How delightful would it be if the “poster boy” for the GOP were a Democrat? It would give them hives.
How about Harry Truman, the accidental president who faced an incredible challenge when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, almost seventy years ago as the end of World War 2 was in sight? As Eleanor Roosevelt said to Harry Truman on delivering the news that her husband had died: ” Is there anything we can do for you? You are the one in trouble now.”Without benefit of a college degree Harry Truman rose to every challenge before him.
His obituary in The New York Times: “Harry Truman- Decisive President”(http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0508.html) said the following:
For Truman, a hitherto minor national figure with a pedestrian background as a Senator from Missouri, the awesome moment came without his having intimate knowledge of the nation’s tremendously intricate war and foreign policies. These he had to become acquainted with and to deal with instantly, for on him alone, a former haberdasher and politician of unspectacular scale, devolved the Executive power of one of the world’s mightiest nations.”But now the lightning had struck, and events beyond anyone’s control had taken command,” Truman wrote later.These events, over which he presided and on which he placed his indelible imprint, were among the most momentous in national and world history, for they took place in the shadow and the hope of the Atomic Age, whose beginning coincided with Truman’s accession. And during his eight years in office, the outlines of the cold war were fashioned.In war-ravaged Europe in those years, Truman and the United States established peace and held back Soviet expansion and built economic and political stability through the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the Mideast he recognized the State of Israel. In the Far East the President imposed peace and constitutional democracy on the Japanese enemy, tried valiantly to save China from Communism and chose to wage war in Korea to halt aggression. In the United States, Truman led the nation’s conversion from war to peace, while maintaining a stable and prosperous economy.”
Now that sounds like the perfect role model to me…..rsk