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President Harry S. Truman - Miracle Man of Missouri / Part I

 

A quartet of political miracles epitomise the astonishing career of President Harry S. Truman.

Following service as a county judge in Missouri, Truman - who wanted to run for Governor or the US House of Representatives in 1934 - is the 4th-choice pick of the famous Pendergast Democratic machine to run for the United States Senate. Truman goes on to win in a 3-way Democratic Primary, then romps over the incumbent Republican by 20 points.

In 1940 - his prospects for renomination to the Senate looking bleak - Truman once again prevails in a 3-way Democratic Primary, though his two opponents total more combined votes. Again,Truman then massively defeats his Republican opponent - by over 40,000 votes.

In 1944 - his reputation reaching fame due to his Truman Committee Investigation of military waste fraud and mismanagement - Truman is President Franklin D. Roosevelt's stunning "Missouri Compromise" choice for the Vice Presidential spot on the Democratic ticket.  (FDR had dropped then-VP Henry Wallace from consideration as too radical to stay on, rejected a right-wing Southern racist and left Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas - a great progressive liberal whom Roosevelt had placed on the Court in 1939 and who was the only viable alternative to Truman - on the bench)

A "staged" phone call between FDR and Democratic leaders - with Truman summoned to listen - put forth the cause of party unity and compelled Truman, who had not campaigned directly or indirectly for the spot, to accept the party's nomination as candidate for Vice President.

In 1948 - Truman, who became President upon the cataclysmic passing of President Roosevelt (4/1945) - less than 3 months after being sworn in as Vice President - and has seen the United States, and the world, through the end of World War II in Europe, the first-ever dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (unleashing the fierce atomic technology that soon led to the nuclear age) to force Japan to surrender and so end World War II, the establishment and development of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of a devastated Europe, the Berlin Airlift, the founding of the United Nations and NATO, the rescue of Greece and Turkey from Communist rule, recognition of the new - gravely threatened - state of Israel, the restoration and democratisation of Japan after the bombings and subsequent surrender, and - at home - the GI Bill, which gave veterans returning from World War II a chance to improve their lives through college education and led to the explosion of America's economy as the new generation of college graduates went on to create a fantastic boom in businesses, goods and services that rocketed the United States to the top of the world's socio-economic order, is written off as having any chance of defeating Gov. Tom Dewey of New York. (Dewey was running as the Republican nominee for the second consecutive time.)

 

 

 

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