TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/50s/50truman

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 8KB | 171 lines

                /.2.3.                                                        ╚Truman Takes Charge


  [In the last two years of his term of office, President Truman
made two controversial decisions that helped establish the
growing the dimensions, and the limits, of presidential power.
In 1951, in the middle of the Korean War, he dismissed his
supreme militry commander, General Douglas MacArthur, for
insubordination over the conduct of the war and Asian policy in
general. At the time, many dismayed people thought the wrong man
was being fired. But there was no doubt of the President's
authority to do so. The following year, Truman invoked
constitutional authority to nationalize the steel industry in
order to break a negotiating deadlock that threatened to lead
to a critical war- time strike. On this occasion, the Supreme
Court declared that he did not have the power to do so.]


(April 23, 1951)

  A White House aide, leafing through a routine sheaf of wire
copy from the news ticker, started with surprise. He had come
across the report of Joe Martin's speech, made that afternoon
in the House, containing General Douglas MacArthur's letter
endorsing the employment of Chiang Kai-shek's troops to open a
second front in China. The aide rushed in to the President's
office. As he read, Harry Truman flushed with anger. As the
White House leaked the story later, he made his decision then
& there -- Thursday, April 5 -- that Douglas MacArthur must go.

  The press got the mimeographed sheets: "With deep regret, I
have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is
unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the
United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties...It
is fundamental...that military commanders must be governed by
the policies and directives issued to them in the manner
provided by our laws and the Constitution.

  The man he fired was a military hero, idolized by many.
MacArthur had done a superb job as Supreme Commander for the
Allied Powers in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan. He
was the strongest bulwark against the Far East's Communists, who
had long cried for his head. If Douglas MacArthur had an admirer
in the White House set, it was Truman himself, an
ex-artilleryman with an innate respect for soldiering.

  But strong-minded General Douglas MacArthur had set himself
firmly against the policy of Truman, of his Secretary of State
Dean Acheson, and of the U.N. itself. Despite repeated efforts
to silence him, he had spoken up defiantly and deliberately As
a soldier, Douglas MacArthur well knew that he was risking his
military career. His bold pronouncements had alarmed U.S.
allies, especially Britain. In Truman's view, this threatened
the solidarity of the North Atlantic countries, and embarrassed
Secretary Acheson in his own plans.


(April 30, 1951)

  A hush fell over the assembled Congress of the United States
and the crowded galleries. In the silence, the Doorkeeper's
voice came clear: "Mr. Speaker, General of the Army Douglas
MacArthur."

  In a great wave, the applause and cheers burst upon the erect
figure who strode down the aisle. Democrats, Republicans, and
the crowds in the galleries rose as one, clapped and shouted on
& on. Across 8,700 miles, through cheering crowds, clouds of
black headlines and storms of angry argument, Douglas MacArthur
had come to this podium to make his stand before the nation and
to state his case to the world. He stood in a trim Eisenhower
jacket without ribbons or medals back rigid, his face stone --
a dismissed commander conscious that history plucked at his
sleeve, peered down at him from the lenses of the television
camera. He waited, impassively. As silence fell, he began to
speak slowly, in a deep, resonant voice. "I address you" he
said, "with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight
of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country."
Applause welled up again, interrupting him as it was to do again
& again -- in all, some 30 times.

  To his critics who charged him with wanting to start a world
war, MacArthur retorted emphatically: "I know war as few other
men now living know it, and nothing to me is more
revolting...But once war is forced upon us, there is no other
alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to
a swift end. War's very object is victory."

  Attempts to appease Red China are useless, said MacArthur.
"They are blind to history's clear lesson...Like blackmail,
(appeasement) lays the basis for new and successively greater
demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other
alternative. Why, my soldiers asked of me, surrender military
advantages to an enemy in the field?"

  He paused dramatically, then said: "I could not answer."
Douglas MacArthur had hurled his challenge, and was ready to
make his farewells. "I have just left your fighting sons in
Korea," he told his hushed audience, "and I can report to you
without reservation that they are splendid in every way...Those
gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers
always."

  He dropped his voice a little, and went on, "When I joined
the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the
fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams...The hopes and
dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the
refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day
which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they
just fade away.

  "And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my
military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to
do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.
Goodbye."


(April 21, 1952)

  The midnight strike deadline was only 90 minutes away when the
face of the President appeared on the nation's television
screens. The voice of Harry Truman came through the
loudspeakers: "I have to think about our soldiers in Korea...the
weapons and ammunition they need...our soldiers and our allies
in Europe...our atomic energy program...our domestic economy."
Said the president: "We are faced by the possibility that at
midnight tonight the steel industry will be shut down. This must
not happen."

  If Harry Truman had acted on that sound premise to force a
settlement in steel, no one could have questioned his course.
After five months of negotiations, hearings and mediation, the
steel dispute had come to a dead stop. It was a deadlock
compounded of errors and intransigence on all sides: steel's
long refusal to make any wage offer at all without the guarantee
of a price increase; the C.I.O. steelworkers' insistence on the
full recommendation of the Wage Stabilization Board (a wage
package of 26.1 cents an hour plus the union shop); the
Government's optimism about a settlement.

  But Harry Truman did not see that the blame for the deadlock
rested on all three parties. The man who two years ago thought
he had no authority to seize the coal mines now claimed the
power to take over the steel mills "by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United
States."


(June 9, 1952)

  This week the Supreme Court decided that the President of the
U.S.has no powers other than those named in the Constitution or
derived from acts of Congress. He holds one of the most powerful
posts in the world, but he may not make law under any
circumstances, even in emergencies.

  This affirmation of the American doctrine of separate
legislative, executive and judicial powers is all the more
striking because every member of the  court was appointed by
Roosevelt or Truman, and some of the Justices (e.g.,
Frankfurter, Douglas) have been mainsprings of the New-Fair
Deal.

  The nation and the world have long understood that the U.S.
is strong, but perhaps neither the nation or the world fully
understand that constitutional government by limited and
balanced powers is the key of that strength. The court
trenchantly stated the case for constitutional government at a
time when it direly needed restating.