After Two Years

"Well, gentlemen," the President said when everybody was in, "this is the one hundredth press conference I've held. I have nothing special to tell you. But I thought you might have a question or two you might like to ask."

Harry Truman stood behind his big, uncluttered desk, his back to the great window that looks out on the south lawn. He was still tan from his Florida vacation; his teeth gleamed brighter than usual through his wide grin.

The reporters began. What did the President think about prices? The President said he hoped that businessmen would see the handwriting on the wall and keep them from spiraling upward. Did the President think the Truman Doctrine would lead to peace or war? He thought his speech had clearly expressed his hope that it would contribute to peace.

No Quarrels. Time was when Harry Truman might have stubbed his toe on such questions; but not any more. Then pert May Craig, correspondent for five Maine papers, tossed him an easy one. "Mr. President," she asked, "I would like to have your comment on us after 100 conferences." Harry Truman grinned, swept the front line with a glance, and turned serious. He had enjoyed the press conferences immensely, he said. He thought the press of the nation had been eminently fair to him from the outset. He thought everyone had always tried to give the facts as they were. He had no quarrel with anyone.

Newsmen trained in the Roosevelt school, where more than one correspondent had been lectured or ordered into the corner with a dunce cap, pricked up their ears. The President, they had to admit, had been fair and candid with them, too. They found that they had also begun to like the man whom they had once dismissed as a well-meaning bumbler.

No Horseshoes. There were other Truman landmarks. By next week he will have been President of the U.S. for two years. Next month, he will celebrate his 63rd birthday. And a Gallup poll reported that the President's political popularity was still on the upswing. As of this week, on the fever chart of public opinion, 60% of the U.S. thought that Harry Truman is running his office well.

He is working hard and methodically. His day begins at a strenuously early 5:30. By 6:15 he has shaved, dressed, leafed through the morning papers. If the weather is good, he ducks out of the White House for a brisk two-mile stroll through the capital streets, accompanied only by secret servicemen, taking delight in the surprised faces of early-bird passersby. Breakfast is at 7.

The working day begins at 8:20 with dictation to Private Secretary Rose Connally. Then there is a staff conference to plot the day's agenda, a 20-minute, confidential chat with grizzled, old Chief of Staff William D. Leahy, who still wields great influence. At 10 the formal appointments begin. (Last week the President's calling list ranged from Dean Acheson to New York's Mayor William O'Dwyer, from Warren Austin to Chesley R. Palmer, president of Cluett, Peabody and an old friend from Truman's Kansas City haberdashery days.)

By 1 he is ready for lunch and a short nap. By 3 he is back at his desk for more conferences and appointments until 5:30. Then, for the next hour and a half, Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the White House physician, takes over.

The President, says Graham, is in top condition. He relaxes easily, his weight is down to a healthy 172, he feels fine. His invariable remark to Physician Graham: "You know I don't get sick."

Except for his morning walks, Harry Truman is no exercise-lover. The White House horseshoe court has had so little use that grass now grows around the stakes. But, under orders from Graham, the President swims in the White House pool, has an occasional bout with the exercise board --a slanted contraption into which the President obediently straps his feet for toe-touching exercise.

After a shower and rubdown, a family dinner at 7, the President usually goes back to his upstairs study with an armful of papers, intelligence reports, news summaries. He relaxes by listening to the radio, or taking a turn at the piano. No movie fan, he avoids the White House showings, except for an occasional newsreel of himself. Most evenings he is in bed by 11 o'clock.

No Cronies. In many respects this is the same hard-driving regimen Harry Truman had staked out for himself when he first entered the White House. But it now revolves around a brand-new operating routine. The old days of government by cronies are gone, and so are most of the cronies (Jake Vardaman, Ed McKim, John Caskie Collet, George Allen, et al.). The President now has a new, tightly knit staff and a new administrative procedure which makes full use of his Cabinet.

To keep from pulling the boners which kept him in continual hot water for the first year and a half of his term, Harry Truman now never makes a decision the first time an important problem is brought to him. The question first goes for study to his four-man staff: Adviser Clark Clifford, Assistant John Steelman (still a White House big shot despite his labor bobbles), Secretaries Charlie Ross (press) and Matt Connelly (agenda). Clifford decides what Cabinet officers or other Administration officials should be called in for consultation, sets up a special subcommittee to chew on the problem. Major policy questions, or tough ones the subcommittee cannot decide, Harry Truman brings to his regular Friday Cabinet meeting.

No Debts. There have been other changes in procedure and tactics; the President is now letting Congress handle the tough ones. But the biggest change of all is in Harry Truman himself. He has a new sense of the dignity of his office. His sure diplomacy at Mexico City was a long step from his early bourbon-drinking, poker-playing junketing, his wistful lurking on the fringes of Congress. He has a new confidence and a new formula: be natural. He likes his job and no longer asks anyone to pray for him.

More than anything else, he is no longer the receiver for Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. November 5, 1946 settled that. Said Presidential Secretary Ross: "The real Truman Administration began the day after elections."

Last week he was riding the crest of popularity. For the first time since he entered the White House, he was consistently able to attract strong men to his Administration (General George Marshall, W. Averell Harriman, Lewis Douglas, et al.). No one could accuse him of using ambassadorships to pay off political debts.

His proclamation of the Truman Doctrine was not only a strong move in foreign policy; combined with his order for loyalty checkups on Government employees and Secretary Schwellenbach's suggestion to outlaw the Communist Party, it was a domestic political master stroke as well.

Not only plain citizens, but GOPoliticos had begun to look on Harry Truman with new respect. Their November landslide had made him President in fact as well as name. It would not be a pushover to send him back to Kansas City in 1948.

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