rail, 17,000 by ship.
But he said his mail always followed him and that he was always the president no matter where he was.
I don't know about you, but that sounds like somebody who's trying to make sure that people understood that he was working.
It sounds like a man who didn't let the presidency speak for him.
He wanted to make sure that people understood, just because he had the title of President of the United States, that he was actually out there working with people.
He was actually out there doing the job that needed to be done.
So, as you look at these, you look through it a very simple man.
A very simple man who had strong convictions.
And as you think about that, he even goes into the littlest of details.
And the littlest of details...
is the fact that when you look at his speech he talks about the fact that he came into the White House in which it was really and this is the residential side what we see as the White House not the West Wing but the White House itself what you see was actually gutted out during Truman's administration the walls that you see were never taken down but the whole inside of the White House his living residences and the others were redone During
his administration because they were literally falling in.
And he talks about that, that for three years him and Mr. Truman lived in Blair House across the street.
And he talked about how he even talked about in the speech how he hated going back and forth in a car.
He just wanted to be able to walk.
Again, this idea of a president who was not bigger than, who had not bigger ideas of who he was as compared to the job that he was doing.
Now, I said earlier, it was interesting to me, why he would spend time discussing the transition period between him and Eisenhower, making sure that Eisenhower got a full briefing, his cabinet staff got a full briefing, so coming into their jobs they would not be coming into coal.
And I think, frankly, it goes to the very fact of how Truman became president.
Let's put this in context for you, especially for my historians out there, and I get a lot of comments back from you about how these speeches, and you're listening to them, and how they affect Not only what was happening then, but how they can affect today.
Let me tell the story a little bit.
was not uh roosevelt's close friend he was not a close confidant in fact for the most part um you could say that roosevelt could pick truman out of a lineup he could but as far as bringing him in uh he did not bring him into the realm of the presidency he didn't bring him in close enough even though he was the vice president he was kept in the dark about a great many details such as the manhattan project which was the atomic energy project He was not brought in on a lot of the military decisions
that were being made or the future decisions with Churchill or with Stalin or others as they were looking at what could be the post-war world.
So you find a situation in which Truman Took solace in the only thing that he knew, and that was being a senator and his president pro tem of the Senate.
He regularly and, frankly, daily was presiding over the Senate and had a lot of contacts still on Capitol Hill.
That's where he was comfortable.
That's where his friends were.
It was not that he was welcome in the West Wing.
So when you think about that, and he talks about this, that in April of 1945, he had been presiding over the Senate, as was a custom of his.
And he walked over, and if you ever come to D.C. and there's a chance that you may be able to do this, and when you talk about the Capitol, his friends were like Sam Rayburn, who was the Speaker of the House.
He went after the Senate had adjourned for that day, he went over to raise a toast to freedom, as he called it.
It was a drink of whiskey with the Speaker of the House, his other friends.
They would play cards.
This was a regular occurrence.
But on that April day, it was a little bit interesting.
He went over to the Speaker's room and one was called the Board of Education, where the Speaker Would deal with members of his own party, especially if he was trying to get something done, and would correct them and thus the name, or educate them if you would, thus the name of the room being called the Board of Education.
On that April day, he went in.
Now think about this.
Franklin Roosevelt was in Warm Springs, Georgia.
And that's where he retreated.
That's because of his polio, his condition.
He would go there.
Warm Springs still stands to this day.
In fact, you can go visit the little White House where he died.
It was left as he left it that day.
You can visit what's going on at Warm Springs, which is still a rehabilitative institute and which helps people with not only physical injuries, Impairments and polio and others, but also other things that are cognitive issues that keep them from having to be able to experience a full employment life and others.
Warm Springs is still a vocational rehab institute modeled in the traditions that Roosevelt founded when he went there.
Roosevelt was there.
He was paying attention to what was going on overseas doing his presidential duties when he died.
Now, we're not in the days of Twitter.
We're not in the days of TV and phones at this point where everything is known immediately.
It took a little bit of time.
Truman was there with his other friends, Speaker Rayburn and others.
When he gets a call, and he talks about this in the speech, he gets the call to go down to the White House.
And it is interesting that when he is told in the speech, he says that he goes to the White House He's told to go through a certain gate and to go into Mrs. Roosevelt's room, and Mrs. Roosevelt was the one who actually told him that the president had passed away.
And that night, he called the cabinet together, and at 7.09 that evening, he was sworn in by the chief justice to be the president of the United States.
Now think about this.
He walks into this job with...
Nothing.
He walks into this job with barely even been in the Oval Office, barely having any acknowledgement except a few meetings and lunches with the now deceased president, the one who had carried the nation in many ways through the world wars up until this point.
You saw the war in Europe coming to an end.
It was getting close to coming to an end when Roosevelt died.
You had Japan still left to go.
There were some other issues there.
But here you had Truman walking in cold to the presidency.
No transition, no uptick, no upbrief.
And it is interesting that the way he talks about this, He spends those first four months, if you think about it, the UN was getting formed, Germany was getting ready to surrender, you had Japan and the battles in the Pacific still going on, and him just finding out about, frankly, the Manhattan Project and the use of atomic weapons, not only finding out about what it could do, but then actually being called upon to use it.
And he made the decision, he talks about it in the speech, he said he made the decision to use the bomb so that it would save, in his words, and his reasoning was to save hundreds of thousands of lives of not only Americans, but Japanese.
And that's why he used the bomb.
And now, in that matter of four months of becoming president to the time of the ending of the war in August in Japan, he began to then have to deal with an economy and a country that was rebuilding after World War II. All of that in just a short matter of time.
That's why I believe when you see the first half of the speech, he talks about what he did.
He talks about the fact that he tried to get Eisenhower up to speed.
He talked about the hours that he put in.
He talked about the deals that are coming along that he had to deal with on his desk and how many times he had to shake hands and how many times he had to sign signatures.
And you really look at this and discuss it because he makes a point and an issue of making sure that the president's job is a big one.
He wanted you to know that it mattered and that he took it seriously.
In fact, he makes a point and he talks about his signatures, but he talks about all the government work.
And I love how he puts this.
He said, the papers may circulate around government for a while, but they finally reach this desk, talking about the president's desk.
And this is when he says this.
And he said, then there's no place to go The president, whoever he is, has to decide.
He cannot pass the buck to anybody.
No one else can do the deciding for him.
That is his job.
This is where, of course, you see the famous sign on his desk as the buck stops here.
He took it very seriously.
In today's society, when you look at politicians, you look at presidents, you look at politicians, you look in Congress and Senate, you look at governors.
Is this a move back toward Truman or is there a move away from Truman?
I'm going to tend to say that there tends to move away from Truman.
Truman believed that your office, and especially leadership roles, that you were there to make decisions.
You're not there to pass the buck.
You're not there to blame.
You're not there to...
To show and obfuscate what could be.
And in Truman's own discussions here, he understood that the buck would stop with him.
And if the buck stopped with him, that means that sometimes he had to make unpopular decisions, but yet he understood that was the role of the job.
Where would we be today if we could actually have more and more who served this country, who believed that it was their decision to take in all aspects, to take in everything coming in, but find a stopping point?
Political life today has become not as much about the buck stopping here.
It's where can I make the buck stop somewhere else?
Or where can I lay the blame for somebody else?
Truman, coming from his background, his very simple upbringing, but very hardworking background from the Midwest into his battles.
In Europe in World War I, his struggles in business, his struggles in providing for his family, his struggles in getting into politics and the whole political machine of the Pendergrass family and others.
He always wanted to be his own man.
And I think for understanding that he would put that into the speech that he was, you know, saying that the buck stops with him is something that is really powerful.
And it speaks to the fact that he wanted people to understand that he worked 17 hour days.
And I think it was really interesting he put in this, he said that the president works long hours, typically 17 hour days, with no payment for overtime.
I thought that was just hilarious to me that he would place that in the speech.
This working man who believed in getting up and going to a job, he said, look, I worked all these long hours and I didn't even get overtime.
And so, again, it is interesting to discuss the humble upbringings and the sense of duty that Truman brought to the office of president.
So when he brings this duty to president, when he brings this idea that service is bigger than ourselves, I simply have to ask you on this podcast, and for the listeners, we talk about a lot of things from the daily political activities of what's going on in Washington.
We have Interviews with our health and all.
But the question is, where does the political discourse today actually start and stop?
For Truman, it stopped with him.
For Truman, he believed in taking advice from others.
He would listen.
He would take notes.
He would do the things that he believed he needed to do as president.
But at the end of the day, the political life of this country, he viewed coming from the president.
And if the president was not making strong decisions and taking the heat for those strong decisions, then who else would?
Truman was very aware of the fact that it was his duty, his responsibility, his role as commander-in-chief to make the decisions at the end of the day that affected millions of lives.
You go into that in his discussions that he had here with dropping the atomic bomb.
If you read outside of this speech, you read the biography of him, Truman truly struggled with this idea of using this weapon, this horrendous weapon that he had been given And not even known about.
And was called on within a matter of two or three months to actually use this weapon that caused and entered into the era that we have today.
It entered into what the people saw as the just horrendous life loss and destruction that came from the dropping of that bomb in Japan on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But he took that very real.
But when the decision was made, the decision was made.
He never stopped.
And if you read the biographies and you read the discussions in later history of Truman, Truman was very forthright that although it was a very difficult decision once made, he stuck to his decision that it was the decision and the right decision to be made.
And he shared that with others.
Then he goes into a discussion, I think, that we see later in Korea, we see later in how he fired one of America's most beloved generals at the time, Douglas MacArthur, because MacArthur was, frankly, usurping the authority of the president.
And Truman knew that this was not going to last, no matter how popular.
Look, MacArthur was more popular.
This was not any idea, but Truman knew that in the understanding of the presidency that he was the one that was in charge.
He was the one that gives the leadership and if he delegated that role to a field commander Across the world, then his power would be negated.
His power as president, as the representative of the people, would not have the power that needed.
So he made the tough calls.
He suffered the consequences for that.
Truman is definitely one that if you look at the polls and the history, you'll find that history has been kind to Truman, whereas his contemporaries were not.
One of the big issues that Truman dealt with in this speech was what we now know of as the Cold War and the discussions of inactivity that he saw that led to World War II that he also then justified for his action in Korea.
I want you to listen to What he says here and we're going to break this apart a little bit.
He says, Now
let's put a pen right here for a second.
This goes back to someone who saw war firsthand up close and personal in the trench warfare of World War I. He made his leadership mark in World War I, fighting in Europe, He saw the problems that were there.
He saw the gravity of war and the realities of it.
But that brings him back then when he looks at his progression on how he was looking at the Cold War, which he felt we could win.
Now, we've already listened to and talked about the speech from Ronald Reagan in the end of his eight years where he was right on the precipice of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cold War as we knew it up until that point coming to an end.
The pedestroika and glasnost of Gorbachev was succeeding.
It took a long time.
It started, though, with Truman laying out the fact that we're not going to bend in the Soviet Union.
We're not going to bend to the atrocities of the world and the failures of communism.
We're not going to do that.
And it laid the groundwork for the strength through peace doctrine that was fully admitted through Reagan that actually ended the Cold War.
And so he understood sort of the causes, which I think are very interesting to you because this, of any parts of the speech, really hits where we are today.
This is the ultimate struggle of a political power such as the United States being the supreme military power in the world, but is being challenged by near-peer rivals such as China and Russia and others.
Russia now expending a lot of their military power Might, if you would, into Ukraine and which they've not met with very good success at all.
In fact, they have shown themselves to be very inept at times in this invasion, which needs to stop.
Putin has made aggression toward Ukraine that needs to stop.
But let's take this back into a time.
Now, you have to get into this understanding.
That Truman was looking at this from the lens of ending the Second World War in which he was a part of, in which he helped in.
And so in writing this, he looks back and he talks about the isolationist viewpoints that he believed got us in trouble.
And how America should be a part of the world perspective.
This is a discussion that's right now reshaping the political platforms in Washington, D.C. from Joe Biden and from Republican members of the House and the Senate and to commentators across the world.
It's what is America's role and are we a part of it?
Should we be a part of it?
Should we be isolationist and not be a part?
It's the debate that's raging, as you know right now, in Washington over our role in Ukraine.
So it's interesting now to go back and look at what Truman thought, frankly, was the cause of World War I and some of the problems that started World War I, but then after World War I led into World War II. So let's look at this.
He said, We failed to act in concert with other people against aggression.
We helped kill the League of Nations and we helped build up tariff barriers that strangled world trade.
And this time we avoided those mistakes.
Now let's take a moment to say what he said here.
Isolationist was rampant after the World War I up until we actually got into World War II. Roosevelt dealt with this in his entire first part of his terms, several terms, dealing with right up until World War II. It is firmly believed,
and you read the writings, you can see his understanding, that Roosevelt understood that by the time Hitler was moving, we saw the occupations that he was making and the emphatic discussions from Churchill is that...
America was going to be into this war at some point.
The question was, is when we would get into it?
And I think if politically speaking, he would have probably gotten into it earlier had it not been for the isolationist sentiment here in America.
Now let's think about what this isolationist sentiment in America then.
It was led by folks like Charles Lindbergh, national heroes, who said, look, we only need to be concentrating on here inside our border.
We only need to be a part of...
What we need to say to deal with our country as it exists and the rest of the world needs to take care of itself.
That was the isolation viewpoint.
Frankly, if you look at TV and you look at others right now, you will see that that is becoming the discussion that we have right now among isolationist viewpoints and the effect of America not being an active world leader.
Now, I am of the opinion we don't need to be the America's police force.
America's not the world's police force.
We don't go into every idea.
And every part and say, we're going to fix the problems everywhere.
We're going to be a part of making sure that the world is kept in check.
Because, frankly, you cannot view America in isolation anymore.
Truman understood this after World War I into World War II. You have to be sort of understanding that isolationist viewpoint had a great deal of effect on how he dealt with that.
Now, he went on in to say, That the starting of the United Nations, I think, frankly, though, if Truman saw what the United Nations looked like today, he would be very upset at how this is understanding.
He also viewed that trade was our healthy dose of how we get understanding among nations.
Basically, that it was free trade and the cooperation between nations actually stopped wars, and I think that was something he wanted to continue.
But he also understood that the...
Isolationist principles were something that needed to be changed.
After World War II, he was determined not to let that happen.
He goes into a couple of examples with Iran.
When Russia wanted to keep troops in Iran, he went back at them, told his advisors.
Members of his cabinet, he said, came to me to ask me if we were ready to take a risk that a firm stand involved.
And he said, I replied that we were.
So he stood up to Russia.
They finally removed their troops from Iran.
It then came in 47 with Greece and Turkey, the same kind of a realization that British said that they could no longer keep up their maintaining of help there.
So it was America that stepped in, keeping Greece and Turkey free from what would have been communist domination.
From Russia.
So these are the things that he is very proud of.
He said, we stood firm in this Cold War because we did not just simply take an isolationist viewpoint.
We actually went out and determined that we needed to be a part of making sure that those who wanted freedom, those who wanted a voice in this world, whether they were able to do it on their own or not, had the backing of a freedom country such as the United States.
So the question comes in our time today, That we deal with even as we look forward to is how do we deal with the world without becoming entangled in every minor scrape or even major scrape in the world, but yet providing a point of leadership for the world as we see, you know, the communist We see expansion, we see totalitarianism, we see those kind of things.
For Truman, it was never a discussion.
From what he had saw leading into World War II, when Germany started moving, nobody did anything.
When Japan started moving into mainland China, nobody did anything.
He saw that that appeasement, that that isolationism of America actually led to World War II, and he was determined that was not going to happen.
So one of the things that he talked about greatly and the information that he looked at in deciding how he would then take Korea when he was informed that Korea had been invaded, this is what he took into it.
He said, we've got to do something because if we don't do something, then we are going to lack the ability to stop what could potentially become the World War III, except at this point in time, with nuclear weapons.
So when you see he was talking about when he dealt with Korea, when he dealt with what was going into Korea, he also had to deal with this discussion of the Cold War and the perception of the American isolation that he saw between World War I and World War II. And that affected greatly how he determined, coming out of World War II, that he was going to act.
He felt that the inaction of the world, not necessarily just America, but the inaction of the world, In not confronting what he saw from Japan and from Germany and Italy and others, but also not only not confronting them when they expanded into different territories, he also was dealing with the issue of the fact that he felt that some of the economic conditions that were imposed upon the defeated nations,
Germany in particular and others, was a leading catalyst toward what happened in World War II. He was determined not to let that happen.
Getting into Korea and coming out of the Cold War and dealing with Korea, his motivation was that we're going to have a firm stance and let these countries know that they're not going to be run over by these totalitarian communist dictatorships.
We're not going to do that.
We're going to be there so that what he believed was putting off the next world war.
And that's when he transitioned into Korea.
And in the speech, he talks about He was getting a lot of pressure at the time to use the atomic bomb in Korea against China and others to stop that war.
And he makes an interesting point about this and I love the conversational style that Truman uses here.
He says, now once in a while, I'll get a letter from some impatient person asking, why don't we get it over with?
Why don't we issue an ultimatum, make all-out war, drop the atomic bomb?
And for most Americans, the answer is quite simple.
We're not made that way.
We're a moral people.
Peace is our goal with justice and freedom.
We cannot, of our free will, violate the principles that we're striving to defend.
The whole purpose of what we're doing to prevent World War III, starting a war, is no way to make peace.
An interesting point of view there because, again, he viewed the involvement in Korea, he viewed the involvement of the use or non-use of the atomic bomb was that they were trying to avoid a war.
And at this point in time, the world had lived eight years without any kind of other nuclear devices being used, atomic devices being used.
And he viewed that as...
A success.
Now, he also was very adamant in saying that, look, using these devices would end the Cold War.
It would end the Communist regime, but it also end ours as well.
He understood the foremaning doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and that was what was coming on.
Now, he also viewed power in that base and how they used it.
And we had the Marshall Plan come out.
As I said earlier, not only was the isolationist issues, but he also had an issue with the world being rebuilt because he realized that those who were left in abject poverty with no hope were going to turn to the first person or the first movement that offered them a way out of what they were dealing with.
And he saw that in Germany with Hitler.
And others with Japan.
But he made an emphasis, especially in Europe, through the Marshall Plan to say we're going to be actively involved in rebuilding economies.
And had it not been, Western Europe would be nowhere close to what it is today.
And I think even laying it further down the line, it was the freedom of Western Europe and then the steadfastness of folks like Ronald Reagan and others who said, we will not tolerate, we're not going to be weak in this, we're going to force communism to...
Have to deal with its own imperfections and flaws that will basically kill it internally and pushing them as he did that ended the Cold War.
But it started with this fact of saying, look, it is freedom and people seeing freedom and seeing economic prosperity that is going to lead those who are not a part of that to want it more.
Now, he did say in talking about communism, he did talk about this when he said Then some of you may ask, when and where will the Cold War end?
He goes back to this issue, and he says, I think that I can answer that simply.
The communist world has great resources, and it looks strong.
He's talking about the appearance.
Remember, there was a lot of even discussion of Russia in America on the Russian...
Strength looked good.
The communist thought was coming on.
This was starting to take hold in the U.S., and especially if they saw inequalities in what people had here in America, the proposition that everybody had something equal, that everybody had a part, was a very...
Appealing doctrine until you look deeper into what you gave up to, quote, get that.
And so he said, look, it looks strong.
He said, but there is a fatal flaw in their society.
Theirs is a godless system, a system of slavery.
There is no freedom in it, no consent.
The Iron Curtain, the secret police, the constant purges, all are these are symptoms of a great basic weaknesses.
The rulers fear their own people.
And that is true even up until today.
The reality is if you're wanting a socialist or communist style government, then basically what you're saying is we want leaders who fear the people because to keep this style of government, we're going to have to keep the people without the freedom, without the freedoms that we have inherently here in the United States.
And he goes on to say, in the long run, the strength of our free side of our ideals will prevail over a system that has neither respect for God or for man.
So again, put him at the feet of the communists and say, look, your system, although it looks strong now, it is bankrupt.
And it's bankrupt from the entirety of believing that people and their inherent freedoms don't matter.
This is where I think Truman, from his very Normal, if you would, background.
His not ever being groomed for president.
In fact, as we said earlier, the accidental president.
He was not one that anybody saw being president.
Became the very catalyst for looking at issues through his lens.
His lens was that everyday people mattered, that kindness and honesty mattered, that people will continue to be a part of something in which they believe they have a spot in.
His goal through the Marshall Plan, his goal through confronting Russia and the creeping of communism, was one in which he believed That if you put up a fence against these bad ideas, that the good ideas of freedom and liberty and those kind of things would overwhelm and those would eventually pay off.
He was right.
He was about 70, 60 years ahead of his time, but he is right.
Even into this society today, people yearn for freedom.
People yearn for being able to have a A way to better themselves and communist countries, the totalitarian countries, understand they're having to fight this every single day.
So he would move forward.
Now the one thing that Truman did have, and I think it comes again from his upbringing, not having everything given to him, was that he also believed in the future.
He believed in the hope of what would be tomorrow.
And he talked about the world becoming a better place.
He talked about the Tigris and Euphrates River in Iraq, what was known as Iraq now and Iran, you know, being blooming again as he called it back to the biblical times of Nineveh and Babylon.
He talked about the plateaus in Ethiopia, high up, that has 65,000 square miles, he pointed out.
Exactly like the Corn Belt of Northern Illinois.
There'll be enough food to raise there to feed hundreds of millions of people.
It's interesting to me, sometimes how he made a point here, talking about Ethiopia, when in just 30 years later, in the late 70s and 80s, Ethiopia, and even to this day, has trouble feeding itself.
Now think about this.
Truman who believed that if you gave resources and things to people to build for themselves, to self-sustain, to do the things that countries are supposed to, that they could actually have a better future.
And he pointed out Ethiopia has the land and the variety and the technology to make a country that can self-feed itself.
But we're now seeing a country that 30 years later The world had to come to its aid because it simply was not feeding itself and its people were starving.
These are the kind of interesting proposals that Truman had this optimistic sort of outlook.
I call it Midwestern outlook.
I call it a normal upbringing outlook.
Look, things are going to be better.
Things are not easy.
You have to take responsibility for where you are.
And Truman was, by his own buck stops here mentality, one who believed that the actions of life were dependent upon something he was to do.
And as president of the United States, he was not going to let that go away because he believed that that was embedded into the presidency, that he was to act, that he was to be a part of the society around him, that he was to be someone who was taking action and moving the world ahead for a better place.
He makes a comment in here and he says this, It's interesting.
He said...
This is our dream, and he talks about his dream of peace through the United Nations, through trade and development.
He said, this is our dream of the future, our picture of a world we hope to have when the communist threat is overcome.
I've talked a lot tonight about the menace of communism and our fight against it because that is the overriding issue of our time.
But there are some things that we've done to correct the history, and those are what he talked about, about putting people back to work.
He turned back to home.
He talked about the ideas of a growing economy.
Remember, Truman came out of the war In what was a really dramatic change state, our whole economy had grown to one of the biggest industrial bases in the world.
We had people coming home.
It was the beginning of what we would know as the baby boom.
But people were coming home needing jobs, needing places to work, needing housing.
This was a very tough economic time.
But he always believed in people and he pointed to the fact of putting people to work And getting jobs and changing the economy was something he was very proud of.
He also touched on in his final speech here a discussion of America and its issues with civil rights, equal economic opportunities, equal rights of citizenship, and education opportunities.
He was one who truly believed that.
That you should be judged, as Martin Luther King would say, later on the content of your character, not the color of your skin.
And this was a part of this moving forward.
Now, he ends this speech, and as we end this speech, it's interesting to see, and I want you to understand what he actually says.
He states in very simple terms.
He says, So as I empty the drawers of this desk and Mrs. Truman and I leave the White House, we have no regret.
We feel we have done our best in public service.
I hope and believe we have contributed to the welfare of this nation and to the peace of the world.
When Franklin Roosevelt died, I felt there must have been a million men better qualified than I to take up the presidential task.
But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it.
And I have tried to give it everything that was in me.
Through all the years that I have worked here in this room, I have been well aware I did not really work alone, that you were working with me.
No president could ever hope to lead our country or to sustain the burdens of this office, save as the people helped with their support.
I have had that help.
You have given me that support on all of our great essential undertakings to build the free world's strength and keep the peace.
There are big things, and these are the things that we have done together.
And he said for that, I will be forever grateful.
He starts off in a very And the only way I can use plain tone.
And then he goes into and ends with the fact that he himself, he said, I never thought I'd be here.
He said, there's a lot more people capable than I to leave this country after Franklin Roosevelt died.
But it was up to me.
And he was not going to shirk away from the task.
He was not going to find others to blame.
He was not going to blame anybody else.
He was not going to try to give the responsibility to anyone else.
And he said unto himself, he said, I am the leader.
I am the president.
The buck stops with me.
So many today in our political, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this speech was I see too many times political leaders not taking responsibility, not saying, you know, admitting a mistake or moving forward, not making an action, trying to blame others.
We've got to get back into our country and our political leadership has to understand That leadership is about leading.
It's not about going forward.
And in just the last little bit, I mean, again, it is amazing to see in our country, which is rough with inflation, which was started last year, long before the war in Ukraine, and its escalation through Putin.
We have an administration that frankly is still trying to blame A war now for stuff that is started later.
That's not leadership.
And it should not come through any administration or any congressional leader or Senate leader that they should take anything except say, this is the job I've been given.
This is the job I will do.
And I will do it to the very best of my ability.
Harry Truman understood that.
An interesting discussion and a final point of this.
It was not a part of the speech after he gave, but when he got back and left, this was far beyond the times of the Secret Service and the post-presidential memoirs and setup that we have now for our presidents with money and the government and providing for them.
Harry and Beth went to the train station basically alone in Washington, D.C., and they traveled back.
And it was sort of interesting, if you look at the Truman biography, if you look at the Truman movie, they portray this fairly well, that he was sort of by himself.
He went from one day from being president, the next day being, frankly, average Harry Truman plain citizen, as he speaks of in his speech.
He was greeted when he got back to Missouri, but it is just amazing today that it was a simple goodbye from a simple man We may have disagreed on policy and may have disagreed on social policy and healthcare and other things, but at the end of the day, he was a man who, as he said and he said, I was given a job and I did the job.
And the buck stops with him.
You know, in our society today, it would probably be a lot better if our leaders understood that concept, that the buck stops with them.
And that when they bring other people into the mix, they bring others to do the best that they can.
And when everyone strives for the greater good, America is at its strongest.
That was Harry Truman's message to the country.
I think it's a message that we can take today in applying it to the political strife that we're going through.
Because if America is weak, the world is weak.
When America is strong, they can look to the shining light on the hill, as Reagan said, and understand that freedom is still the most powerful beacon in the world that overcomes ideologies when people can yearn to breathe free and see it live out.
That was Truman's message.
That was the message I think that is appropriate for today.
So you go out.
Have a great day.
Look forward to seeing you again.
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