Near the end of which war?
I can’t find any evidence of Truman offering to be Eisenhower’s VP. It’s totally against his personality, for one thing. Neither political party would have accepted it for a second and Truman, the consummate politician, would know this to his bones.
What did happen was that on December 18, 1951 Truman wrote Eisenhower a handwritten appeal to run as a Democrat or not run at all. Eisenhower, who was actively, if behind the scenes, pursuing the Republican nomination, wrote back on January 1, 1952, saying that he wasn’t seeking the office. He then dictated a letter to Henry Cabot Lodge affirming that he had signed a sworn statement that he was a member of the Republican Party and Lodge leaked the news a few days later.
It’s also doubtful that the Democrats would have made Truman their nominee. It’s moot, since he announced his retirement on March 29, 1952. However, Kefauver had already beaten him in the New Hampshire primary and the fight at the convention would have been extremely ugly.
The parallel to 1968, when Eugene McCarthy came within a nose of beating Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary resulting in Johnson’s announcing his retirement on March 31, is startling.
That’s perception. Reality says that Truman had already met with Adlai Stevenson on January 22, 1952 and offered to make him the next president, telling him he wouldn’t run again. That’s Truman’s late-in-life version, at any rate.
If by “near the end of the war” **Tuckerfan ** meant WWII, I find the statement even less credible. Truman had been president less than six months at the time and the 1948 election was three years away. Eisenhower was avowedly apolitical throughout the war. Douglas MacArthur was the one who was campaigning for the presidency. Truman would certainly have much preferred George Marshall over both of them. He joked at the time that they were suffering “either Potomac Fever or brass infection.”
Can’t. Wasn’t born in the U.S. in either the comic or film version.
The President’s Plane is Missing (novel and film), The Man (novel and film) and Give Me Liberty (four-part Moore/Gibbons graphic novel) all deal with succession issues and/or not-completely-dead Presidents.
Truman by David McCullough details it. Truman said to Eisenhower during WWII, “If you were to run for President, I would not be so foolish to run against you.”
Ah, I was responding to the “the Democrats would have nominated him again” bit. I think the link shows that to have been no sure thing, and Truman chose to bow out rather than go through what would have been a hellish fight for the nomination.
Found the cite. Chapter 13 of Truman.
Not near the end of any war, so I was looking in the wrong place in the book before.
Is there any reason to believe this assertion? Royall was not a friend or confidant of Truman’s. This, p. 584, is the first time he is mentioned in the book and his later mentions are brief and for his job. Here’s the main one:
Truman did often complain of the burdens of being president, but so did every other president. He did keep after Eisenhower in 1947 to persuade him to be groomed for the job as his successor and Eisenhower kept declining, saying his had no political ambitions. There’s no doubt that he liked being president and every evidence that he fought incredibly hard to keep the job, even in 1948.
As for Tuckerfan’s other quote, “Truman said to Eisenhower during WWII, ‘If you were to run for President, I would not be so foolish to run against you.’,” I don’t find it, but I may have missed it.
Truman does say something similar on two occasions near the end of WWII, but there’s no reason to think that he seriously meant it either time.
At Yalta:
Eisenhower replied:
Presidents, politicians, and people say a lot of things at times when saying them costs them nothing. They often behave completely differently when push comes to shove. I don’t believe for a second that Truman offered to be Eisenhower’s VP, or that the thought would ever have occurred to him except at a particular low moment. He never would have acted on the thought. Presidents don’t. Once you’re president there’s no going back. You fight to keep the job for as long as possible, which is exactly what Truman did.