Word: truman
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...Some time after the parsimonious days of Harry Truman it became an accepted political fact that Presidents and those around them by right of election were due a voluptuous life-style and great wealth...
...BOOK COMES complete with Miller's homespun philosophy: "We need more Presidents who have run from fights and admit it. We must run from more fights. That's our only hope." Plain Speaking could do with more probing of Truman's personality and less banal simplicity...
...Harry Truman who emerges from this book is an honest, well-intentioned, intelligent man with a great deal of insight into human character. Although somewhat limited by his background, as his continued references to "niggers" indicate, he had a solid progressive outlook on politics and on society. After learning in the past year of the way the executive branch has operated under President Nixon since 1969, it is a relief to read these interviews with Harry Truman--a down-to-earth man who did not get carried away by the grandeur and power of his office...
This is an entertaining book to read, more of a curiosity than a valuable historical contribution, though it may be of some use as a handy compendium of Truman's sayings and anecdotes. Miller is a perceptive man and a good interviewer, and he was fortunate in having an extremely responsive subject. He had the chance to produce a unique and significant document and make an important inroad in the relatively new field of oral biography. He shouldn't have stopped short...
Miller originally intended that the interviews be part of a television series on Harry Truman to be shown in the early sixties. But apparently as a result of residual McCarthy era anti-Truman sentiment, he was still too hot a subject for television to handle at the time. The series was never produced. Miller's interviews probably would have made a remarkable television event. But as a biography, Plain Speaking leaves much to be desired...