Truman Administrations - The Truman Administration Legacy
The Truman Administration Legacy
The last years of Truman's administration were soured by McCarthyism and by the bloody, inconclusive fighting in Korea. Truman was determined not to run for president again and reflected on the difficulties of the job in a 1952 memorandum. "The president," he wrote, "should embody the virtues of all the great leaders of the past; he should be a Cincinnatus, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a Cato, Washington, Jefferson and Jackson all in one. I fear there is no such man" (Ferrell, p. 221). Under no illusions about being such a man himself he tried to persuade the nearest approximation he could find, Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, to run for president in his place. Stevenson at first refused, then, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, he changed his mind and entered the race late. A highly intelligent man, he was nominated on the third ballot over Truman's own vice president Alben Barkely, but then...
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