Tanner Port
Robert Lovett and the Perils of Transitions
“You, more than any other man, have saved Western civilization.” – Winston Churchill
On the eve of the 1952 Presidential election, it had be six years and 244 days had passed since the British Bulldog spoke those words to the 33rd President of the United States at Westminster College’s Iron Curtain summit. If Churchill’s praise had been an indicator of smoother seas ahead for Truman to navigate, it could not have been more wrong. Truman’s troubles were only just beginning. In rapid succession, the administration found itself subject to a proven maxim of leadership that Abraham Lincoln once lamented:
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
Globally, Truman’s tenure as president carried the weight of containing communism, launching the Marshall Plan, and reorganizing the nation’s defense apparatus under the National Security Act of 1947, creating the CIA and NSC. By 1949, the administration saw the Soviets become an atomic power, and the hydrogen age loomed. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 shifted the Cold War from a contest of ideology to a kinetic fight resulting in over 30,000 American service members killed by the election of 1952.
Domestically, Truman arguably faced even greater challenges. Executive Order 9981 in 1948 desegregated the armed forces and prompted a Dixiecrat revolt, while FDR’s former Vice President, Henry Wallace, broke away to create a national Progressive Party. By 1950, McCarthyism dominated politics, compounded by Truman’s loyalty program, which obligated federal employees to undergo loyalty tests. The Korean War spurred the creation of the Office of Price Stabilization and the Wage Stabilization Board in 1951, while 1952 brought a constitutional crisis when Truman attempted to seize management of the nation’s steel mills. The Supreme Court struck down the action in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a landmark decision limiting presidential power.
As the election approached, the country’s polarization was unmistakable. As America prepared to test the hydrogen bomb, General Dwight D. Eisenhower stood before 22,000 supporters at Madison Square Garden, warning that the opposition was fighting him “as the Nazis fought.” On election night, as Truman reviewed the secret memorandum that would lay the foundation for the National Security Agency, his approval rating had sunk below 30 percent. November 4, 1952, brought the highest voter turnout in American history up to that point, as Americans elected Eisenhower with 55 percent of the vote.
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