Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the son of a mule trader and farmer. He grew up in Independence, Missouri, the small-town Midwest that shaped his no-nonsense, plainspoken character. Unlike most of his presidential predecessors, he never attended college — a fact that made him unusual among post-war presidents and that his critics used against him, and that his admirers cited as evidence of his common-man authenticity. He worked as a bank clerk, then as a farmer on his family’s land in Grandview, Missouri, for eleven years. In World War I he served as a captain in the Missouri National Guard, commanding an artillery battery in France, where he demonstrated leadership under fire that would characterize his later career.

Truman entered politics through the Pendergast machine — the notoriously corrupt Democratic political organization that controlled Kansas City — serving as a county judge (essentially a county administrator) before being elected to the US Senate from Missouri in 1934. In the Senate he chaired the Truman Committee investigating waste and fraud in wartime defense contracts, saving an estimated $15 billion and earning a national reputation for integrity. In 1944, at Roosevelt’s request, he replaced the incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace on the Democratic ticket — a decision of enormous consequence, since Roosevelt’s declining health was visible to insiders. On April 12, 1945, just 82 days after being inaugurated as vice president, Truman was summoned to the White House and told that Roosevelt had died. “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now,” he told reporters the next morning. “I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Truman served the remainder of FDR’s term and won the presidency in his own right in the famous 1948 upset. He declined to run for a third term in 1952 — the 22nd Amendment did not apply to him since he was already in office when it was ratified — and retired to Independence, Missouri. He died on December 26, 1972, at age 88.

Truman’s approval ratings traced one of the most dramatic arcs in the history of presidential polling. He entered office with enormous goodwill after FDR’s death and the Allied victory, posting approval ratings in the mid-80s in April and May 1945. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, his approval hit 82% — the highest of his presidency. The post-war period brought rapid decline: reconversion to a peacetime economy brought inflation, labor strikes, and shortages, pushing his approval into the 30s by 1946 and contributing to a Democratic massacre in the 1946 midterms that handed Republicans control of both chambers for the first time since 1933.

His 1948 upset reelection temporarily restored his standing, and the early stages of the Korean War, seen as a principled response to communist aggression, were initially popular. But as the war ground on, casualties mounted, and no end appeared in sight, his approval collapsed. In February 1952, Gallup recorded a 22% approval rating for Truman — at the time the lowest ever recorded for a sitting president, a record that stood until the Nixon and George W. Bush eras. He did not run for re-election in 1952. His historical reputation has risen substantially since then: he is now consistently ranked in the top ten presidents, with his Cold War architecture — Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, containment — seen as foundational achievements that shaped the Western order for fifty years.

The 1948 presidential election is the greatest upset in American political history and the most famous failure of polling and punditry. Every major indicator suggested Truman would lose. The Democratic Party had fractured: southern conservatives bolted to form the States’ Rights (“Dixiecrat”) Party under South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, running on a platform opposing civil rights; liberals frustrated with Truman’s foreign policy backed former Vice President Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party candidacy. Against this fragmented coalition, Republican Governor Thomas Dewey of New York — polished, organized, and running a cautious front-runner’s campaign — seemed a near-certain winner.

Gallup, Roper, and Crossley all stopped polling weeks before election day, confident of the result. On election eve, Newsweek polled 50 leading political reporters — all 50 predicted a Dewey victory. The Chicago Tribune, determined not to miss its early-edition deadline, printed “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” in 96-point type on its front page. Truman, who had gone to bed early on election night believing he had lost, woke up at 4 a.m. to learn he had carried the Midwest. Final result: Truman 303 Electoral College votes, Dewey 189, Thurmond 39. He won the popular vote 49.6% to 45.1%. The photograph of Truman grinning and holding up the erroneous Tribune front page remains one of the most reproduced images in American political history. See the full 1948 election breakdown.

Truman left office in January 1953 as one of the most unpopular presidents in history. His rehabilitation began almost immediately. The Cold War architecture he built — the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the containment strategy — proved so durable and effective that every subsequent president, Republican and Democrat alike, governed within the framework he established. George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and the national security team Truman assembled is widely considered the finest foreign policy team any American president has ever had.

His domestic record includes the desegregation of the US military by executive order in 1948 — a significant civil rights act that preceded the Civil Rights movement by a decade — and the Fair Deal proposals (national health insurance, federal aid to education, civil rights legislation) that were mostly blocked by Congress but anticipated the Great Society programs of the 1960s. His firing of General MacArthur is now seen as a definitive assertion of civilian control over the military, upheld at enormous political cost. His directness, his unpretentiousness, and his willingness to make hard decisions without looking back have made him a model of presidential character for historians. He ranks consistently in the top five to ten in presidential historians’ polls — the greatest reputational comeback in presidential history.