Not MY First Choice

It is natural for desperate folks  to look backwards to deceased executives for models and/or inspirations of democratic behavior. In yer ol' perfesser'z judgment, hagiographizing not withstanding, Truman's not one to emulate.

Harry pretended to be a friend of the workingman. An he did initiate the great work of integrating USer military forces, which arguably led withing a decade to the Black civil rights movement.

But HST also BEGAN the chore--which Raygoon and the Raygunsels completed to thoroughly 30 years later--of rolling back, undermining, dismantling and eventually all-but eliminating the gains USer labor had made in the previous 30 years. He vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, which eviscerated Union activities, and then enforced it 12 times in the next four years after his veto was--as he knew from the start it would be--overturned.

HST also unleashed the National Security State, via the National Security Act of 1947.

It effectively truncated the authority of the Constitution to EXCLUDE "security" and established MOST of the most troublesome institutions in the toils of which we now try to salvage a bare modicum of privacy in our own lives."

It was these facts which Eisenhower's eulogy in his farewell address, the "militaryu-industrial complex" speech mourned and bemoaned.