Word: truman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gerald Ford could not quite bring it off. But he came achingly close to duplicating the upset victory of the fighting underdog he so much admired, Harry Truman, and he cannot be faulted for not trying. From the beginning, it was a long shot-an accidental President swept into office on a wave of scandal, stuck with the worst recession since World War II, confronted with a charismatic opponent in a bitter primary fight and then with an all-things-to-all-people Democrat in the general election...
Clarence Barksdale, 44, board chairman of the First National Bank of St. Louis, said one trait was not essential: superior intelligence. He noted: "My home-state guy, Harry Truman, said, 'The C students run the world.' " Kansas City Police Chief Joseph McNamara, 41, pinpointed "good judgment." Said he: "We can have someone with wonderful traits. If his judgment is poor, the net results are going to be bad." Some noted that a leader showed his judgment in selecting as lieutenants people who either complemented his own skills or were smarter than the boss...
...because people aged 18 to 21 were eligible for the first time, and they are less inclined to vote than others. This year, says Daniel Yankelovich, "the election bears all the earmarks of 1948, except that we don't yet know which candidate will play Harry Truman's starring role." Studies of the 1948 election found that voters who are vacillating between unexciting choices for President tend either to put off making a final decision until the last minute or not to vote at all. Says Yankelovich: "This is what is happening today." The voters may be turned...
...Southern blacks allied with Northern liberals and labor unions. The story gets complicated here, Bass and DeVries say, because the pressure exerted on behalf of racial equality changed major and minor features of politics very quickly. First, the Southern racists were read out of the National Democratic party at Truman's convention, and formed their own National States Rights Party. The civil rights movement won crucial successes after that, chief among them the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which insured the franchise for Southern blacks and ultimately, their political power in states like Louisiana, Mississippi, and South...
...emphasize issues of their own choosing. But both scored some solid debating points. While Carter criticized Ford's record of 56 vetoes in his two years in the White House as an example of "government by stalemate," the President claimed that F.D.R. had averaged 55 vetoes a year, Harry Truman 38 and Carter himself, as Governor of Georgia, between 35 and 40. (All such averages, of course, fail to gauge the significance of the measures vetoed...